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Etro launches ecommerce on revamped website

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While other brands add ever-more sophisticated content to their online shopping channels, Balenciaga is coming out with a stripped-down version of its site. Gvasalia is creative director of the Paris-based brand, in addition to his label Vetements.

The new balenciaga.com, which rolls out today on all devices, features a bare-bones menu inspired by an Excel sheet, designed for ease of use.

"Organized as a plain-view portal for ready-to-wear and accessories, it removes all the visual obstructions and useless distractions between the shopper and the purchase. Each click brings you closer to the product," the brand said.

The e-commerce site, originally launched in September 2008, ships to 95 countries worldwide and will add five more in March: United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

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Balenciaga Rolls Out Stripped-Down E-commerce Site

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While other brands add ever-more sophisticated content to their online shopping channels, Balenciaga is coming out with a stripped-down version of its site. Gvasalia is creative director of the Paris-based brand, in addition to his label Vetements. The new balenciaga.com, which rolls out today on all devices, features a bare-bones menu inspired by an Excel sheet, designed for ease of use.

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All hail Daniel Lee. The year is 2020 and the New Bottega fangirl is a force to be reckoned with. She seamlessly merges her minimal wardrobe with the understated elegance of Daniel Lee's Bottega Veneta. Cloud-like, dumpling pouch bags are on her agenda, and she rounds off her look with padded mules, chain mesh pumps and wrap-around sandals.

Filling the minimal void that emerged when Phoebe Philo left Céline, Daniel Lee is ushering Bottega Veneta into a new era. He embarks on a fashion renaissance (with a Designer of the Year award already in his pouch, of course). Bringing with him a rare sense of excitement that the industry has been craving, he celebrates the freedom of self-expression, but also discretion. Daniel Lee celebrates luxury, but reasserts the label's relevance in a logo-manic landscape. And, with such a wide range of Bottega Veneta shoes available comes confusion about the sizing, fit and styling of individual styles ― things that minimal cool-girls who adopt the brand rarely ever discuss.

We got in touch with five Bottega Veneta savvys to target the all important questions. Do Bottega Veneta shoes run true to size? Are Bottega Veneta shoes comfortable? What can I wear with square toe, padded sandals? Now you can join the New Bottega club with total peace of mind.

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The Ultimate Guide to Bottega Veneta Shoes: Sizing, Fit & Styling

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All hail Daniel Lee. The year is 2020 and the New Bottega fangirl is a force to be reckoned with. She seamlessly merges her minimal wardrobe with the understated elegance of Daniel Lee's Bottega Veneta. Cloud-like, dumpling pouch bags are on her agenda, and she rounds off her look with padded mules, chain mesh pumps and wrap-around sandals.

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After launching its new redesigned website bottegaveneta.com in June 2010, the brand has decided to extend its e-commerce reach beyond the USA by adding the option to shop in Japan since November, and now also in the United Kingdom as of December 8th.

"Offering e-commerce in the UK has been an important goal for Bottega Veneta for some time," says Bottega Veneta CEO and President Marco Bizzarri. "I'm pleased that we are achieving our goal with a site as inviting and as service-oriented as our physical stores. With online shopping now available in the US, Japan, and the UK, we're significantly closer to our goal of making bottegaveneta.com the brand's global flagship."

Shopping categories are organised to allow browsing by product category as well as by theme. Videos, photos, and text stories frame each product in ways that allow the customer to explore it in multiple dimensions in one place.

Shopping directly from the online catalog is effortless thanks to a simple click-to-purchase function. Customers can choose from a range of new products including jewellery, watches, furniture, and home accessories, as well as the brand's famous collections of ready-to-wear, handbags, shoes, small leather goods, eyewear and luggage.

Since its founding in Vicenza in 1966, Bottega Veneta has created a new standard of luxury and its high-quality leather goods have earned the brand the reputation as one of the world's premier luxury brands. Recently acquired by the Gucci Group in 2001, the company currently offers product distribution in Europe, Asia, North and South America.

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Bottega Veneta launches e-commerce functionality in the UK

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After launching its new redesigned website bottegaveneta.com in June 2010, the brand has decided to extend its e-commerce reach beyond the USA by adding the option to shop in Japan since November, and now also in the United Kingdom as of December 8th.

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Mica Argañaraz is the carefree and sophisticated face of Bottega Veneta

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Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta has presented a sensual, luxurious and exquisite campaign for its 2020 spring-summer collection. Mica Argañaraz is the heroine of this indolent summer reverie.

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Instagram Analytics for Balenciaga 🕊

Here're Instagram account statistics for balenciaga. The audience size of balenciaga is 14.3M followers. The account gained -9263 new followers in the four last weeks. The Engagement Rate is 0.77%. The average number of likes and comments per Instagram post created by Balenciaga 🕊 is 109.8K and 0 respectively. balenciaga publishes content mostly about Fashion, Clothing & Outfits, Accessories & Jewellery.

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Eager to learn more about the @balenciaga Instagram followers? Or maybe you need to review the engagement rate and other vital metrics of Balenciaga 🕊 Instagram account since you want to collaborate with them? There could be a lot of reasons why you might be interested in learning the Balenciaga 🕊 analytics data. But no matter the cause, we prepared this small and insightful FAQ to answer the most popular questions about Balenciaga 🕊 Instagram statistics.

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Balenciaga 🕊 (@balenciaga) Instagram Stats and analytics - HypeAuditor

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Instagram Analytics for Balenciaga 🕊 Here're Instagram account statistics for balenciaga. The audience size of balenciaga is 14.3M followers. The account gained -9263 new followers in the four last weeks. The Engagement Rate is 0.77%. The average number of likes and comments per Instagram post created by Balenciaga 🕊 is 109.8K and 0 respectively.

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Instagram Analytics for ETRO

Here're Instagram account statistics for etro. The audience size of etro is 1.6M followers. The account gained 644 new followers in the four last weeks. The Engagement Rate is 0.05%. The average number of likes and comments per Instagram post created by ETRO is 889 and 4 respectively. etro publishes content mostly about Fashion, Art/Artists, Clothing & Outfits, Accessories & Jewellery.

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Instagram Follower Growth for ETRO

+644 followers last 4 weeks

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Check @etro audience demographics. Full report shows percentage for top-5 countries, top-5 cities, states breakdown for US, core gender, and top-5 languages.

@etro audience quality analytics

Get in-depth analysis of the quality of audience and find fake or ghost followers numbers. The report will show the number of real people and influencers, the percentage of mass followers and suspicious accounts.

Evaluate the percentage of target age group and gender among @etro audience. The report will show the percent of each age-gender group and overall split.

FAQ: Instagram Stats for etro Instagram Account

Eager to learn more about the @etro Instagram followers? Or maybe you need to review the engagement rate and other vital metrics of ETRO Instagram account since you want to collaborate with them? There could be a lot of reasons why you might be interested in learning the ETRO analytics data. But no matter the cause, we prepared this small and insightful FAQ to answer the most popular questions about ETRO Instagram statistics.

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ETRO (@etro) Instagram Stats and analytics - HypeAuditor

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Instagram Analytics for ETRO Here're Instagram account statistics for etro. The audience size of etro is 1.6M followers. The account gained 644 new followers in the four last weeks. The Engagement Rate is 0.05%. The average number of likes and comments per Instagram post created by ETRO is 889 and 4 respectively.

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gucci (@gucci) Instagram Stats and analytics - HypeAuditor

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gucci Instagram stats and analytics. @gucci has 50M followers, 0.09% - engagement Rate, and 43.1K average likes per post. View free report by HypeAuditor.

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Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you’re into with the people who get you.

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Though Hermès launched into e-commerce as early as 2001, it had nevertheless started to lag behind, owing to an ageing website which was hard to access and had very limited geographical scope. As the luxury label announced last year, its digital make-over would involve the introduction of a new, revamped website. On Tuesday 3rd April, Hermès's new European website was finally launched, completing the label's digital transformation which began with a trial deployment in Canada last June, and in the USA since last October.

The French label was happy with the North American trial's results, especially the booming conversion rates, and has now made the site available in French, English, Spanish and German, launching it simultaneously in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, the UK, Switzerland and Sweden.

The new "digital flagship", as Hermès defines it, is a fluid, easily navigated website with a twin dimension: e-store, now made more consistent with e-shoppers' expectations, and a strong, unique editorial platform - as was the previous website, which openly invited browsing but tended to lose its visitors' attention.

Notably, the new website highlights the work by French documentary director Frédéric Laffont with Hermès. Intended as a showcase of the label's expertise, the site is chiefly designed to boost Hermès's e-tail results in Europe. It is rich in editorial content, for example featuring video demos by sales consultants from some of the label's key flagship stores, and it showcases the entire product line. Navigation is intuitive, taking users across all of Hermès's lines, from ready-to-wear to handbags, silk scarves, watches, horse-riding apparel and equipment, fragrances etc.

Hermès recently reported record-breaking results in 2017 - a net income of €1.22 billion for a revenue of €5.5 billion - and now needs to exploit this new growth vector, closing down the digital gap with its competitors by adopting a parallel omni-channel strategy.

Hermès is also planning to extend the reach of its digital flagship to new, not inconsequential markets, for example by deploying it before the end of the year in China, a country in which Hermès has not yet ventured into e-tail.

Will this risk weakening the label's aura of great exclusivity? In parallel with this digital investment, Hermès continues to open new brick-and-mortar stores: eight new openings are announced for 2018, notably in California and in China.

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Hermès launches European digital flagship

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Though Hermès launched into e-commerce as early as 2001, it had nevertheless started to lag behind, owing to an ageing website which was hard to access and had very limited geographical scope. As the luxury label announced last year, its digital make-over would involve the introduction of a new, revamped website.

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TikTok - trends start here. On a device or on the web, viewers can watch and discover millions of personalized short videos. Download the app to get started.

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Finally, the fashion editor’s favourite label is launching its own shoppable website

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Discover handcrafted leather goods and shop luxury bags, designer clothing, shoes and jewellery from Bottega Veneta.

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Facebook. 177,912,737 likes · 108,250 talking about this · 120 were here. The Facebook app Page celebrates how our friends inspire us, support us, and help us discover the world when we connect.

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Bottega Veneta has set a new standard for Luxury since its birth in Vicenza in 1966. Bottega Veneta's history is closely interwoven with that of Veneto. The bottega veneta house embraces a core philosophy of Venetian art, culture and beauty.

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L'Officiel Cyprus is pleased to announce our new column: Fashion Brand Story. Each month, we'll share the memories and DNA of some of the most famous, inspiring brands and the people behind them. Bags in incredible shapes and colours from this brand are worn by models and influencers around the world. Street style fashionistas flaunt the brand's sophisticated and trendy pumps during fashion weeks. This brand is recognizable not by the logo but by the unique leather processing technique. Bottega Veneta.

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L'Officiel Cyprus is pleased to announce our new column: Fashion Brand Story. Each month, we'll share the memories and DNA of some of the most famous, inspiring

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This year, a lot of planning was done around fashion sustainability - but less action. The biggest theme as we head into 2022 is the interconnection between carbon emissions, equity and supply chain.

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In the past year, the focus around sustainable fashion has continued to grow, as industry leaders made pledges to sustainability at COP26, accelerated material innovation and began to explore circularity. Most importantly, a growing realisation emerged that climate change is as much about equity as it is about carbon footprints.

"Climate change is not about emissions. It's about a system that has been benefiting some at the expense of the vast majority of people on the planet and the planet itself," says Muhannad Malas, senior climate campaigner for advocacy group Stand.earth.

But despite the interest in and emphasis placed on sustainable fashion, the industry as a whole has made little tangible progress this year. Emissions continue to increase, circularity remains elusive, next-gen textiles have yet to scale, and countless garment workers are still being underpaid. Actions speak louder than words, but even so, for the fashion industry, heightened conversation and urgency is a positive sign. Critics are encouraged by the fact that some of the biggest brands and highest-ranking executives are talking about end-of-life impacts and establishing biodiversity strategies, reflecting a shift in mindset as new targets are set for the coming year.

"The last 12 months have shown me that mindsets and decision-making frameworks are changing," says Rebecca Burgess, founder of the nonprofit Fibershed. Alarm bells are going off, she says, triggering meaningful action.

The implications of textile dyeing are now a bigger part of the ethical fashion conversation. As a result of synthetic dyes and chemicals being applied to textiles, toxins are released into the wastewater near clothing manufacturing plants. The water consumed and used by residents in those areas causes serious health and environmental damage - including increased risk of cancer, skin problems and extermination of animal populations. Now, in countries like Bangladesh and China, which house major clothing manufacturing hubs, the government is beginning to take action.

Companies are beginning to prioritise not only the sustainability of their product but also the impact of their packaging on the environment - which, with the rise of e-commerce, has become especially wasteful.

To date, the progress around fashion sustainability has been slow because it is designed to be, by tweaking only around the edges, advocates say. The changes that would result in the biggest impact - eliminating fossil fuels in manufacturing processes and increasing garment worker wages - both require systemic transformation of industry infrastructure and business models. They top experts' lists as the most fundamental priorities to address next year and rank among the key sustainable fashion trends in 2022.

Fossil fuels and low wages: Fashion's enablers

Decarbonising the fashion supply chain is complicated, but it may singularly have the greatest impact in terms of decreasing the industry's carbon footprint. If achieved, it will also inherently tackle some of fashion's other problems along the way, such as waste, overproduction and the overuse of hazardous chemicals.

The proliferation of low-cost fossil fuels is largely responsible for how fashion came to operate the way it does today, says Malas. "Rethinking fashion without fossil fuels is going to help catalyse this conversation about how we deal with overproduction."

But it's no easy feat. In 2021, the fashion industry accounted for between 8-10% of global carbon dioxide output, and 20 per cent of the world's plastic production - largely due to the industry's reliance on petroleum-based polyester. And though companies have pledged to reduce or neutralize their carbon footprint, the necessary structures and obligation to transparency to hold them accountable don't exist. And the manufacturing of clothing derived from fossil fuels is only expected to grow over the next twenty years. Reducing carbon emissions industry-wide would require an overhaul of the entire supply chain.

Low labour costs are another enabler of the current challenges. Only two percent of garment workers worldwide make a liveable wage. "The price of clothing is artificially low, partially because of poor working conditions," says Elizabeth Cline, director of advocacy and policy at the nonprofit Remake. "That's what leads to the larger, systemic issues, including overproduction and consumer waste."

"In terms of forcing a system change, increasing the power of labour through organising power or wages is absolutely one of the most effective ways to dramatically shift the business model," she says.

Social progress is mixed

Many of the industry's eco-friendly initiatives, however, leave people out of the equation. "Building a decarbonised fashion industry is not going to solve all of our environmental challenges," says Cline, adding that the renewable energy sector is still vulnerable to human rights abuses. "Looking at the UN Sustainable Development Goals, number one is poverty alleviation. It's not more recycled plastic in your collections."

And while labour efforts have made some progress, they don't add up to the systems change experts say is necessary.

The focus on purchasing practices is a textbook example, says Kim van der Weerd, former garment factory manager and host of the podcast Manufactured. Contracts between brands and suppliers ultimately determine the social and environmental standards in manufacturing. Brands look to their suppliers to reduce emissions and improve labour conditions, but because of the production deadlines and financial constraints written into their contracts, suppliers feel powerless to make those changes. The movement to improve the brand and supplier relationship had some time in the spotlight this year, which van der Weerd says is a change from just a year or two ago - but it's still not enough.

"As an industry, I sometimes feel that we're trying to push for improved purchasing practices in isolation, without addressing the root cause," she says. "The root cause of bad purchasing practices is that brands have little to no skin in the game, and the absence of shared financial risk. We should be pushing for things that re-distribute financial risk, and better purchasing practices will follow."

The Bangladesh Accord, the unprecedented industry agreement that improved factory safety after the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013, was renewed this year in a victory for labour advocates. However, the uncertainty leading up to it was, for many, a sign that the underlying dynamics that lead to poor working conditions have not significantly improved.

"What is most notable about 2021 is all that hasn't changed, and the resumption of the way things were," says Jill Tucker, head of the Laudes Foundation's labour rights programme, who sees pandemic-era workloads as the most recent evidence for that. "Workers are back to working 60+ hours [per] week with all the same problems and the same wages. The industry is still relying on voluntary measures and auditing regimes that have been proven to be ineffective. The industry has tried to use carrots; we need real rules and sticks."

The passing of Senate Bill 62 in California, though, left others more optimistic. The bill, which requires factories to pay garment workers hourly wages instead of payment per-piece produced, and will hold brands and retailers liable for wage theft in their supply chains, reflects a shift in views about where solutions need to come from and who should be responsible for developing them. It places the burden not just on industry-led initiatives and consumers, but also suppliers and small brands that are already operating with practices the bill was designed to enforce.

"The bill sets an important legal precedent - that brands are jointly responsible for worker wages - and is already being used as a blueprint for change globally," says Cline.

And earlier this year, a New York coalition proposed the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act, to hold all major brands accountable for their environmental and social impacts. The bill would require all fashion companies that sell their products in New York and generate more than $100 million in revenue to map at least 50 percent of their supply chains, disclose impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, water footprint and chemical use, and report the total volumes of materials they produce - in a move to highlight the sector's aggregate impact. On the labour side, brands would need to disclose median wages for workers and the measures that are in place to embed responsible business conduct into policies and management systems.

If passed, the bill has the potential to make history and impact the way the fashion industry operates on a global scale.

Leaving partial fixes behind

Ecologists have concerns about solutions becoming diluted as they scale. As regenerative agriculture catches on, for example, its practices are increasingly applied in a selective manner without transforming the wider systems. It also continues to be too siloed, says Julie Stein, co-founder Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network, who has said fashion and society, in general, forget that farms should be part of nature, not separate from them. "My hope is that we can expand the definition of regenerative to include truly wildlife-friendly practices," she says.

Other existing industry tactics have fallen short, sometimes to the point of impeding progress. Lower-impact materials that improve but don't transform supply chains, such as better cotton and recycled polyester, are key examples. Malas sees a contradiction in how brands use, and talk about, recycled polyester in particular, which is fashion's most popular "sustainable" material, but is made from plastic and perpetuates a dependence on fossil fuels. Though materials such as mycelium and cactus leather are gaining popularity as a replacement, especially for use in shoes and handbags, most alternatives still remain expensive to produce and hard to scale.

The UN Fashion Charter updated its commitments so that new and existing signatories must pledge to halve their emissions by 2030 (up from 30 per cent in 2018) or set a science-based target to reduce their carbon footprint, as well as specify within 12 months how they will achieve the new commitments. A new digital ID technology was introduced at the summit to encourage and track brand transparency, and companies pushed for trade policies that encourage the use of eco-friendly materials.

However, despite the progress, many were left feeling disappointed. Global leaders set weak emissions targets and watered down their final agreement, while fashion failed to fund the work needed to meet its own climate goals. Nor did the industry attempt to address the bigger, underlying issues at play, says Laudes Foundation's Tucker. "Ignored at COP, and by brands, is any conversation and action around volume and growth and endless consumption."

But this is the year that sustainability efforts will no longer remain at the fringes of fashion. Though it's important to continue promoting transparency and accountability amongst brands and retailers, and drive change with material and packaging innovation, the real drivers of systemic change will be better labour rights and wages for garment workers, and the depletion of fossil fuels from industry-wide supply chains. All of the challenges that come with an overhaul of fashion's impact on the environment are connected, advocates say. And in 2022, the industry is starting to awaken to that reality. "I see light bulbs going off at deeper levels," says Fibershed's Burgess. "With brands, we are working with, transformative ideas are becoming increasingly part of the collective vision."
Additional reporting and research by Sandhya Iyer.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author: Aiming to be climate positive? Reformation opens its playbook Leather alternatives have a new club: Inside Ecovative's cooperative Meet the silk startup replacing the chemicals in beauty and clothing

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Sustainability: Where fashion is heading in 2022

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Last year, a lot of planning was done around fashion sustainability - but less action. The biggest theme as we head into 2022 is the interconnection between carbon emissions, equity and supply chain.

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As fashion goes ever more mass, designers across the price spectrum are building sizable made-to-order businesses, with designers like Prabal Gurung and Antonio Berardi attributing 20 to 25 per cent of sales to made-to-order.

Designers have found ways to control costs by outsourcing parts of the process and relying on some automation.

Similar to haute couture, many designers say made-to-order services are a valve for creativity, allowing them to develop ideas that may later be incorporated into ready-to-wear.

With its trademark white, puff-sleeved blouses and ruched gingham dresses, Olivia Rose epitomises the modern-day Jane Birkin aesthetic that has become popular on Instagram. But what sets the Edinburgh-based label apart from visually similar peers like With Jéan and Rouje is that each piece is made upon purchase.

From fast-fashion giants to the rise of indie brands with Instagram storefronts and Chinese factories, fashion is moving more rapidly than ever. Simultaneously, labels across the price spectrum are finding success with made-to-order, positioning it as a slower, higher-quality alternative to mass retail and off-the-rack designer clothes.

In the past decade, as prices for ready-to-wear have gone up and quality has arguably gone down, haute couture and bespoke tailoring have witnessed a renaissance. Although it is not the most scalable of business models, it is a sustainable one. Today, established designers like Emilia Wickstead and Jenny Packham offer made-to-measure services in addition to ready-to-wear, while digitally native brands Olivia Rose and Maison Cleo operate on a fully custom model as a way to avoid excess inventory and provide the personalisation customers crave.

"We are in the early stages of one of the largest sector-driven opportunities of our lifetime," says Lisa Morales-Hellebo, co-founder of Refashiond, a venture capital firm that invests in companies attempting to reinvent the supply chain.

Personalisation goes mass

The absence of excess inventory is a significant benefit for businesses that offer made-to-measure. Prices are usually much higher, and the profit margins can also be significant. At New York-based Prabal Gurung, made-to-order accounts for 25 per cent of the business and margins are "healthy", according to Olivia Ong, the brand's VP of global sales and merchandising. Prices take into account fabric, timeline, pattern, sketches, fittings, hours of sewing, and embroidery.

Made-to-order pieces at Roland Mouret run from between £6,000 to £50,000, or at least triple the prices of his ready-to-wear. Mouret says these take into account the cost of materials - unique fabrics tend to have higher costs since they aren't bought in bulk - and also his time and presence.

While customers can buy designs made entirely from scratch, designers with ready-to-wear lines say most clients desire variations of the clothes that were previously shown on the runway. "[Requests are] never too far from the creativity of the collection," says Mouret. This is echoed by London-based Antonio Berardi, where made-to-order makes up 20 to 25 per cent of the business. This keeps costs down further since most fabrics will already be on hand, and less time is needed to tweak a piece.

While made-to-order brands historically had to build their own workshops and carry overheads, many more customisation services are now available off-the-shelf and accessible to customers worldwide. Instead of having one central workshop, for instance, San Francisco-based Milaner produces its custom capsule collections in partnership with heritage factories in Spain, Italy and France.

Morales-Hellebo sees a future where clients can virtually try on a garment with augmented reality and then have the garment produced via sewbots, digital weaving, knitting machines or on-demand cut-and-sew. For example, New York's Lab 141 licenses its patented fit-garment technology to help luxury brands produce made-to-order clothing in 48 hours. It built a laser cutter with Lectra that takes a customer's measurements, which are then transformed into a pattern with the help of an algorithm, says Morales-Hellebo. The laser cutter's robotic arms then assemble clothing using a bonding agent instead of stitching.

The venture capitalist argues that rather than taking the romance out of craft, technology and limited automation will encourage customers to see customisation as a given. "If you look at things like personalisation and customisation, there is so much upside," Morales-Hellebo says, citing lower returns and higher brand loyalty and efficiency.

Delivery and scalability hurdles

Made-to-order is not easily scalable. It also can't compete with clothes available via same-day delivery. "The sales cycle in made-to-order can be understandably more difficult to plan for, and given the inherent nature of the work, it can make for more erratic cash flow and demands on labour," says Doug Stephens, founder of Retail Prophet, a retail-focused consultancy firm that works with LVMH and L'Oréal.

"Because I hand-make everything myself, I can only make a limited amount in a certain time frame," says Olivia Rose Havelock of Olivia Rose. "A lot of people can miss out on ordering when they want because I can be fully booked with orders sometimes for weeks."

Even larger brands like Roland Mouret require a three-month lead time to procure fabric, assign a pattern cutter and a seamstress. Prabal Gurung also asks for eight to 12 weeks for the team to "dedicate adequate resources - design, production, pattern-making, customer service - without sacrificing the schedule of the ready-to-wear business," says Ong. Jenny Packham has a "made-to-size" service that allows customers to make small changes to off-the-rack pieces that has a quick turnaround time: it can offer re-orders to stockists within a season. (About 10 per cent of its business is made-to-order.) But purely bespoke fittings require "as many fittings as needed", she says.

That's why many made-to-order brands primarily deal with evening and bridal wear, where demand is relatively controlled. Ong says that most "custom projects are not aligned with any season in particular, so they really are one-off sourcing missions".

Forging a close customer connection

Still, Ong says the "the non-tangible advantages outweigh the tangible ones". The close connection formed between the designer and the customer is "invaluable" to the business. "With ready-to-wear, the dress leaves the door, and we don't usually get a chance for that immediate feedback: how the dress made the woman feel, what she was wearing it for, what made her buy it. With our atelier business, we work diligently to partner as closely as possible with the client to make her look precisely the way she wants. It really is a labour of love."

Packham finds the extra effort to be worth the creative inspiration that custom pieces provide. "From a design perspective, being chosen to make an important piece for a customer is an opportunity to experiment with new techniques and create something entirely new and beautiful," she says. "The creation of such a piece always sends the creative sparks flying throughout the studio and will influence the collections."

"[Made-to-measure] offers a moment of communication and sharing information. You learn the way your customer lives and how they use your clothes," says Mouret. "It's that one-on-one moment with a designer, something that was a luxury in the '30s or '40s. It's the notion of haute couture, but at the price of bespoke. You deliver something high-street and contemporary fashion can't."
To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More on this topic: In 2019, haute couture is thriving How fashion brands use product imagery to sell their story With 30 Montaigne, Dior hopes another 'icon' is in the bag

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In the age of mass fashion, made-to-order finds new appeal

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As fashion goes ever more mass, designers across the price spectrum are building sizable made-to-order businesses, with designers like Prabal Gurung and Antonio Berardi attributing 20 to 25 per cent of sales to made-to-order. Designers have found ways to control costs by outsourcing parts of the process and relying on some automation.

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‘True Gen’: Generation Z and its implications for companies

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Generation Z characteristics center around the search for truth as the influence of the first generation of true digital natives is now radiating outward. For companies, this will bring both challenges and equally attractive opportunities.

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Turns out the reason behind the house's 2021 Instagram departure is more than just #detoxing.

Turns out the reason behind the house's 2021 Instagram departure is more than just #detoxing.

Back in January, when the internet was still rejoicing in Donald Trump's social media lockout, Bottega Veneta rocked the fashion world with its sudden - voluntary - departure from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The move left many fans scratching their heads, while others speculated it was nothing more than a publicity stunt - not unlike when musicians delete all their photos ahead of a new album drop, for example. Well, nearly two months later, we finally have an answer.

Bottega's parent company, Kering, CEO François-Henri Pinault told WWD this is all part of the label's new marketing plan. "Regarding its digital communication strategy, it's not disappearing from social networks - it's merely using them differently," he said. "Bottega has decided, in line with its positioning, to lean much more on its ambassadors and fans by giving them the material they need to talk about the brand through various social networks, by letting them speak for the brand rather than doing it itself."

Meaning: Bottega is leaving its social media promotion in the hands of its fanbase, which includes the likes of Rihanna, Hailey Bieber, Kanye West, and the Kardashian-Jenner clan, who can sport creative director Daniel Lee's designs in candid Instagram posts and paparazzi shots. Basically, old-school word-of-mouth marketing.

The strategy is quite similar to the one employed by Balenciaga (another Kering label, btw), whose Instagram page has been publishing seemingly user-generated photos without any captions or tags since 2018 to nearly 12 million followers. Both houses have decided to sit out this season's Fashion Week schedules, along with Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Alexander McQueen.

It also seems to be very on-brand with Bottega's low-profile philosophy: its abrupt social media departure came less than a month after it unveiled its "Salon 01" Spring/Summer 2021 show , which had been secretly recorded two months prior.

So far, the strategy seems to be paying off. "Bottega has had a very specific positioning for years, which is now being reinforced," Pinault said. "I have to say that after a month and a half, it's pretty convincing in terms of Bottega Veneta's visibility, and we are monitoring it quite precisely."

Credits: Cover photo courtesy of Bottega Veneta.

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Here's Why Bottega Veneta Deleted Their Social Media - V Magazine

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Turns out the reason behind the house's 2021 Instagram departure is more than just #detoxing. Turns out the reason behind the house's 2021 Instagram departure is more than just #detoxing. Back in January, when the internet was still rejoicing in Donald Trump's social media lockout, Bottega Veneta rocked the fashion world with its sudden - voluntary - departure from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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Where Does "Zero-Waste" Lie On The Sustainability Spectrum? In A Pretty Good Place.

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Before it was a buzzword, "sustainable" used to mean something. But with the recent deluge of "sustainable" collections coming from brands that are, in the grand scheme of things, anything but sustainable, the word is now almost entirely devoid of meaning.