FASHION INDUSTRY: HOW IT RISES AND CONQUERS THE WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Fashion industry, for the past decade, has become one of the rare economic success stories. According to the McKinsey Global Fashion Index, within the period, the industry has grown at 5.5 percent annually, and ow estimated to worth $2.4 trillion. In fact, not only does it touch everyone, but it would be the world’s seventh-largest economy if ranked alongside individual countries’ GDP.

The dictionary defines fashion as a popular or the latest style of clothing, hair, decoration, or behavior. For some people, fashion, might seem trivial and many might think “Who cares about fashion? I could just wear anything I find comfortable, I don’t care about it”. But still, from Paris, London, to New York, now each country seems racing to have their own Fashion Week, an event to show their identity and influence in the fashion world.

Then, what kind of charm is used by the industry so that right now almost all people from all levels started to pay attention towards their daily style and appearance, something that is clearly formed by the standard created by fashion industry around the world? And how fashion industry could thrive to the point where it is considered unexpected especially in the 21^st century? The answer might be not as simple as it seems but here are 3 reasons why the ‘not-so-important’ industry of fashion could be one of the influential powers as we know today.

SHOPPING ADDICTION

The fashion industry is being out of control in the 21^st century. People are buying clothes like never before, to the point that the average Australian woman wears only a third of what’s in her wardrobe. The same pattern happened to menswear, global menswear sales increased by 70% from 1998 to 2014. We are being brainwashed by social media, advertisements, and celebrities who never wear the same outfit twice that made us want things that we don’t need and it makes the industry produces way too much than needed.

The fact is that we easily get addicted to shopping which leads to a tendency of buying things we don’t necessarily need but wanted. We are satisfied by the luxury and the feeling of roundness to wear such up-to-date items. It may not seem dangerous on the surface, but shopping addiction really is a tricky and as dangerous as drugs or alcohol addiction. Moreover, young generations who often started to have this shopping issues in their late teen age to early 20s are the ones that likely will have shopping addiction.

The problem is, there is no escape. Commercial fashion is ubiquitous. Right now, cultural institutions are being presented by retail stores and our new rock stars are the designers and models. We don’t often remember when buying a silly blue jumper that’s too small but we buy it anyway because its cashmere (referred to cashmere wool: a fiber obtained from cashmere goats and other types of goat), or a nude brown coat that is actually 2 sizes bigger than our size but we don’t mind because we think it will eventually fit when we grow. Also, don’t forget the crazy bargain we are powerless to resist. All of these things basically draw us into a never-ending shopping circle in this rapidly developing fashion industry.

THE FAST FASHION

Stylish, affordable clothing has been a hit with shoppers. Research shows that the brain finds pleasure when pursuing inexpensive things, and high-street chains and online retailers’ sites alike are cashing in. right now, you can buy fashion as part of your weekly food shop, with as little thought as you might give when you are purchasing a bread, this is what we called fast-fashion trend.

The first grocery store to introduce a fast-fashion line was the British chain Asda – now owned by Walmart. Over the years, the same line is still growing rapidly as it is getting easier and cheaper for us to buy fashion items. In Tokyo, you can buy tailored suits on vending machines. At the mall, you will find numerous stores offering cheap and discounted fashion collections started with an incredibly and almost unbelievable cheap price. This is crazy, even Suzy Menkes, a much-admired British fashion critic, has said that she thinks “we need to realize that it’s morally wrong to buy a bikini for the same price as cappuccino”.

The fast fashion provides us with good deals. When seeing items you want and getting a bargain, both elicit waves of shopping joy and fast-fashion perfectly feed this process. First, it is very easy to buy since the prices of the clothing are very cheap. Second, the stores are continuously and frequently changing their stocks with new deliveries of fashion items, which means consumers will always have something new to look and longing for, take example with Zara which gets two new shipments of clothes each week, or H&M and Forever21 that get clothes daily.

ONLINE SHOPPING

According to McKinsey, “shopping behaviors are changing almost as fast as technology”. Online convenience, speed and range are hard to beat. As fast as the globalization emerge, we may be looking at a future where all transactions take place online, where malls and stores are no longer carry stock at all – but act as showrooms, selling ‘experiences’ to generate brand loyalty.

Mobile is now the primary way people transact online. A report from a firm about the way people shop on mobile, found that in January 2015, Americans spent about 3 hours over the course of the month shopping on phones and tablets and it doesn’t include the amount of time they spent shopping on computers or in physical stores. The obsession with looking at products is especially prevalent among Millennials, the generation that grew up in the age of the internet. Another survey conducted by Urban Land Institute in 2013 concluded that 45% of Millennials spend more than an hour each day looking at retail sites.

The obsession of looking at products online, even if no purchase is intended, often leads into a desire to have the products. This is supported by how often retail sites offers great deal or discounts for their products in which the customers could get cheaper price than the one they sold in their stores. Although studies of how the internet plays into compulsive buying are still in their early stages, but the evidence so far suggests there may be a link. This is what makes the percentage of online purchases growing rapidly each year, bringing huge profits for the fashion industry when actually their expenses are declining because they are no longer need physical stores to sell their items.

Well of course these are not the complete reasons on why fashion industry can have such influence on world’s economy, but still, there reasons alone can show how the industry can thrive incredibly especially in the 21^st century. So, what do you think? Does the fashion industry is still as trivial as it seems?