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After further research on WGSN, I found another Design Capsule for women's SS22. 'A New Freedom'. Upon looking through the trend, I found out that it has been inspired by optimism for the future and a sense of escapism through culture. The overall mood of the capsule combines effortless essentials with confident colour combinations, inspired by the consumer trend of being comfort-led but being able to wear fresh, feminine pieces. As we have seen this past season with the introduction of colour into the consumers this trend continues that theme but also brings balance with a palette of neutrals which will create trans seasonal garments that can be worn for a long time. The garments will provide comfort and ease, which the consumer will be able to wear from day to night providing versatility and a timeless wardrobe. The key details of the trend incorporate texture through the use of handcrafted techniques such as crochet, smocking and embroidery. This is inspired by designers such as 'Marle' who embrace similar traditional techniques.

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Design Capsule - Womens A New Freedom SS22

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I watched the first series of Hip Hop Evolution of Netflix, which was really informative for researching the emergence of the Hip Hop subculture. It started right at the beginning of the subculture and spoke about the mainstream factors and how they influenced the Hip Hop subculture such as how because of financial cuts, the residents of the Bronx were struggling. They were looking for something to do and that's when DJ's such as 'DJ Kool Herc' started doing House Parties to revolt against the disco norm that everyone was into. The fashion of the time originated from 'B Boys' who were break dancing gangs. In these gangs, there was also a lot of fighting in the Bronx and another artist 'Afrika Bambatta' began to use music as a way for them to release pressure and create peace amongst the community. 'Grand Master Flash' was another DJ from the era and he was responsible for taking the culture mainstream with a performance group called 'Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five'. They were one of the first Hip Hop groups to go on tour, making the subculture mainstream, and many other groups like Run DMC followed on from this.

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Hip-Hop Evolution | Netflix Official Site

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Interviews with influential MCs, DJs and moguls trace the genre's dynamic evolution from the 1970s through the '00s in this documentary series.

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Very informative & interesting article giving a general overview of why Hip Hop began. It highlighted events right from the origins through to Artists of the era. Including technology developments and fashion trends.
This was a really helpful to give a general overview of the time period and for starting research.

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From the street corner to the world stage, hip hop has grown into one of the world's most prominent musical genres and cultural influences. Explore significant events in hip hop history and its explosive evolution.
What is Hip Hop

Hip hop is more than music; it's a cultural movement that incorporates different elements of art. Four foundational elements characterize hip hop culture. The original four main pillars of hip hop include DJing/turntablism, MCing/rapping, B-boying/breaking, and visual/graffiti art. These forms of expression have also developed into further subcultures with lasting legacies.

"Rap is something you do; hip hop is something you live." KRS One

The intersection of these four elements also generated a cultural revolution that rapidly spread across the globe. The global influence of hip hop culture has shaped music styles, fashion, technology, art, entertainment, language, dance, education, politics, media, and more. To this day, hip hop continues to be a global phenomenon, developing new art forms that impact the lives of new and old generations.

Hip Hop Culture Origins

Hip hop is a subculture and an art movement that emerged from the Bronx in New York City during the early 1970s. Its development reflected the negative effects of post-industrial decline, political discourse, and a rapidly changing economy.

Looking back to New York City during this era, we see an economic collapse. The city's economy was falling apart due to the decline of the manufacturing industry and construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Much of the white middle class moved to the suburbs to escape the social and economic challenges. The migration shifted demographics and segregated communities. Conditions worsened in neighborhoods prominently populated by African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Caribbean immigrants. Urban despair also brought rising crime, gang violence, and poverty.

Consequently, businesses closed their doors, causing many economic opportunities and sources of entertainment to evaporate. As a result, urban youth turned to the streets for recreation and self-expression. The abandoned buildings and parking lots set the stage for block parties. These block parties laid the groundwork for everything associated with early hip hop culture. DJs and MCs brought the music by setting up mobile " Sound Systems " introduced by Jamaican culture. Sheets of cardboard became dance floors for break-dancers, and brick walls transformed into canvases for graffiti.

A new era was on the rise fueled by sentiments of anger, hardship, and abandonment. However, the emerging hip hop movement transformed despair and racial barriers into numerous creative outlets. It also became an outlet to deal with violence.

Hip Hop Pioneers

Several people were influential in creating hip hop. However, the most notable pioneers are DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. These three innovators are known as the "Holy Trinity" of hip hop.

DJ Kool Herc

One of the most influential hip hop pioneers was DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican immigrant regarded as the founding father of hip hop. Kool Herc made history in 1973 when he and his sister hosted the "Back to School Jam" in the recreation room of their Bronx apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. This historical party is recognized for launching the hip hop movement.

DJ Kool Herc also introduced the "breakbeat" DJ technique - a mixing practice he adapted from Jamaican dub music. However, Kool Herc would play funk, soul, and other genres with percussive sections. Using a pair of turntables, Kool Herc would play two copies of the same record and then switch between them to extend the percussive section known as the break. Kool Herc named this breakbeat juggling style of DJing "The Merry-Go-Round." This breakbeat turntablism quickly became influential in the rise of hip hop music, rapping, and breakdancing.

The break section was also the most anticipated part of a song where people danced the most. Break-dancers would form dancer circles and save their best dance moves for the break. Kool Herc named the people dancing to his music B-Boys and B-Girls, which was short for Break-Boys and Break-Girls. Overtime, breaking evolved and became a global subculture that transcended into the mainstream.

Kool Herc also helped develop the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes and wordplay performed by MCs. He would speak in rhythm and rhyme over instrumental parts of songs to hype the crowd. His style of lyrical chanting and rhythmic wordplay was an early form of rapping inspired by the Jamaican tradition of toasting. He would shout phrases like "B-Boys, B-Girls, are you ready? Keep on rock steady," "This is the joint! Herc beat on the point," "To the beat, y'all," and "You don't stop!"

Kool Herc also enlisted his friend Coke La Rock to control the mic at their parties. During one party, Coke La Rock dropped the line "There's not a man that can't be thrown, not a horse that can't be rode, a bull that can't be stopped, there's not a disco that I Coke La Rock can't rock." Many consider this verse as the first rap lyrics and Coke La Rock as the first MC of hip hop.

Afrika Bambaataa

Another influential figure of hip hop to emerge from New York City was Afrika Bambaataa, also known as "The Godfather." Bambaataa was a pioneering DJ and music producer who organized block parties in the Brox during the late 1970s. He was also a visionary who helped guide the city's youth away from gang life, drugs, and violence. He formed Universal Zulu Nation, a music-oriented organization that encourages peace and unity through the expressions of hip hop culture. Members introduced urban youth to DJing, breakdancing, rapping, and visual art. Soon after, Bambaataa categorized these forms of expression as the "four elements" of hip hop. To this day, Zulu Nation continues to spread hip hop culture throughout the world.

In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force released "Planet Rock," one of the most influential early hip hop songs. Instead of rapping over funk beats, Bambaataa created an electronic sound by sampling Kraftwerk and using the Roland TR-808 drum machine. The song helped popularize the TR-808, which became a staple of hip hop music.

Grandmaster Flash

Grandmaster Flash is another innovative DJ from the Bronx, New York City. He was the first DJ to manipulate records in a backward, forward or counterclockwise motion. He also invented distinct DJing techniques such as the backspin, cutting, punch phrasing, and scratching.

Grandmaster Flash also organized a group called Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 1976. The group became widely acknowledged as one of the most influential hip hop acts. They delivered a unique style by trading off lyrics between four rappers and blending them with Flash's unrivaled DJ skills. Flash would also perform acrobatic DJing skills by manipulating vinyl with his fingers, toes, elbows, and objects.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had several influential songs. However, their most prominent song was "The Message." This critical hit further solidified rap as a genre and put rappers at the forefront for the first time. The powerful lyrics also detailed the grim realities of life in the ghetto, which was a significant shift from the traditional rhythmic chants of early hip hop.

In 2007, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five made history again. The group became the first hip hop act inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Early Music Technology

The early 1980s was a vital turning point for hip hop and music production. Synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines became cheaper and more accessible. Roland's iconic TR-808 drum machine became the weapon of choice. Instead of relying on DJ breakbeats, music producers could now program original drum patterns. The TR-808 also became a cornerstone of hip hop for its powerful bass drum sound.

Sampling technology also emerged during the 1980s. DJs experimented with early samplers such as the Linn 9000, E-mu SP-1200, and the Akai MPC60. They used these samplers to piece together breaks in songs rather than using turntables. Samplers also allowed producers to perform, rearrange sections, sequence arrangments, edit, and mix music in new ways. These production methods were an early form of remixing.

Over time sampling technology advanced. A new generation of samplers such as the AKAI S900 provided increased memory, higher sampling rates, better editing capabilities, and more. Music producers experimented with techniques such as layering sounds, looping, sequencing elaborate arrangements, adding effects, and more.

Turntable and mixer technology also advanced. There was an increase of DJs scratching records to create new sounds and effects. The most influential turntable was the Technics SL-1200 due to its strong motor, durability, and fidelity.

The Golden Age of Hip Hop

During the mid 1980s and early 1990s, hip hop spread across the country in full force. It brought an era that significantly transformed hip hop culture. This new era became known as "the golden age of hip hop." Many characterize this turning point by its explosion of diversity, influence, stylistic innovation, and mainstream success.

Record labels recognized the genre as an emerging trend and invested a lot of money into the movement. Independent record labels like Tommy Boy, Prism Records, and Def Jam became successful. They were releasing records at a fast pace in response to the demand generated by local radio stations and club DJs.

New scenes and different styles of hip hop also emerged from city to city as the culture popularized. However, hip hop music was still mostly experimental. Although, the new generation of hip hop producers had access to more advanced drum machines and samplers that allowed them to take hip hop music to the next level.

One of the definitive characteristics of hip hop's golden age was the heavy use of sampled music. No copyright laws protected music from being sampled, so artists could use samples from a variety of sources without legal troubles. They were capturing samples from various genres ranging from jazz to rock music. However, sampling was not limited to music. R.Z.A. of the Wu-Tang Clan sampled sound clips from his collection of 1970s Kung Fu films.

The lyrical content of hip hop developed as well. The early rhythmic chants of the 1970s progressed into metaphorical lyrics exploring a range of subjects. Artists also performed the lyrics over a more complex, multi-layered instrumental arrangement. Artists such as Melle Mel, KRS-One, Rakim, Chuck D, and Warp 9 were pivotal in advancing hip hop lyrics and the art of rapping.

There was also a wave of new school rappers who were pivotal in bringing hip hop to the mainstream. At the forefront was RUN DMC, a hip hop trio who fused rap with hard rock. They took rap into the Top Ten when they collaborated with Aerosmith on a rap remake of "Walk This Way." The single conquered the radio and MTV, catapulting rap even further into the mainstream. Some other innovators in the golden age of hip hop were L.L. Cool J, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and many others.

It wasn't just the music propelling hip hop culture. Hip hop fashion also hit the mainstream. Various clothes, shoes, accessories, and hairstyles became a form of expression. Street slang, later known as Ebonics, also crossed over into the mainstream. For example, the words "bling" and "fo' shizzle" have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sampling and Copyright Laws

Rap music heavily used sampling in the early 1990s. Original copyright owners of the music being sampled heard parts of their songs in new rap music. They didn't like other artists cashing in on their work and wanted compensation for the use of their music.

After many legal actions, the Government passed several copyright enforcement laws. They required artists to clear all samples in advance to avoid lawsuits. However, clearing samples was expensive, and many record labels could not afford to clear all the samples. Hip hop music took a whole new direction, and producers had to make original sounds rather than relying heavily on samples. We heard a different sound because producers were no longer sampling commercially released songs. As a result, the music lost much of its jazz and soul influences.

Mainstream Influences

Hip hop music became even more commercial, becoming the top-selling music genre by the late 1990s. Different regional styles also emerged such as West Coast hip hop, gangster rap, Southern rap, rap rock, and various other genres. A new wave of artists also emerged, such as N.W.A., Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dog, the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Jay-Z, and several others. By the end of the decade, hip hop was an integral part of popular music. It even found its way into mainstream pop and electronic music.

Conclusion

Hip hop history has a fascinating story worth exploring more. This cultural movement has seen considerable change and evolution since its inception in the seventies. What began as a local movement intended to provide a haven for African-American and Puerto Rican youth in New York City, has become a global phenomenon. To this day, hip hop continues to be a dominant force influencing the culture around the world.

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Hip Hop History: From the Streets to the Mainstream | Icon Collective

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From the street corner to the world stage, hip hop has grown into one of the world's most prominent musical genres and cultural influences. Explore significant events in hip hop history and its explosive evolution. Hip hop is more than music; it's a cultural movement that incorporates different elements of art.

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This article clearly laid out the history and evolution of the Adidas Superstar, from which I was able to gain lots of information for timeline and essay. As the garment hasn't changed much in the way of how it is made over the years, this article was helpful to see how it has changed in the way it is worn and also the different collaborations it has been involved in.

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The Toe to Know: A History of the adidas Superstar

The Toe to Know: A History of the adidas Superstar
Follow Stephen on Twitter here.
The adidas Superstar as we know it owes a considerable debt to the adidas Supergrip. Created sometime around 1965, the Supergrip was allegedly adidas' first foray into basketball footwear, and aside from featuring a herringbone outsole that would shape what we see on Superstars today, it would drop alongside another early-adidas icon: the Pro Model. Early Supergrip models didn't focus on a reinforced toebox, but with adidas' innovation inspired by more Euro-centric pastimes (tennis and soccer), it became clear that the rapid start-rapid stop movement of those sports would make a rugged toecap an excellent addition on shoes meant for other stop-start sports... like, say, basketball. The Supergrip may have morphed into what we'd call the Superstar today, but by the end of the '60s and into the '70s, the Supergrip was reworked to include a vulcanized sole, sold at a lower price and ultimately would influence the current-day adidas Campus model.

Outside of internal development, adidas had another hurdle: Competition. In 1969, Converse All Stars dominated the basketball sneaker market. The high-top All Stars were the preferred sneaker of hoopers from high school through the pros, and were an all-canvas performance shoe, seemingly unthinkable looking back on it all these years later. The basketball sneaker market in general was severely lacking in any noticeable innovation during the previous decades and Chris Severn, an adidas consultant at the time, sensed an opportunity.

Early canvas shoes inherently had poor grip on the basketball court and, due to the need to make abrupt moves and cuts during play, players routinely injured their ankles and knees. Severn and the design team sought to produce a performance shoe with an all leather upper instead of canvas. The leather would provide a much firmer hold than the Converse canvas, thus giving players added protection. The new shoe would also include a distinctive shell toe on the nose of the sneaker and a herringbone pattern of thin grooves lined on its outsole, with the signature adidas three stripes on the sides.

While Converse had a team of salesmen-some of which were even former professional basketball players themselves-Severn would travel to gyms around the country essentially by himself, imploring players and coaches to try out the Three Stripes. He knew that if players just gave the Superstar a shot, they would see how much better it was than what they were used to.

"They had played in canvas all their lives; the Superstar looked completely alien to them," he said in the book Sneaker Wars. "They weren't getting paid by Converse; it was just a habit."

Jack McMahon, then manager of the San Diego Rockets, was one of the first to be receptive to Severn's pitch, mainly because three of his players had been suffering from injuries which he attributed to their sneakers. He convinced nearly all of the players to give the Superstars a shot. When Converse received word that adidas was making a move into its market, it offered money to some players to continue playing in the canvas. Severn remained steadfast in his approach.

"When they ran into the arena, lo and behold, they were all wearing three-striped shoes," he recalled. "It was a real thrill and it caused quite a stir among the public."

The Rockets may have been the worst team in the league at the time, but every time they showed up in a different city against a new team, it gave the Superstar an entirely fresh audience. Players would take notice and Severn began to receive phone calls about his new shell toes. By its second year, the Superstar was being worn many players on the Boston Celtics, who won the NBA Championship in 1969. The tide was quickly turning in adidas' favor. Within four years from the product's launch, about 85 percent of all pro players in the United States switched to adidas.

Severn even convinced the higher ups to jump into the player endorsement game. They would go on to sign Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1976, arguably the league's biggest name at the time, to a $25,000 per year contract. He would become the first basketball player ever to be contracted by adidas.

The introduction of the Superstar simultaneously boosted overall business for adidas and threw gasoline on the demise of Converse as a performance shoe. By not only infiltrating, but dominating, what was a previously untapped market in basketball, adidas' sales soared. By the early 1970s, basketball quickly accounted for 10 percent of overall adidas sales. And as adidas began to soar, Converse quickly found themselves floundering. By the end of the decade, the shoe which was synonymous with basketball for decades would be completely phased out of the game, and Converse faced money issues for most of the 1970s. It cannot be overstated just how incredible that turn of events is in such a short amount of time. Converse was the basketball sneaker market for decades. Within two years of the Superstar's introduction, adidas not only carved out its own space in a market that had no competition for decades, it began to eradicate its competition. Converse went from all to nothing, primarily because of the introduction of the Superstar.

Much like the sneaker in which it surpassed, the Superstar would eventually outlive its usefulness as a performance basketball sneaker. As other sneakers with more modern technology would begin to hit the market, the Superstar would find its true calling and achieve new levels of popularity as a lifestyle sneaker. Thanks in large part to hip-hop.

In the early-1980s, adidas' began shifting the Superstar from flat leathers to felt and suede; coupled with the introduction of a more American-centric wider footbed fit, adidas created a cultural behemoth. The Superstar transitioned from basketball, usurped by corporate in favor of the Top Ten sneaker model.

In the mid-1980s, Run-DMC was the biggest hip-hop act in the world. The groups sold out arenas and were true pioneers of a still nascent genre of music. It was the first rap group to have certified gold and platinum albums, as well as a Grammy nomination. They were the first rap group to have its videos played on MTV, appear on the cover of Rolling Stone, and they were the only rap group to perform at Live Aid in 1985.

Aside from the group's great songs, Run-DMC were perhaps best known for its groundbreaking image. While their rap predecessors would don leather glam rock attire, Run-DMC became the first rap act to dress like people from the block, which in this case was Hollis, Queens. And a big part of that look was...well, adidas.

From head to toe, Run-DMC sported three stripes, from adidas tracksuits to shell toe Superstars. The group quickly started a style movement. It was simple and authentic, and in no time, every fan who would show up to every sold out Run-DMC show would also don adidas head to toe.

The group's "My Adidas" is what cemented the Superstar's status, serving as an ode to shell toes and the misconstrued perception of the b-boy. Speaking to [ Sole Collector]( https://solecollector.com/news/2014/03/this-history-of-run-d-m-c-and-adidas-as-told-by-d-m-c, Run DMC explained, "There was a doctor in our neighborhood named Dr. Deas, and he was like this community activist dude...he was saying [that] kids and youth in the streets that wore Lee jeans and Kangol hats and gold chains and PUMAs and adidas without shoe laces were the thugs, the drug dealers and the low lifes of the community."

It was in rebellion to this stereotype that spawned the songs, and in turn, brought the Three Stripes into contact with Run-DMC directly. By the time adidas rep Angelo Anastasio had identified the group as a direct cause for a spike in sales, he was witnessing history at Madison Square Garden. "When Run went out there during the show, 'D, take it off your feet; hold it up. What's those? Everybody in here, if you got adidas on, hold 'em up,' Run DMC said to Sole Collector. "So, 40,000 people in a sold-out Madison Square Garden held a sneaker up and Anastasio was like, 'Oh my god, it's true.'" The global phenomenon was cemented in 1987 on the Together Forever tour, as the group famously posed in front of the Eiffel Tower while in Paris, in the signature black adidas track suits, gold rope chains and Superstars with no laces.

"'My Adidas' was a song about our sneakers, but it was bigger than just talking about how many pairs of sneakers we had," Daryl "DMC" McDaniels told MTV in 2011. "It came from the place where people would look at the b-boys, the b-girls and go, 'Oh those are the people that cause all the problems in here.' And, 'Those young people are nothing but troublemakers and those young people don't know nothing.' So they was [sic] judging the book by its cover, without seeing what was inside of it."

By identifying Run-DMC as a force, adidas made not only a savvy business decision, but became pioneers in capitalizing on the budding popularity of hip-hop culture at a time when it was far from the norm. Rap wasn't the behemoth then that it is today, obviously, but adidas had the foresight to know that it had become the genre of the youth, and that's a powerful demographic. The deal between Run-DMC and adidas would set the tone for every other hip-hop deal to follow in the ensuing decades. Without Run-DMC and adidas, there's no Kanye West and adidas. Rappers are sneaker culture's most valuable endorsers now, the true arbiters of what's deemed cool in a way that athletes used to be, and Run-DMC and adidas laid the foundation for that evolution.

Connected to the global hip-hop boom, the beginnings of the modern streetwear boom were taking hold. In Japan, the sneaker gained traction thanks to its bloated import price, spurring collectors and cultural commentators (like the trendsetting Hiroshi Fujiwara) to adopt the sneaker both as a status symbol and collectors item. In London, the beginnings of rave culture incorporated aspects of 1970s disco flair into the mix, meaning the retro sport shoe was ripe for reinterpretation. Out in Los Angeles, the Beastie Boys-adjacent (themselves also major proponents of the adidas Superstar) X-Large was a bastion of rare adidas pickups-including French-made Superstars-well into the 1990s.

The 1990s would also see the introduction of the Superstar II, updating the shoe, moving production to Asia and adding extra padding. As the 1990s bled into the 2000s, skaters like Keith Hufnagel and Mark Gonzales (a current adidas-affiliated rider and Supreme icon) skated in the Superstar; the Superstar's signature shelltoe was almost predernaturally built to withstand the constant torture toeboxes undergo when attempting flip tricks.

As streetwear became a global force in fashion during the 2000s, Fujiawara protege NIGO worked BAPE into the adidas Superstar's legacy, using the sneaker as a canvas for collaboration, and working with adidas well into the present day.

Over the last 40 years, the adidas Superstar has been released in nearly every colorway imaginable. There have been countless collaborations with artists and designers. Its design and style have remained relatively the same. The shoe is timeless and has long transcended from performance shoe to pop culture-the true litmus test of any classic sneaker.

The Superstar, like the Converse All-Star, is one of the few shoes that had two lives, if you will. It changed sport by shifting the market of performance basketball shoes. It infiltrated a market it had no experience in and dominated for years despite Converse previously having a stranglehold on the market. Then in another revolutionary act, the Superstar infiltrated the world of music-especially the then-nascent world of rap-becoming a pioneer in the fusion of sneakers and pop culture; it's an endorsement scheme that adidas itself has turned to time and again, with Kanye West or Pharrell (just to name a few). The Three Stripes would even honor Run-DMC's connection to catapulting the Superstar with a co-branded version of the sneaker on "My Adidas" 35th anniversary.

Even with all that history the Superstar's run is far from over. In 2016, the Superstar was the best-selling shoe in the United States and would come in at number two in 2017. Despite massive retro releases from Jordan every year, innovative new products from Nike and exceptional Boost-equipped sneakers from adidas, the Superstar continues to outsell them all, nearly 50 years from its original release.

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The Toe to Know: A History of the adidas Superstar The Toe to Know: A History of the adidas Superstar Follow Stephen on Twitter here. The adidas Superstar as we know it owes a considerable debt to the adidas Supergrip.

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Another interesting article focused on Run-DMC and their association with the adidas brand. In particular it speaks about the influence they had on the fashion during time and the particular garments that they wore, which became mainstream culture. Also gives an overview of how their music became mainstream culture.

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NEW YORK, United States - Few images capture the 1980s quite as representatively as that of Run-D.M.C. crouching in front of the Eiffel Tower. Group members Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels and Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell are dressed in unison. Each wears a three-striped Adidas tracksuit emblazoned with its three-leafed motif. Gold 'dookie rope' chains swing from their necks and black fedoras crown their heads. On their feet are unlaced white Adidas shell toe 'Superstars' with the tongues pushed up, allegedly in impersonation of the 'prison style' worn by inmates. The photo, taken for the band's 1987 Together Forever tour, encapsulates the paradigm shift in rap and fashion culture brought about by the band's now iconic hit song "My Adidas", released the year before.

Run-D.M.C. in Paris on the Together Forever tour | Photo: Ricky Powell

To the modern observer, total-look sportswear, ostentatious sneakers and jewellery are synonymous with hip hop culture, but before Run-D.M.C. popularised the look, and later genre-defining artists The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J adopted it, hip hop looked entirely different. Unlike their immediate rap predecessors Melle Mel (of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five) and Afrika Bambaataa, Run-D.M.C. eschewed the leather vestiges of glam rock and camp African King attire. Instead they favoured the clothes they sported on the streets and one street in particular: Hollis Avenue in Queens, New York.

Growing up during the 1970s on Hollis Avenue, Run-D.M.C. witnessed a period of distinct change in New York. Its long-standing social mores and hierarchies faded in relevance, while the cultural and societal codes of the future were yet to be established. The simplicity and consistency of the band's self-identifying, quasi-tribal style of dress reflected this state of flux in New York and American society. The band's neighbourhood, culture, race and style weren't placed behind the standard music industry veneer; they looked like who they were and, crucially, they looked like their fans. Knowingly or not, "three brothers, wearing three stripes," created a stylistic movement that would come to galvanise the confidence of a newly emerging cultural demographic.

"['My Adidas'] was a song that was about our sneakers, but it was bigger than just talking about how many pairs of sneakers we had," McDaniels told MTV in 2011, 25 years after the song's release. "It came from the place where people would look at the b-boys, the b-girls and go, 'Oh, those are the people that cause all the problems in here.' And, 'Those young people are nothing but troublemakers and those young people don't know nothing.' So they was [sic] judging the book by its cover, without seeing what was inside of it."

As the next two albums dropped, in 1985 and 1986, the trefoiled Run-D.M.C. came to represent black, urban youth across America. What had begun as an indicator had become a flag. "We was [sic] going through Detroit, through Boston, through Chicago, through LA, through Virginia; every city we went to on the Raising Hell Tour, we would look out the back of the tour bus and everybody had the Adidas [track] suits from head to toe," McDaniels continued. Fittingly at this stage, Adidas itself entered the mix, creating a trifecta that would alter the music and fashion industries forever, revolutionising the relationship between performer and consumer in the process.

Angelo Anastasio, a senior Adidas employee, was attending a 1986 Madison Square Gardens performance of the Raising Hell tour when he was struck by the sight of tens of thousands of fans lifting their Adidas sneakers into the air, answering the call of those on stage. Inspired, Anastasio reportedly ran back to the Adidas New York headquarters and within days, Run-D.M.C. became the first hip hop group to receive a million-dollar endorsement deal. Success was immediate; a limited edition shell toe 'Superstar' sneaker was released, soon followed by the now immediately recallable cross-branded clothing range, which is still in production under the Adidas Originals label. Big budget advertisements depicting the band in the brand were soon everywhere, and sales skyrocketed.

A Run-D.M.C. and Adidas billboard | Source: Adidas

By the time of the Together Forever tour, the partnership pervaded every press call, every image and every association the band made. Its rampant success paved the way for the kind of endorsement deals that saturate the music industry today and forged Adidas' long-running association with hip hop, which has seen the sportswear giant sign deals with Kanye West, Missy Elliott, Snoop Dogg, Ciara and Pharrell, amongst many, many more.

However, the fashion legacy of Run-D.M.C. and their shell-toed Adidas is so much more than the emergence of a new revenue driver for performers and brands alike. Hip hop fashion, streetwear, the cachet of sportswear brands and the increasingly inextricable relationship between music and fashion have all, in some way or another, been influenced and affected by the group.

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Run-D.M.C.'s 'My Adidas' and the Birth of Hip Hop Sneaker Culture

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NEW YORK, United States - Few images capture the 1980s quite as representatively as that of Run-D.M.C. crouching in front of the Eiffel Tower. Group members Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons, Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels and Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell are dressed in unison. Each wears a three-striped Adidas tracksuit emblazoned with its three-leafed motif.

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I took this book out from the library and it was my very first introduction into Future Technology, Innovation and Sustainability. It is comprised of statements from sneaker industry individuals from Global Heads of Design to Global Energy Leads. It gave me an introduction to future innovations that the adidas brands are using including their FUTURECRAFT system which is their future approach to design, technology and science. From this I was able to look at their innovations in more detail. Muriel Jung, who is a designer for the brand spoke briefly about the brand wanting to move into using bio-based and bio-degradable products which I spoke about in my essay. She also spoke about using Virtual Reality design programmes in the future, which allow you to create a garment using goggles and controllers and that would just be the beginning for augmented reality and design.
In the book, there was also statements about the consumer and how their shopping habits have changed going into the future. Sam Handy, who is the Vice President for Design at adidas states that 'Health and well-being will influence the footwear industry most, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic'.

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Another interesting article about the Adidas brand and its approach to technology and sustainability. I found this really insightful to gain knowledge on the different schemes adidas have in place, which is vast. This was the first article I read about adidas and gave me a general overview of what they have achieved and what their future plans are. On here I found information on the brands 'Own the Game' strategy, which I went onto explore in further detail for my essay. Before reading this article I little knowledge of the schemes had in place, it was interesting to find out how dedicated they are to their sustainability approach.
An important partnership adidas have had since 2015, is with 'Parley for Oceans'. This enables adidas to use Parley Ocean Plastic as a replacement for virgin plastic, which has been rolled out across their key categories. In 2020 adidas produced 15 million pairs of shoes containing Parley Ocean Plastic.

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Following our ambition to be transparent toward stakeholders for years, adidas has regularly reported on our sustainability performance by measuring and disclosing the progress made toward our targets. Although 2020 was a difficult year due to the coronavirus pandemic, making it necessary to adhere to local regulations such as store closures and travel bans, we were, overall, able to advance our initiatives and deliver against our targets.

Own operations: In 2020, we were able to cumulatively reduce our combined net emissions by 55% compared to 2015. This is a result of our energy saving initiatives, the use of Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) at central sites, a company-wide energy monitoring systems, and the installation of photovoltaic systems at various locations. On top, we offset the carbon footprint of our gas consumption for all our facilities in Germany. To calculate the overall footprint of all other sites, globally, we take the location-based emission factor provided by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

In 2020, the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic also had a positive impact on the energy and water consumption at our sites. As a result, in 2020 our accumulated water savings amounted to 48% per employee compared to 2008. With these results, we have overachieved our targets of the last strategic cycle.

Supply chain: Our suppliers were able to exceed our five-year environmental targets on water, energy and waste in 2020:

Water: With an aggregated reduction by 36% in water consumption at strategic Tier 1 supplier facilitites, and an aggregated reduction of 43% at strategic Tier 2 apparel material supplier facilities, we overachieved our targets of reaching a reduction of 20% (Tier 1) and 35% (Tier 2) over the five-year cycle 2015 - 2020.

Energy: With an aggregated reduction by 23% in energy consumption at strategic Tier 1 supplier facilities and strategic Tier 2 apparel material facilities, we slightly exceeded out target of reaching a reduction level of 20% at these suppliers over the five-year cycle 2015 - 2020.

Waste: With an aggregated reduction by 30% in waste volume at strategic Tier 1 supplier facilities and strategic Tier 2 apparel material supplier facilities, we overachieved our target of reaching a reduction by 20% at these suppliers over the five-year cycle 2015 - 2020.

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Following our ambition to be transparent toward stakeholders for years, adidas has regularly reported on our sustainability performance by measuring and disclosing the progress made toward our targets. Although 2020 was a difficult year due to the coronavirus pandemic, making it necessary to adhere to local regulations such as store closures and travel bans, we were, overall, able to advance our initiatives and deliver against our targets.

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Trend Report

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Trend Report

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Project 2 Customer Centric - Trend Report

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The bold colours seen in this document have been seen throughout the high street this year, in brands such as Pangaia with their bold and bright choices of colours for their range.
The brown and green colours have also been significant on the high street this year, the brown especially influenced by public figures such as The Kardashians.
Going into SS22, the colour choices have been made to create and emotional connection with the consumer, maintaining a sense of well-being and calmness. The tones are 'restful pale tones' and are associated with nourishment and restoring a sense of balance.

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Range Plan

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Range Plan

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Project 3 Sourcing  Product in an Agile Market - Range Plan

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This article was a lot more detailed in adidas' approach to sustainability and also gave an insight into the brands strategy for the next 4 years, 'Own the Game'. In this article, I found information on how the adidas consumer has changed and what the brand are doing to elevate their customer experience in the coming years. A repetitive theme in the article is the way that the business is focused is driven by the consumers needs, even their approach to Sustainability. The points I have made in my essay, regarding the Adidas Membership programme, is a way in which Adidas are driving their DTC (Direct to Consumer) business. This article explains that e-com is their most important store and is expected to increase even more in the coming years. It also explains how the brand will leverage their partnerships with influencers to amplify their credibility in the lifestyle side of the business which the Superstar falls into.

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Unit 1: Garment Futures Assignment 'Hip Hop & The Evolution of the Adidas Superstar' Essay and Timeline.

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Unit 1: Garment Futures Assignment 'Hip Hop & The Evolution of the Adidas Superstar' Essay and Timeline.

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Hip Hop & The Evolution of the Adidas Essay and Timeline

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Unit 1: Garment Futures - Reflective Blog 

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Unit 1: Garment Futures - Reflective Blog 

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Unit 1 Garment Futures - Reflective Blog

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Contextual Studies Presentation Feedback Form

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Unit 1: Garment Futures - Authentication Form

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Unit 1: Garment Futures - Authentication Form

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Brand Report

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Brand Report

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Project 2 Customer Centric - Brand Report

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Reflective Blog

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Reflective Blog

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Project 2 Customer Centric - Reflective Blog

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Premiere Vision SS22 - Wovens, Jersey, Leather & Accesories

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Premiere Vision SS22 - Wovens, Jersey, Leather & Accesories

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After looking into my chosen trend, I went onto to look at the Premiere Vision report on WGSN for SS22. Including in this report, was 'Poplin' which has featured in my chosen trend. In the report it states that recycled polyesters and cotton should be used to make the Poplin fabrics. The article also introduced me to OKEO-TEX from which I then went onto the website to research in greater detail.

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This article from WGSN, focuses more on the sourcing on fibres and fabrics that have been forecasted for SS22. This article introduced me to brands such as Recytex, Naia and Repreve which I then went onto research in greater detail. This article discusses the increase in Recycled Fabrics, which has been growing in usage, and how buyers can contribute to this.

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'REPREVE' are a company who make fibres from recycled plastic bottles, so far they have recycled 25 million plastic bottles. 'REPREVE' is used throughout the retail industry and supplies brand such as 'Guess', Toms and Patagonia.
'REPREVE' is also used by 'recytex' who are a textile company who manufacture fabric for the fashion industry. They have 3 sustainable lines, one of which used 'REPREVE' recycled polyester fibres.

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REPREVE is the trusted, branded recycled performance fiber, used to make sustainable textiles with wicking, odor control, water resistance, and more.

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OKEO-TEX test garments for harmful substances that can be damaging. Many fashion brands use this to receive the 'Standard-100' label which ensures every aspect of a garment has been tested, from button, thread and every other accessory. Using OKEO-TEX ensures consumers safety and trust when purchasing garments from a brand.

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OEKO-TEX® - Tailor-made solutions for the textile and leather industry

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OEKO-TEX® enables consumers and businesses to make responsible choices to protect our planet.

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'Naia Eastman' source fibres from sustainable pine and eucalyptus forests and plantations to ensure no deforestation of ancient or endangered forests. They create cellulosic fibre through a variety of eco-conscious material, which they have been ranked at number 3 in the textiles industry. They create their fibres making sure solvents are recycled back into the loop and use OKEO-TEX to ensure the fibres are certified and that they are made with no hazardous chemicals. All the fibres created by 'Naia Eastman' are fully biodegrable or compostable.

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In light of stay-at-home orders, the world recently spent the 50th Earth Day this April inside, most likely in the most comfortable clothing we had. If prevailing trends hold true, many of us were wearing these cozy fashions made with sustainable fiber. Sustainability has become one of the most pressing issues in apparel as earth-friendly materials are in higher demand than ever.

In 2018, the global eco-fiber market was estimated at more than $37 billion and is predicted to grow at 9.2%.*

This call for greater sustainability isn't just for brands and fashion designers. Sustainability is important across the whole textiles value chain, including mills who choose to work with environmentally friendly fibers. These trendsetting mills have sustainability goals of their own-to minimize waste, for example, or embrace closed-loop processes.

Naia™ from Eastman has eco-conscious materials that are the perfect fit for mills looking to improve their sustainability scorecards and brands looking for sustainable solutions for their fashion collections. With full traceability from tree to fiber, Naia™ is made with the highest safety, social, and environmental standards. It is responsibly sourced from sustainably managed pine and eucalyptus forests and plantations to ensure no deforestation of protected forests. Our closed-loop production process allows recycling and reuse of safe solvents and water, resulting in fibers with low environmental impact.

With the introduction of our latest sustainable fabric material, Naia™ staple fiber, mills now have access to an entire portfolio of sustainable textiles, including cellulosic staple fiber and cellulosic filament yarn. And brands can choose for high diversity of fabrics.

For example, Pratibha Syntex in India is blending 29% Naia™ staple with modal and elastane to create a medium-weight stretch knit in charcoal and creamy white-perfect for tees, tanks, and flowing dresses.

Charcoal and white stripe knit from Pratibha Syntex (India); Naia™ staple blended with modal and elastane
Or take a look at this pink jersey knit from Ekoten, also a blend of Naia™, modal, and elastane. This medium-weight knit creates flowing fabric with a buttery hand and slight texture-just the thing for work-at-home casual or athleisure styles.

Pink jersey knit from Ekoten Tekstill (Turkey); Naia™ staple blended with modal and elastane
For added sustainability, Naia™ biobased fiber pairs well with recycled fibers for an even greater reduced carbon footprint. Arvind Limited blended Naia™ staple cellulose fiber with recycled polyester to create a crisp blue-and-white check pattern, a light look with flexible drape and desired sustainable origins.

Without a doubt, sustainable fashion calls for a sustainable fabric material that has natural origins and resource-efficient processes. But the best sustainable fabrics also help reduce footprints long after they are crafted, fashioned, shipped, and sold off the shelves. For example, quick-drying fabrics can help save energy by shortening tumble time in electric dryers. Naia™ staple acetate fiber consistently improves dry rate, providing versatile blending options. It also delivers enduring softness in fabrics for longer lasting comfort-proving apparel can be sustainable without compromises. In Intertek testing, Naia™ blends with lyocell and modal improved dry rates up to 30%.

Chambray Type Wove from Süzer Textile Company (Turkey); Naia™ staple blended with lyocell
Naia™ is excited for designers to pick up on this added bonus. At Süzer Textile Company, the Turkish mill created an eco-friendly, finely woven fabric with the classic look of chambray, blending Naia™ staple with lyocell.

Green micro-rib knit from Acabamentos Têxteis de Barcelos (Portugal); Naia™ staple blended with modal
Blue mélange jersey knit from Sinotex (China); 28% Naia™ staple, Naia™ staple blended with modal and elastane
Before "green" meant environmentally friendly, the hue was coveted for its vibrance and symbolism of rebirth, regeneration, and living nature. To see how well Naia™ staple biobased fiber takes to color, Acabamentos Têxteis de Barcelos created a blend of Naia™ and modal that should make others jealous. This green micro-rib knit shows a slight texture but sports a smooth tactile surface with a rippling drape-ideal for shorts, wide-leg lounge pants, or even cuff accents.

Speaking of dyes, Sinotex used earth-friendly, plant-based dyes to create a blue mélange jersey knit, using Naia™, modal, and spandex for a heathered look and just the right amount of stretch. Soft, comfortable, and lightweight, it represents sustainability without compromise.
*Eco-Fiber Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis By Product (Organic, Regenerated, Recycled, Natural), By Application (Textiles, Household, Industrial, Medical), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2019 - 2025, published by Grand View Research.
Soft, quick drying, and with reduced piling, all these fabrics are great examples of how Naia™ staple fiber transforms environment-friendly clothing materials into comfortable and easy-to-care-for sustainable textiles and apparel. For added luxury, mills and brands can opt for Naia™ cellulosic filament yarn. Extremely smooth to the touch, Naia™ filament creates fabrics that glide lightly and sumptuously over skin and drape elegantly to create alluring silhouettes. They naturally have a beautiful luster and rich color, creating a standout look. For a more subdued appearance and texture, the yarn can also be transformed into a luxurious fabric with a matte finish.

For mills and brands looking to source sustainable materials that will create biodegradable fabrics and garments, Naia™ has received the TÜV AUSTRIA 'OK biodegradable' certification for freshwater and soil environments and the 'OK compost' certification for industrial settings.

Naia™ cellulosic filament yarn and Naia™ cellulosic staple fiber are both sustainable options. But they offer different advantages to give mills and designers the versatility to fulfill their vision. Naia™ can be used alone or blended to create incredible fashion fabrics-from comfortable everyday wear to luxurious apparel. Both options mix well with cotton, silk, wool, linen, nylon, polyester, viscose, or elastane-adding fine luxury when woven into a silky satin fabric and comfort when knitted with spandex into a jersey or interlock fabric. In combination with these other yarns, Naia™ affords almost unlimited possibilities for textural variety.

Consumers and designers alike are looking for sustainable styles to reflect their lifestyles. Now, mills can give them a wide variety of options, creating sustainable textiles with inherent softness, reduced piling, comfort, silky drape, cool hand, and tranquil confidence.

As womenswear designers and manufacturers clamor for sustainable fabrics to meet demand, mills are stepping up-so we all can step out in the best earth-friendly apparel.

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Greater Sustainability: Fabric Innovations From Mills | Naia

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In light of stay-at-home orders, the world recently spent the 50th Earth Day this April inside, most likely in the most comfortable clothing we had. If prevailing trends hold true, many of us were wearing these cozy fashions made with sustainable fiber.

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Chloe Spring 2022 Ready-To-Wear Collection

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Chloe Spring 2022 Ready-To-Wear Collection

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Upon researching further into the trend, I found the 'Chloe Spring 2022 Ready-To-Wear' show images on Vogue Runway. This show in particular had a lot of the key garments and colours from the trend I have researched. Main garments from the show included: tailored blazer and joggers, knit dresses, tiered skirts and sundress. The main colours include: Pale Banana, Butterfly, Blue Fog and Brown Sugar.

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There was a lovely moment of happenstance at the first Chloé show to gather a live audience together since you-know-when. There we were, sitting by the Seine, watching the girls walking along the Quai de la Tournelle in brilliant sunshine. A second audience of Parisian passersby was sur le pont to the right. And just at the very moment the finale began, a packed riverboat sailed past, full of accidental fashion show spectators waving and delighted on deck.

Somehow, this all felt like a very Gabriela Hearst moment, because the practice of sharing and openness is her all over. "As cheesy as it sounds, this collection is about love," she said in a preview. "It's really about the love of so many things: the love of craft, the love of friendship, the love of fellow humans. I literally have to memorize the many different NGOs, because I am working with so many this season."

You get the free-flowing, unforced boho spirit of what Hearst is doing with Chloé from the 31 pictures of the show. What with its summer-holiday caftans, ponchos, lacy dresses, and smattering of boyish pantsuits, the collection is fully in the tradition of the free-spirited Chloé girl brand identity that has been passed down from hand to hand by a succession of women designers, from Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo onward.

What's very different with Hearst is, first of all, the reduced number of looks in the shows: down to 31 from sometimes more than 50. And second, the meticulous and quite formidable way she's bringing in changes in sourcing, the supply chain, traceability, and environmental and social responsibility to a major Paris fashion brand.

All the information is documented in a Chloé press release and on its website: progress toward what all fashion houses ought to look like internally in this age of climate emergency. At points-when you consider how many women's organizations and communities Chloé is benefiting through buying strategies around the world-it almost begins to seem possible that this work could even be marking a shift in the entire purpose of a luxury brand's existence.

One step in that direction is that the most exclusive level of Chloé luxury is now being launched as Chloé Craft-a group of products with a spiral logo, denoting, as Hearst puts it, "that only a human hand can make those pieces." In the spring collection, those hand skills were evidenced in pieces like the petal-pattern crocheted dress and the intricately knotted streamer-harnesses made of strips of leftover fabric from seasons before-techniques created by Akanjo, a social enterprise organization in Madagascar. The chunky seashell and macramé necklaces, as well as baskets that come labeled with the name of the person who wove them, also bear the spiral branding.

Shifting the needle toward causing less environmental harm primarily comes in Hearst's creditable insistence on fabric switching. For example, there's more linen and less cotton involved in this collection. It's used to chic effect in the cream pieces, including a generous, Hearst-signature trench coat with a cool heft and whipstitched leather edging. And, more surprisingly, in a great indigo blue pantsuit that at first sight seemed to be denim, but was in fact a beautifully soft, supple linen.

Underfoot, as well as the eco-friendly Nama trainers launched this year, a new and delightfully multicolored deep-soled Chloé flip-flop was treading the Parisian riverside quai. In fact, all the pretty pastel layers pressed into the soles were once other flip-flops. "They're from Ocean Sole, which I've been wanting to work with for a long time!" Hearst declared with glee. "It's a Kenyan nonprofit that collects flip- flops from the ocean."

All the applause from the people of Paris, boat-trippers and fashion audience alike, was well deserved for the progress she's pushing through.

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Chloé Spring 2022 Ready-to-Wear Collection

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There was a lovely moment of happenstance at the first Chloé show to gather a live audience together since you-know-when. There we were, sitting by the Seine, watching the girls walking along the Quai de la Tournelle in brilliant sunshine. A second audience of Parisian passersby was sur le pont to the right.

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& Other Stories - Fashion Themed Board Game 

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& Other Stories - Fashion Themed Board Game 

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& Other Stories have launched a board game to support the launch of their AW21 collection. This game is a great way of introducing customers to their brand whilst also showcasing their latest collection. The game has been sent to influencers, who have then been brought together to play the game and spread awareness of the brand.

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Retailer & Other Stories has launched The Style Game, a fashion-themed board game featuring its autumn/winter collections.

The limit-edition multiplayer board game revolves around & Other Stories three ateliers - Stockholm, Los Angeles and Paris. Players, represented by a small golden brass metal game pieces in the shape of ballerinas and shoes, start in their favourite atelier and roll the die to move around the board and gather fashion cards.

The first player who collects a full look from one of the three ateliers and walks to or past that city wins The Style Game.

The game also includes questions about fashion, culture and inspiring women, with players encountering cards with quizzes, travels, and conversation starters. In addition, there are special treasure cards that give players real treats in & Other Stories stores such as discounts.

Image: courtesy of & Other Stories

Rocky af Ekenstam Brennicke, director brand and creative at & Other Stories, said in a statement: "By providing some extra fun for our customers and inviting them to play around in the world of Stories and our ateliers, we wanted to not only bring to light our autumn collections in a unique way, but also rejoice being in the company of our closest friends again, even if just a few people."

& Other Stories has also created a small Style Game pop-up in all the stores that have a Kiosque, "game" corners with bistro tables to sit down and play with friends.

The Style Game is available in select & Other Stories stores priced 28 pounds.

Image: courtesy of & Other Stories

Image: courtesy of & Other Stories

Image: courtesy of & Other Stories

Image: courtesy of & Other Stories

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& Other Stories launches fashion-themed board game

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Retailer & Other Stories has launched The Style Game, a fashion-themed board game featuring its autumn/winter collections. The limit-edition multiplayer board game revolves around & Other Stories three ateliers - Stockholm, Los Angeles and Paris.

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This article posted on the H&M Group, explores the beginnings of & Other Stories from it's very first concept on not being a fashion brand but actually a cosmetic's brand, and how it became a store where women can find every item needed for a complete look. The article explains how the need of diversity in the brand, prompted the founders to have the 3 design studios in different countries and how street style was a major influence for the brand. Another really interesting part of the article is that influencer 'Iris Apfel' was part of the initial launch of the first store in the US. The name '& Other Stories' came from the idea that the brand wanted the customer to be able to their own stories and wanted a name that could be combined with different things, such as cities or people. From that the brand came up with a name that writers use to name a collection of stories, where they title the first story then continue with '& Other Stories'.

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& Other Stories has quickly become a successful member of the H&M group. Initially not at all envisioned as a fashion brand, its dedicated and visionary team has created a concept adding an entirely new attitude to the fashion circuit. Here they tell their story.

Expanding the business is part of H&M's DNA. Initially called Hennes, the 'M' was added in 1968 through the purchase of Mauritz Widforss which added menswear to the stock. Over the past decade, several newcomers have been added to the H&M group - COS was introduced in 2007 and in 2008 FaBric Scandinavien AB (including Weekday, Cheap Monday, and Monki) became part of the H&M family. But as Samuel Fernström, (General Manager of & Other Stories) and his team in 2010 were handed the project that would become & Other Stories, the brief did not mention setting up a new fashion brand.

"It all started with a question," explains Samuel. "What might a new cosmetics brand within the H&M family look like? That was followed by discussions about a new cosmetics brand that could stand on its own feet. As the idea took shape, we soon realised we wanted to find a new way of giving the customer an entire look - the accessories, the shoes, the bags."

"Just creating a cosmetics brand felt too narrow," continues Samuel. "So we started sketching out the idea of a brand dedicated to women who are into creating their own style, in charge of curating their entire personal look. The beauty products would be just one part of this fashion collection, and the customer would be able to find all of it in one place. The main difference between us and the other brands of the H&M Group, however, is still that we started out doing accessories, with fashion being the final piece of the puzzle."

It was soon decided that the new brand - which had already been given the working title & Other Stories - would never judge styles or fashion on the basis of anything being "right" or "wrong". Anyone should be able to find something at & Other Stories to suit her closet and taste.

Samuel continues: "We soon realised, however, that offering diversity in the way we wanted meant setting up design ateliers in different places, with different kinds of designers being inspired by different things. At first Stockholm, Tokyo, New York, and Berlin were on the shortlist, but the final choice was Stockholm and Paris. Our designs from Paris tell a story of femininity that can be quirky and eclectic on the one hand, and elegant and feminine on the other. The signature of our Stockholm atelier is more minimalist with sharply tailored pieces, merged with innovative Scandinavian elements. Mixing the collections allows the customer to create her own, personal style."

Caroline Björkholm, who works with & Other Stories communication joined the team at an early stage. She recalls that the initial discussions about the concept went on forever: "We were talking about how to make all these ideas come alive. A favourite topic was the look of fashion imagery, and the yearning for a more 'real' expression. At that point in time, street style blogs were the latest craze, and provided us with inspiration. We wanted to portray alternatives and diversity."

To widen the collections and find both a unique expression and a distinctive shop mirroring the brand values, the collections were designed in parallel with the creation of digital communication platforms and the physical store concepts. Caroline continues: "The aim was to create a fashion image that felt open yet personal, as opposed to narrow and dictating. This led to the casting of upcoming models and personalities as well as talented young photographers just embarking on their careers."

Ebba Kettner was recruited to the team from H&M in 2010 to work with the brand design. "Every single thing within our brand needs to feel personal and unique. Using a hand-drawn logo was just the beginning. Our bags - standard paper bags you'll find in many different shops - have turned into a collector's item thanks to the 'colour dip' concept, which we update to align with current trends. It's the same with our hangtags and other material. Take the trolley tables in the stores, for example. Inspired by the backstage areas at fashion shows, we of course wanted them to look good, but the fact that they're flexible, sturdy, and capable of supporting quick in-store layout changes is just as important. We can turn almost anything into inspiring and unique objects."

All & Other Stories communication and graphic design is developed in the brand's creative atelier in Stockholm, which includes a photo studio and a full-scale prototype shop space where ideas and mock-ups can be tested. In many ways, the atelier is similar to the stores, and that is precisely the idea: walking into one of the shops should be like "coming home to" & Other Stories, becoming a part of the creative process.

In spring 2013, the first & Other Stories shop opened on London's Regent Street. At the same time, online sales kicked off in ten markets across Europe. The concept was soon both acknowledged and praised, in particular by customers, who got engaged and spread the word through their own channels. Samuel Fernström has fond memories of the period: "We really didn't understand just how well we were doing. We opened in London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Barcelona - and everywhere enthusiastic customers greeted us. For a while it felt like we were opening a new shop every week. It felt like being on tour. The coolest part about it was to watch the customers doing exactly what we had hoped they would do: mixing the collections and sharing the looks they were creating.

& Other Stories now has more than 30 stores, with more planned. The first U.S. store opened in 2014 and the launch was given a lot of attention, not least because of the choice of model - the more than 90 year old fashion icon Iris Apfel. "It took a year and a half to get an appointment with her," says Caroline Björkholm. "In the end, I managed to track her down through Ari Seth Cohen, the photographer running the Advanced Style blog. He set up a lunch in Manhattan with her and her housekeeper. She loved the brand and our ideas, and we gave her free reins to choose her own outfits for the campaign that was shot by Cohen."

The openings in London and New York went to show that the team had created something that wasn't just lacking in their world, but that was appreciated by many more. To quote one of New York's fashion blogs, commenting on the Manhattan store launch:

"Start making room in your closet because H&M sister brand & Other Stories is coming to the US - and it is good."

What does the name "& Other Stories" actually mean?

Samuel Fernström, Managing Director: "There has always been talk about "stories" in the world of fashion, and early on we had this idea that the customers would be able to "tell their own story" with us. At the same time we wanted a name that could be combined with different things - cities, ideas, people. From that starting point, we ended up with an expression that writers use to name collections of short stories, where you write out the title of the first story and then continue with "& Other Stories", such as "Dresses & Other Stories". That way, we had half a name that could be changed depending on what was put in front of it. There were a few other proposals on the table, but once we came up with this, the discussion was pretty much over."

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Other Stories has quickly become a successful member of the H&M group. Initially not at all envisioned as a fashion brand, its dedicated and visionary team has created a concept adding an entirely new attitude to the fashion circuit. Here they tell their story. Expanding the business is part of H&M's DNA.

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COVID-19 continues to batter H&M as it faces conundrum in China

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COVID-19 continues to batter H&M as it faces conundrum in China

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Article found on Global Data, regarding a situation in China for H&M. There has been a human rights issue in China which has made the H&M Group stop sourcing their cotton from the region in question. Unfortunately in the short time, it will cause issues with their revenue, unless they retract their statement. However the group take a strong stance in terms on ethics, and the retraction of their statement could cause a negative perception of the group.

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H&M Group Sustainability Performance Report 2020

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H&M Group Sustainability Performance Report 2020

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Interesting report found on the H&M Group page. H&M Group have made some really great progress so far in their approach to sustainability, being ranked number 1 in Fashion Revolutions Fashion Transparency Index. They have also had a breakthrough in recycling with some of their brands now using this in garments. In 2020, 64.5% of the groups materials were recycled or sustainably sourced, they have also had a 14% reduction in packaging, 24% of this being plastic. They have also providing thorough information regarding their climate impact and how they are progressing in using less energy emissions.

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HM Group Sustainability Performance Report 2020

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This article of WGSN has grouped together trends from different stores and related them back to trend predictions for this season. This article features a lot of the trends seen across the brands I am focusing on for my Comp Shop, which I have already seen evidence for on the brands websites or stores. Most dominant across my brands, is items such as the padded jacket, quilted jacket, sweater vests, joyful knits and knit dresses.

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WGSN article analysing catwalk trends for AW21/22, this one is particular is focused on jacket and outerwear. These are key items for the season, and heavily featured in campaigns. This article is interesting to see, the designers versions of the items we are seeing on the high street this season.

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Catwalk Analytics AW2122 Jackets Outerwear

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WGSN: Catwalk Analytics AW21 Print & Colour

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WGSN: Catwalk Analytics AW21 Print & Colour

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WGSN Article speaking about key print & colour trends for the A/W 21 season. Some key takeaways from this article were colours such as Green, that is currently popular at brands such as Zara and other high street brands. It has been forecasted to have a 20% increase year on year. Another key trend, is the checkerboard trend which has featured at brands such as Mango. This has been forecasted to 128% increase year on year.

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This article speaks about Zara's marketing strategy and how the customer is a key focus for the brand to be successful. “Shopper frequency at Zara is 2x to 3x higher than traditional women’s apparel, which indicates super loyalty to the brand,”. They have changed the 4 P's of marketing into the 4 E'S, Experience, Exchange, Evangelism and Every Place. They also have a highly engaged work force which translates into a very engaged customer base.

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Spain-based Zara, the world's largest clothing retailer and owned by Inditex, is introducing an augmented reality experience in its stores. Shoppers can engage their mobile phones to see models wearing selected fashions when they click on sensors in the store or displayed on AR-enabled shop windows. Initially launched in 120 stores worldwide, such technology is irresistible digital-honey to draw millennials into the store and shop.

Creating customer curiosity is a most powerful pull marketing strategy. Every human being is innately programmed to satisfy it. With this new AR application and in so many other ways, Zara excels by pulling customers into the brand, unlike its closest competitor H&M, which remains fixed on pushing its brand and product out to the customer.

In studying these two oft-compared brands, the essential differences revolve around their overall approach to marketing. H&M still is fixed on the old 4Ps of marketing model-Product, Price, Promotion and Place-where the company and the brand is the focus.

By contrast Zara has evolved to the new 4Es of marketing strategy-Experience replaces Product; Exchange is new Price; Evangelism is now Promotion; and Every Place is new Place-that puts the customer at the center around which the company and brand revolve.

For Zara, it is all about the customer-experiences for the customer, exchange with the customer, Evangelism through the customer, and being every place for the customer. Shelley E. Kohan, assistant professor Fashion Institute of Technology, recently shared an analysis of the Zara difference based upon the 4Es marketing concept.
Zara makes customer experience king
Product used to be king, but not anymore. In the new retail economy, experience matters more than product in the mind of the shopper. Zara understands this.

"While Zara is an excellent purveyor of product, it also capitalizes on the store experience by continuously offering reasons for customers to visit the stores and catch the hottest trends at affordable prices," Kohan explains, noting that Zara has cultivated a loyal customer who visits about six times per year, as compared to other retailers in the contemporary market where two to three visits per year are the norm.

The fast-fashion experience formula for success combines frictionless shopping in a highly curated product environment offering scarce supply and new styles that rotate rapidly. "The more quickly and efficiently a customer can navigate through the store to explore and find hidden gems, the better the experience," she says. "Zara nails that."
Zara exchanges with customers for value
The old pricing formula-Pile it high, sell it cheap-worked well through the 20th century, but in the new experience economy, it has been replaced by the concept of exchange.

"Exchanging dollars for product is no longer meeting the needs of today's shopper as they strive for deeper connections with the brand," Kohan states. "Retailers must adapt to the changing consumer where the top characteristic is value. Today, value is measured beyond price, but also in time and convenience."

Zara has a deep understanding of the entire value proposition it exchanges with the customers. Its fast-fashion deliverable is available in the quantity, format and time in which the customer needs the product. That translates into great value.

"Branded value aligns customer's needs with a brand deliverable," Kohan stresses. For example, the most loyal customers for retailers typically account for 80% of the sales. These brand loyalists are also less price sensitive. "Appealing to the loyal segment of the target market, like Zara does, allows for higher profit margins and caters to customers who seek out branded value," she emphasizes.

Zara masters the concept of exchange as it is not the cheapest in the fast-fashion arena, but it consistently delivers branded value of trend-right product at appealing prices.
Zara creates brand evangelists
By making the brand experience meaningful and the exchange valuable, Zara taps the potential of its customers to evangelize the brand. Rather than push marketing out, Zara pulls customers in, cultivates them as brand influencers to improve operations, services and products and stimulates them to spread the word.

"Shopper frequency at Zara is 2x to 3x higher than traditional women's apparel, which indicates super loyalty to the brand," Kohan says. These loyalitsts become brand evangelists who share excitement about the brand with their networks. Zara, for example, has over 25 million Facebook followers, 16 million on Instagram and over one million in Twitter.

Zara has a highly evolved data infrastructure, Kohan also notes, that allows for super-efficient analysis of what's selling and being said on social media platforms. This data is used to improve various aspects of the business from product offerings to service enhancements. "The two-way communication between the customer and Zara allows for continual improvement of product and services," she says.
Zara is every place the customer needs it to be
Personal commerce is the every place where the customers are, rather than only in the physical place the brand is present. This is the new distribution model for retailers today: Delivering the brand experience and products when and where the customer demands it. Zara does that for them.

"Zara has devoted significant time, money and resources to develop a synchronized strategy between online and offline commerce," Kohan explains. Through this technology and mobile connectivity, it links a customer's shopping visit and provides access to inventory not present in the specific location. "It is a big win for both the customer and the company," she says.

And the company's store location strategy is another aspect of its every place factor. It currently operates in 2,213 stores across 93 markets and 39 online markets. The flagship locations are located in the most critical markets that appeal to their most loyal shopper. "Zara has the courage to continually strengthen their portfolio of stores by closing unprofitable ones, opening new markets, and expanding sister brands in existing markets (Zara Home, Massimo Dutti)," Kohan says.
Zara is all about the customer
Zara has cultivated unique advantages with its 4Es approach to marketing by focusing on experience, exchange, evangelism and every place strategies for the customer, rather than the old product, price, promotion and place concept focused on the brand. "As the brand ethos is so embedded in the customers' mind, the customer becomes the brand manager," Kohan explains.

In 2016, the service agents responded to more than 17 million customer inquiries, Kohan found. "Zara actually listens and reacts to customer feedback as its most valuable brand asset to improve its products and services, " she says.

Further, Zara focuses on its own people with corporate initiatives on diversity, respect, equal opportunity, work-life balance and professional development. Zara fosters a highly-engaged workforce that translates into highly-engaged interactions with customers. Additionally, over 60% of the Inditex workforce is 30 or younger thus aligning with the target market of the brand.

"The result is the customer and the company work cooperatively together so that the Zara customer becomes the Chief Customer Officer providing feedback on all aspects of the business," Kohan concludes. This is a fundamentally different alignment than brands using the 4Ps approach to marketing operate. Today the customer, not the company, calls the shots. Zara involves the customer interactively in the decision-making process. That is the Zara difference.

... Read More

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Why Zara Succeeds: It Focuses On Pulling People In, Not Pushing Product Out

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Analysis of Zara's fast-fashion retailing strategy with FIT Shelley E. Kohan, based on the 4Es model of marketing, where Experience replaces Product, Exchange in new Price, Evangelism is now Promotion and Every Place is the new Place. Zara recognizes the customer as its most valuable brand asset.

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Authentication Form

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Project 2: Customer Centric - Authentication Form

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Project 2 - Customer Centric Authentication Form

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& Other Stories - Fashion United Article

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& Other Stories - Fashion United Article

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This article talks about merchandising in the & Other Stories stores and was interesting to read after completing the comp shop, to see if it had changed much over the years. This article was written in 2013 and their Visual Merchandising hasn't changed much since then. The article explains that the products are grouped together in their Design Ateliers and have accessories tables amongst them. This strategy must still be having a positive impact on the brand as they have kept it the same with only minor adjustments.

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OPINION_The curtains have finally been raised on global apparel giant H&M's much-awaited new venture, & Other Stories. Focusing on evoking emotions rather than splashing high-end celebrities and low-end prices across billboards,

& Other Stories' novel approach to selling fashion could well be the catalyst needed to bring H&M up to speed with its biggest rival Inditex.

Visual

merchandising drives emotional connections
In-store environment and visual merchandising plays an imperative role in conveying the brand's ethos. Consumers are immediately struck by the unconventional juxtaposition of products; bags are displayed with shoes among body lotions, jewellery with matching nail polish. Lingerie is not contained within a designated corner but is omnipresent alongside outerwear.

This lack of compartmentalisation is a key facet of & Other Stories' desire to be perceived as a one-stop shop for the building blocks of style, emphasising beauty and accessories as much as ready-to-wear. Products are instead categorised based on four overarching design aesthetics, from 'Poetic and Dandy' to 'Minimalism and Contradiction', urging consumers to shop a mood as opposed to a trend. Forming emotional connections ('stories') of this sort with the product lies at the heart of the brand's concept.

This ethos is evident in the product as well. Whilst offering fresh and contemporary pieces, & Other Stories does not seek to be a purveyor of 'on-trend' items but of timeless pieces which can be combined with existing items in consumers' wardrobes. Even its collaborations are with upcoming designers like Abigail Lorick instead of established fashion houses, further alluding to a less authoritarian view on fashion.

A digital era brand
In-store atmosphere is evoked through short snippets of text and campaign imagery, often featuring women caught mid-stride (akin to fashion bloggers) to show products in their element rather than shot in a studio. It is such subtle touches which indicate & Other Stories' intrinsic digital DNA.

In an era when social media and street-style blogs hold as much, or even more, clout than traditional print and outdoor advertising, & Other Stories has been born out of these elements, rather than latching on to them as an afterthought. Thus, the brand really captures contemporary consumer attitudes towards personal style. The brand's website further reinforces this narrative. It features a scrapbook-like overflow of imagery, a mix of candid tableaux, colour cosmetics, prints and textures and high heel-clad feet.

Furthering its online emphasis, & Other Stories' e-commerce operations have also been launched alongside its retail stores, in 10 European markets. This will certainly play to its favour, given the channel's fervent growth, and the problems the H&M brand has encountered in launching its US e-commerce platform. A sound online strategy will further increase brand awareness and help understand potential customers for future store expansion.

Price-quality balance encourages investing
Before the product had been unveiled, Euromonitor International had emphasised the importance of achieving the correct price-quality ratio. Whilst veering clear of the luxury segment, & Other Stories' ready-to-wear prices have hit a sweet spot between economy H&M and premium COS. Clothing prices range from 12 pounds for a basic tank top to 195 pounds for a leather biker jacket. Whilst the disparities may confuse consumers, prices are aligned with quality. At the top end of the spectrum, high-quality fabrication encourages consumers to invest in these "lasting" wardrobe pieces. This new philosophy could either appeal to an older, more affluent demographic or provide H&M's existing consumers with more classic pieces to complement their cheaper, trend-driven H&M items.

Seeking global relevance is key
Fashion is always about looking ahead and figuring out where it is heading next. H&M's eponymous brand is witnessing an evolution of its own in its attempt to move from trend-follower to trend-setter, making appearances on the red carpet at the Oscars and on the Paris Fashion Week runway. The retailer is clearly hedging its bets against the possibility that the notion of 'disposable fashion' - H&M's current raison d'être - may have hit its peak.

The sustained success of & Other Stories, beyond the hype surrounding its initial opening, remains pinned on this reversal of consumer attitudes. If the notion of fast fashion has become so ingrained in the minds of consumers, particularly in Western Europe where the brand is making its debut, & Other Stories' slow and thoughtful approach to fashion could be a hindrance, unless consumers fully understand its message. Currently, the odds are in the brand's favour, due to a strong and consistent concept which is communicated through all consumer touch points.

Which brings us to the brand's other challenge - whether the concept is strong enough for a global rollout. There are very few markets in which the notion of street style and blogging is as sophisticated as it is in Western Europe. The vast majority of consumers, particularly in markets which hold much future apparel market growth, still seek style direction.

If H&M finds a way to make & Other Stories' narrative globally relevant, Inditex will certainly have something to worry about.

Ashma Kunde, Apparel Analyst at Euromonitor International

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& Other Stories re-writes H&M's approach to selling fashion

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OPINION_The curtains have finally been raised on global apparel giant H&M's much-awaited new venture, & Other Stories. Focusing on evoking emotions rather than splashing high-end celebrities and low-end prices across billboards, & Other Stories' novel approach to selling fashion could well be the catalyst needed to bring H&M up to speed with its biggest rival Inditex.

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An interesting article which speaks to & Other Stories, Creative Director: Samuel Fernstrom discussing the initial launch of the brand. He explains that the brand was initially just a beauty brand, an area that the H&M Group hadn't delved into yet. From just beauty, evolved a whole lifestyle concept, “We felt women shop differently today compared to how they used to,” says Behnaz Aram, head of design. “They mix and match, and buy high and low. They don't want to pay too much for a hairclip, but they're okay with paying more for things that will stay in their wardrobe. We felt that customers want to be creative today – and that was the idea with the different directions.”

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For the next big thing on the British high street, the & Other Stories headquarters in Stockholm are surprisingly low-key. Located on a quiet, snowy street in a residential part of the city and permeated with the smell of something delicious cooking for lunch (the team in the atelier all eat together every day), it's a far cry from the vision of ultra-hip Swedish cool we have come to expect from the brands this region keeps sending to invade our shores.

It feels deceptively homely, despite all the fierce-looking, articulated platform shoes, armour-plated bags and sharp silhouttes nestling in the workroom. But then its owner is well-versed in putting us at our ease when it comes to being fashion-forward.

& Other Stories, which launched last week simultaneously in London, Berlin and Copenhagen (how's that for cool company?) and online, is a new concept from the megabrand H&M, which last month dressed Best Supporting Actress nominee Helen Hunt on the Oscars red carpet and presented a collection in the French capital to coincide with the international collections. Which, all in the past few years, has given us COS, Monki and sell-out collaborations with Versace, Marni and Maison Martin Margiela.

It's just another fashionable coup for a company that, seemingly, can do no wrong.

"& Other Stories is about bringing everything a woman can wear into one place," explains creative director Samuel Fernstrom. "About focusing on the whole look. We believe shoes, bags, accessories, jewellery, lingerie and beauty are key for styling, and just as important as clothing."

The label began life simply as a beauty brand, practically the only industry pie H&M doesn't yet have a finger in, with international make-up artist Lisa Butler, who has worked alongside Inez and Vinoodh, as well as labels such as Prada and Hemut Lang - as a consulting colour director. In charge of the fragrances is Ben Gorham, the nose at cult Swedish perfumiers Byredo. The beauty range includes skincare and sweet-smelling body lotions, as well as a Pantone-breadth of shades, such as pistachio and midnight blue nail varnish; coral and rose blushes engraved with a quote from Romeo and Juliet, and cobalt metallic eyeshadow. Everything is packaged in clinical white with black lettering, unutterably cool and "something we'd like to have on our shelves," according to the similarly cool beauty collection manager Frida Fagerholm.

But from the focus on beauty, the label blossomed into an innovative and idiosyncratic lifestyle concept that those working on it are only too excited to unveil. "We felt women shop differently today compared to how they used to," says Behnaz Aram, head of design, who works out of the Stockholm atelier (some of the team are based in Paris). "They mix and match, and buy high and low. They don't want to pay too much for a hairclip, but they're okay with paying more for things that will stay in their wardrobe. We felt that customers want to be creative today - and that was the idea with the different directions."

& Other Stories is made up of four carefully considered mini-collections, each one a coherent vision of a specific aesthetic that takes in ready-to-wear, shoes, handbags, jewellery and a number of suggested beauty looks. "Contradiction and minimalism" is all swirled marble prints and geometric shapes on strict and severe silhouettes and tailoring, topped off with understated and upmarket accessories. "Industrial and effortless" speaks more of glamorous grunge, in biker jackets, chunky metallic jewellery and sheer-panelled minidresses. "Sophisticated and architectural" combines swoops and drapes of fabric with sporty touches and Art Deco flourishes, while "Poetic and dandy" is something more recognisably hip, slightly preppy, with leanings toward vintage.

"All our lines are diverse," Samuel Fernstrom continues, "ranging from masculine tailoring to feminine chic and are designed to provide endless styling choices. We aim to design lasting wardrobe treasures, within a wide price, for a woman who wants to wear thing that feel right to her and reflect her personality."

If it sounds like shopping by numbers, it isn't. The design of each pathway has been carefully considered so that each stands alone - and looks characterful - but will blend easily with another.

It feels modern, reflective of the fact that latterly women don't necessarily fall for every trend that comes their way anymore or, conversely, their tastes fall into different camps on any given day.

While the stable's other prize COS offers a mainly minimalist mid-range take, & Other Stories will provide the brighter and more feminine pieces that other fashion-forward shoppers have been waiting for.

"It felt like customers want to be creative today," adds Behnaz Aram. "That's the thing about the internet and the whole street style thing. So if we could create a brand that had four different direction, they can mix and match." The name comes from the nostalgic publishing tradition - there is a copy of Antony Trollope's The Parson's Daughter & Other Stories lying on one of the benches in the airy atelier (it's an exposed brickwork number) and the concept, while strikingly modern in feel, also comes from a certain sort of heritage: that of the couture houses, winning and welcoming customers with fragrances and cosmetics during the late Fifties - perhaps the last time there was such a concerted democratisation of fashion.

The look of & Other Stories is decidedly fashion-forward too. There are bags here that might not look out of place in the Parisian showroom of a hyper-luxe brand and shoes that could have come straight from the workshop of an avant garde stalwart. These are not the sorts of pieces generally available on the high street and for that, shoppers will flock to & Other Stories. The prices reflect the complexity of design - they're a little higher than your average, but shoes at £120 (real leather, well-made) and roomy totes for £145 (same, and same - one particular model was perfected for nearly 18 months by accessories designer Luca La Rocca, formerly an accessories whizzkid at Cerruti) are a snip compared to the next rung on the price ladder for equivalent items.

The design team are also split between Stockholm and Paris, a cunning move that allows the company to cherry-pick from the wealth of designers based in each city, but also to incorporate two of the most popular strands in fashion right now: nonchalant, downbeat Gallic chic and that grungey Scandi edge - both filter through all four of the Other Stories strands.

"It's for women who are interested in fashion and who feel differently every day," says Aram. "Some days you want a romantic dress, the next day jeans and a T-shirt. That's the same person - it's not that you dress in one style. You feel different and that's what we're trying to reflect."

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H&M & Other Stories: A new chapter for the British high street

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For the next big thing on the British high street, the & Other Stories headquarters in Stockholm are surprisingly low-key.

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This is the Inditex Group page, who are the parent company of Zara.  The brands strategy is Bringing attractive and responsible fashion, as well as improve the customer's experience'. The brand opened their first store in Spain in 1975. The page also talks about Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID), using cutting-edge systems to track the location of garments instantly in stores. The page does not talk about any of their sustainability approached but has a separate page, where this available.

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Inditex is committed to empower every individual to express their own identity with the purpose of leveraging the power of fashion to make positive change in the world

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The Mango company page offers good insight into the brands sustainability approaches, with 44% of the fibres in their garments now of a natural origin. They also a really detailed sustainability report similar to H&M, Group, and a code of ethics. All of this is really clear on their page, so something they are obviously proud of.

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Discover the latest trends in Mango fashion, footwear and accessories. Shop the best outfits for this season at our online store.

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COS was founded in 2007 and opened it's first store in London that same year. The brands concept was to offer reinvented classics and wardrobe essentials for their customers. Another focus for the brand is creating timeless designs that are made to last throughout the season and provide quality. The brand opened their online store in 2011. They currently have 294 stores in 46 markets across the globe.

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COS first opened on Regent Street, London in 2007, followed by the launch of the online store in 2011. The brand is available across Europe, Asia, North America, the Middle East and Australia, and offers reinvented classics and wardrobe essentials for women, men and children. With items made to last beyond the latest season, the collections merge lasting quality with timeless design. Committed to supporting the world of art and design through collaboration, COS partners with established and emerging artists, studios and galleries around the world.

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COS first opened on Regent Street, London in 2007, followed by the launch of the online store in 2011. The brand is available across Europe, Asia, North America, the Middle East and Australia, and offers reinvented classics and wardrobe essentials for women, men and children.

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Interesting research for the customer profile aspect of the Brand Report. This article looks into some of the issues Millennials are facing, this is the target audience of & Other Stories. The article explains that one of the problems is that this generation are still only earning median wages, whilst rising costs are making everything more expensive. The main concern has been rising house costs, which has left many Millennials still living with parents or renting. Another concern for this generation, is paying off their student debts as well as paying expensive mortgages.

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Every generation since the baby boomers has seen its economic influence weaken.

That's the stark conclusion of the latest report from the international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Its new study into the squeezed middle classes provides conclusive evidence of what has long been clear - the idea of a large, comfortably well-off middle class is fast weakening.

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Middle incomes - which the report defines as households that earn between 75 per cent and 200 per cent of the median national income - have barely grown in recent decades.

Yet the costs of maintaining a "comfortable" middle-earner life have rocketed by more than inflation.

"House prices have been growing three times faster than household median income over the last two decades," the OECD states.

"This happened in the context of rising job insecurity in fast transforming labour markets. One in six current middle-income jobs face high risk of automation. More than one in five middle-income households spend more than they earn.

"Over-indebtedness is higher for middle-income than for both low- and high-income households. As a result, today the middle class looks increasingly like a boat in rocky waters."

It's another blow for the millennial generation, attempting to buy homes, raise families and clear student debt while costs rise all around them.

A certain kind of newspaper likes to imply that this over-indebtedness and lack of financial security is because millennials waste so much money on avocados and phones and date nights. In fact, as the OECD report has shown, a lot of the lifestyle extras that used to be considered standard for middle-earners have become simply unaffordable for many professionals who would previously have fallen well within the "comfortably well-off" bracket.

Of course, it's not just the "middle classes" who are struggling - millennials of all income levels face challenges to their financial wellbeing that previous generations did not.

It has less to do with lifestyle and more to do with growing inequality and rising costs.

Here's what we know about why we're feeling so broke here in the UK.
Rising debt, rising costs
There's plenty of evidence that all is not well with the finances of many people in the UK and particularly those of people under 40.

Back in January, research by the TUC showed that unsecured household debt rose dramatically last year, reaching an average of £15,385 per home in the third quarter of 2018.

And research from YouGov for KPMG has shown that 42 per cent of millennials say that debt repayments are a significant chunk of their outgoings. In fact, it found that more than one in five 25-to-34-year-olds say they spend more than 60 per cent of their income the day it enters their account.

That's not because they are living debt-happy lifestyles, it's because their incomes are squeezed. Average weekly earnings are still £18 lower than their peak before the 2008 financial crisis, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

So it's perhaps not surprising that the OECD found a third of middle-income households in the UK say they struggle to make ends meet.

Many millennials also have to contend with the additional burden of student loans and high childcare costs. The charity Coram Family and Childcare recently warned that childcare costs in England, Scotland and Wales had risen again, with a 3 per cent hike in prices in the last year.

Families are paying an average of £127 per week, or over £6,600 per year, for a part-time nursery place for a child under two, according to the research.

Millennials are a generation who've had large parts of their lives shaped by the events of 2008. ONS analysis published last year showed that home ownership among 22-to-29-year-olds has plunged by 10 percentage points since 2008, meaning just 27 per cent have made it onto the property ladder.

And while their financial security is an issue now, for many that will not be resolved even by the time they retire.

A survey carried out by Prudential revealed that almost one in four of millennial-aged workers are not saving into a pension and one in six don't feel they will ever be able to afford retirement.

It wasn't all bad news, with 69 per cent of under-35 saying they are saving into a pension of some sort, for example. But 23 per cent say they know their contribution is not high enough to afford the standard of living they want in their old age.

Last year, former pensions minister Steve Webb commented in a report published by Royal London that the average person needs to have saved more than £260,000 over their lifetime in order to enjoy a basic income in retirement.

For those who have not managed to buy a home and will need to continue paying rent, that's £445,000 to meet the additional costs.

Low interest rates and longer lifespans mean that we need to save far more, he warned. In 2002-03, pension savings of around £150,000 would have delivered a private pension of £9,000 a year through retirement. Now the amount needed to provide that extra income has risen by £110,000.

Debt levels are rising, home ownership is falling, mortgage and rent costs are high, and the pensions time bomb is still not fully resolved, despite a rise in payments.

Many millennials will be wondering if they will ever catch a break and stop feeling so broke.

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Every generation since the baby boomers has seen its economic influence weaken. That's the stark conclusion of the latest report from the international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

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Looking on Tribes, the & Other Stories customer doesn't fit into one tribe in particularly or by the book but there were two tribes that shared similarities with the customer.
The first Tribe, being 'Aspirant' who live in city settings. Amongst this tribe is the 'Trendie' who lean towards vlogging and sharing content on social media. This relates to the & Other Stories customer, as the brand was inspired by blogging and street style.
The second tribe is 'Urban' and amongst these is the 'Styler', these are young people, with access to the latest fashion.

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New In report from Edited. This is interesting as it shows when each brand releases a drop of product throughout the year. It is interesting to see how this varies from brand to brand. For example, Zara have lot's of small drops of new items whereas Cos have just one large drop throughout the year. Mango has a mixture of small and large drops whilst & Other Stories, only have a few large drops throughout the year as well.

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When comparing prices for each brand on Edited. Zara came up with the highest price, which was a bit unusual. The only reason I can think of is that because its A/W, they have a lot of coats in stock which is bringing the average price up. Usually they would be lower than their competitors with & Other Stories sitting at a higher price point. However, & Other Stories currently have a high percentage of discounted items on their website, and this could be influencing the lower price point.

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An interesting article talking about COS and how when they first launched they were seen as the 'Celine' of the high street but over the last few years sales have fallen. This is due to other brands offering similar essentials with a strong sustainability approach, but at much lower prices. This year the brand debuted for the first time at London Fashion Week, aiming to re-invent the brand as 'accessible luxury'. This is a step in the right direction to future proof the brand.

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LONDON, United Kingdom - In the midst of London Fashion Week in September 2017, hosted a blowout party at the National Gallery to celebrate a decade in business. Guests - including Olympic diver Tom Daley, model and designer Jasmine Guinness and wellness entrepreneur Jasmine Hemsley - sipped blackberry and apple martinis and bergamot negronis amid a neon forest light installation before enjoying a set by drum-and-bass group Rudimental.

The apparent success of the brand fashion insiders had dubbed "high street Céline" seemed a solid endorsement of Swedish owner H&M group's efforts to diversify away from its then struggling core fast-fashion business. But the party proved to be a high-water mark.

Less than three years later, COS has stalled and is facing new threats from the sudden shock caused by efforts to contain Covid-19. H&M group doesn't publicly break out financial data by brand, but the company as a whole reported its first quarterly loss in more than a decade as sales fell 50 percent in its second quarter. Though things improved last month, sales were still down 25 percent through June 24 compared to a year earlier. The company has scrapped its dividend and flagged the prospect of big layoffs earlier in the year. Its share price has fallen around 25 percent since January.

But even before the pandemic, the once-buzzy COS was suffering. In 2019, the brand generated just over €800 million ($917 million) in comparable sales, down 2 percent on the previous year, according to an internal financial overview seen by BoF. Though net sales hit €982 million, up nearly 7 percent compared to a year earlier, according to the document, that number has not dramatically increased from the last time the company publicly disclosed COS' turnover in 2018.

H&M group's ambitious goal to build its second-largest brand into a multi-billion-euro business by 2022 now looks unlikely. In January, BoF was first to report the departure of a trio of COS executives: long-time managing director Marie Honda moved to another role in H&M group, while the head of finance and operations and the head of communications also left the company earlier this year.

The underlying problems at COS raise questions about H&M group's ability to navigate today's fast-changing retail landscape beyond the Covid-19 crisis. The company - which itself disrupted the market with its cheap and chic offering, speedy production cycle and high-low collaborations - has long struggled to keep up with shifting consumer preferences and competition from even faster, cheaper digital players.

At the start of 2020, a years-long turnaround at H&M group looked like it was beginning to pay off, but the headline figures masked the performance of its number-two brand. The success of COS and the group's newer labels, like Arket and & Other Stories, have long been central to the company's growth ambitions.

Even before the pandemic, the once-buzzy COS was suffering.

"One of the key drivers of the five- to ten-year view of H&M group is that these businesses become more of a key contributor," said Citigroup analyst Adam Cochrane.

COS' challenges will sound familiar to many executives stewarding high-street fashion businesses in recent years: the brand rapidly expanded its retail footprint, increasing its inventory to meet demand that never materialised. It was also slow to build its e-commerce business and is still playing catch up with savvier digital competitors. At the same time, the brand's minimalist approach to design, once so exciting, fell out of sync with prevailing fashion trends.

Culturally, the brand was struggling too, according to accounts from 20 current and former employees, who for the most part spoke only on condition of anonymity for fear of damaging their careers. Like many others in the industry, its leadership failed to adapt to shifting expectations on workplace behaviour and diversity from employees and consumers alike.

Several pointed to the company's years-long failure to address allegations against one of its more senior employees as symbolic of the worst of the problems. Emails reviewed by BoF and first-hand accounts from multiple people described inappropriate behaviour they said long went unheeded by human resources and COS' top management.
What Happened to COS?
COS launched in 2007 as H&M was riding high on nearly a decade of growth, marking the company's first foray beyond its namesake brand.

It was the heyday of fast fashion's first generation; alongside brands like Topshop and , the Swedish retailer had helped revolutionise the apparel market with a cheap but chic offering that brought the latest trends from the runway to stores with unprecedented speed and frequency, at prices that radically undercut competitors.

Establishing its headquarters in cosmopolitan London instead of Stockholm, COS gave H&M group a toehold in one of the world's top-tier fashion capitals and introduced a more elevated and expensive offering intended to target a new customer segment.

It was a savvy move that initially paid off. With sleek designs at an affordable price point and stores that could only be found in Europe, it soon became a must-go shopping destination for American fashion editors during trips to London and Paris.

When COS made its US debut, American Vogue labelled it the most exciting trans-Atlantic arrival since French fashion-girl favourite Isabel Marant opened its first store there just a few years earlier. By 2017, COS' sales had reached around $1 billion, or nearly 5 percent of the group's total revenue, and it was expanding its retail network rapidly.

In some ways COS stuck closely to the traditional fast-fashion playbook.

In 2018, H&M group executives hailed COS as the first success in its new business division, a positive growth story that contrasted starkly with their core H&M brand's performance at the time. With the group's share price plummeting after it announced poor numbers for 2017, then COS Managing Director Marie Honda presented the brand to investors at the group's first-ever capital markets day.

"We see a huge potential many years ahead to grow that brand to something really amazing," then H&M group Chief Financial Officer Jyrki Tervonen told investors in February 2018. "[It's] already at a good profit level."

The presentation cemented COS' role as the group's second brand. "Looking ahead, we expect COS to grow at least 100 percent until 2022, compared to the year ending 2017," said Peter Ekeberg, then acting head of H&M group's new business division.

But while the brand has continued to grow into new markets and open new stores, comparable sales dipped last year and net turnover has not grown at the pace suggested in 2018, according to the financial overview seen by BoF. E-commerce has taken off, boosted by expansion into new regions. But on a comparable basis the significant growth in online sales last year was not sufficient to offset the decline in brick-and-mortar. Footfall was down, and across channels customers bought fewer items at lower prices. In June, H&M group said its core brand continues to generate around 90 percent of total sales, little changed from 2017 when it was responsible for 93 percent.
A Weak Digital Strategy
Though it was established to differentiate H&M group's offering on the high street, in some ways COS stuck closely to the traditional fast-fashion playbook. Like H&M, Forever 21 and other high-street giants, COS initially focused on physical stores, neglecting the e-commerce opportunity. Since 2015, COS has nearly doubled its retail footprint, hitting 291 stores last year. To stock its new locations, it ordered more units, leading to deep end-of-season discounting that undercut the brand's image.

Though H&M group has been upping its e-commerce game in a years-long strategic shift, the trickle through to COS has been slow. That has forced the company to adapt quickly at a time when online is the only viable sales channel in some markets.

Last year, around 12 percent of COS' total net sales were generated online, according to the financial review seen by BoF. In the same period, online made up 16 percent of H&M group's total sales and 14 percent of Zara-owner Inditex's. Inditex has said it expects online to make up more than 25 percent of total sales by next year, while H&M group said e-commerce surged to represent 28 percent of total sales in the first half of 2020, when many physical stores were closed for a period because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The fast-fashion giant's transition from a traditional retailer to an omnichannel player has been far from smooth. Across channels, COS still lacks basic capabilities that consumers are coming to expect. For instance, its inventory management system is limited, making it difficult to track stock levels across stores and digital channels.

"COS has a sizeable store footprint and as of now they have not connected the dots between the brand site and stores," said Supriya Jain, a principal at advisory and research firm Gartner. "We're seeing brands getting a lot more sophisticated with integrating in-store inventory real-time into on-site pages... when you look at the mid-sized really successful speciality retailers of 2019... that's a big part of their strategy."

COS ranked 95th out of 103 companies examined in Gartner's 2019 Digital IQ Index for specialty retail in the US, which ranks brands based on their digital performance. In the equivalent report for the UK, published in November 2018, it ranked 57th out of 60.

H&M group declined to comment on COS' financial performance, but highlighted the importance of the company's ongoing digital transformation. "We, as everybody in our industry, have to adapt to the ongoing changes in the retail landscape, and the corona crisis has accelerated the needs even further," the company said in an email. "We are confident that COS and the entire group handles the transformation in the best possible way and that we will come out of this well-positioned for the future."
A Fashion Victim
At the same time as the company's business practices fell behind the times, COS also failed to keep up with currents in fashion and culture.

When COS launched, its genius was to reference high-fashion shapes, colours and expensive materials rarely seen on the high street at the time and offer them at affordable prices. Under the creative direction of Rebekka Bay - a Danish trend forecaster and design consultant who went on to stints at , Everlane and Uniqlo - the brand tapped into the same aesthetic vein as high-end labels like Marni and Phoebe Philo 's Céline, and focused on architectural silhouettes in muted and classic colours that felt sophisticated. Editors and other fashion insiders loved it.

But as more competitors moved into the market for elevated basics, the uniqueness of the concept waned. Meanwhile, fashion's pendulum swung towards the maximalism of Alessandro Michele 's , buoyed in part by the rise of Instagram, where COS' understated aesthetic failed to pop. And yet, for years the label continued to stick rigidly to its core look.
Out of Touch
Worse, the brand also lost touch with the cultural zeitgeist. As diversity and inclusion became an increasingly pressing matter - and a trending topic on social media - in large markets like the US, many brands recognised both the shifting cultural imperatives and commercial opportunities. COS was slow to respond. For years, its communications remained homogeneous, featuring a cast of predominantly white and thin models.

COS - now a global brand, sold in stores in more than 40 markets - has gradually updated its approach, but the casting of more diverse talent remains a battle within the company, said current and former employees. Scroll back only a couple of years on the brand's Instagram account and the number of diverse faces drops off noticeably.

We're in central London and you have a team dominated by largely white Swedish people.

The company's external marketing reflected internal issues rooted in a largely monocultural team trying to serve an increasingly multi-cultural market.

When Grant Goulding joined the company in 2017, he said colleagues regularly responded to his comments by attributing his point of view to his Blackness. Though the remarks were sometimes intended as a joke, they were still offensive, he said. Goulding, who is British of Ghanaian heritage and worked at the brand until January 2019, acknowledged that things did improve during his tenure, particularly after the H&M group was confronted with a public scandal for an ad many criticised as racist.

In early 2018, H&M came under fire after putting a young Black model in a sweatshirt that read 'Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.' The company apologised for the incident and went on to hire a group-level head of diversity and inclusion to drive change across the organisation. After that, Goulding said colleagues were more careful about their behaviour, but corporate efforts like unconscious bias training felt like tick-box exercises rather than real change.

"We're in central London and you have a team dominated by largely white Swedish people," Goulding said. "It felt like it was just like, tick, done."

After COS posted on social media in support of anti-racist protests in the US last month, several users responded by accusing the company of failing to live up to the values it was claiming to hold. H&M group declined to comment on any individual allegations, but said it has "zero tolerance for discrimination, harassment, or any other improper conduct." In an Instagram post published in June, COS acknowledged it had received feedback that suggested the brand must do better and vowed to take steps to address the issues. Among other things, COS said it had established a working group to drive forward action internally and externally and would review its recruitment, development and retention processes, as well as the partners it works with.

"We need to look through everything; the people that work in our teams, the people we work together with, the creative people we work with, the photographers, models, and that we have role models that are diverse," new COS Managing Director Lea Rytz Goldman said in an interview. "That is a part of our whole journey within the new brand DNA, definitely."
A Failure of Process
The company's shortcomings on inclusivity were not the only example of a troubled workplace culture that management struggled to address. Like many in the fashion industry, it has stumbled not only in adapting to mounting awareness of systemic racism, but also in managing shifting standards of acceptable workplace behaviour in the wake of movements like #MeToo and the rise of a younger, more outspoken generation of employees. Even when such issues were flagged to management, it seemed unwilling or unable to address them.

Late on the night of COS' 10th-anniversary party, some of the team working that night gathered in a back room. As they worked, they were joined by a more senior employee. According to two people present and emails recounting the event, the employee approached a more junior member of staff, put one leg up on the sofa next to him and pretended to pour champagne over his head. For the junior employee, the incident was the final straw after he claims that he experienced months of unsolicited shoulder massages, ear nibbling and nuzzling. Half a dozen sources confirmed they witnessed this behaviour.

The junior employee, who was in the final weeks of his tenure at the company at the time of the 1oth anniversary party, went to HR, but the response was muted, he said. According to a report documenting the meeting, he was offered the opportunity to pursue the matter further through the company's official grievance policy but declined. The employee claimed he was explicit about the issues and was not made aware of the grievance procedure.

A few months after he left the company, he followed up with HR, claiming that he felt what he had experienced was "at best mildly-inappropriate, but at worst... a total abuse of [the senior employee's] power and verging on sexual harassment" in an email seen by BoF. In response, the junior employee was informed the individual had been provided with feedback and the company was considering "internally appropriate actions," according to an email seen by BoF. In reality, there seemed to be few actions taken in the aftermath of the incident.

Any type of harassment or inequality is totally unacceptable.

In May 2018, nearly a year after the incident, COS considered launching a formal investigation, apparently in response to concerns over legal action, according to an internal email viewed by BoF. Last spring, then Managing Director Marie Honda offered to meet with the junior employee directly after he posted a long account of his claims online. Eventually, he was referred to H&M group's global grievance team.

Last July, UK tabloid Metro ran an article in its online edition that addressed the allegations. Internally, it was a morale-sapping elephant in the room that was hardly acknowledged, according to four people who worked at the company at the time. Through a lawyer, the senior employee said he "entirely rejects the allegations as being false and defamatory of him and has indicated that that there are multiple sources to corroborate what he says." H&M group declined to comment on the individual matter. Honda did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

However, many of the employees who spoke with BoF claim they experienced or witnessed issues with bullying. They described the brand's executive culture as closed and nepotistic, despite its outwardly progressive and inclusive values like "one team" and "straightforward and open-minded."
Cleaning House
Parent company H&M group appears to be finally cleaning house with some of the recent changes; new leadership at the top could provide the refresh the brand needs. Lea Rytz Goldman, the former head of sister brand Arket, has stepped in to lead efforts to revamp COS, but re-energising the brand will be a challenging task.

Still, many people who spoke with BoF for this story were quick to praise the abilities of their colleagues in the trenches, suggesting the brand may still have the talent it needs to succeed. It helps, too, that COS can lean on the deep pockets and extensive infrastructure of its parent company to help its turnaround.

From a business perspective, "I think what we'll find with COS is an ability to try and redefine what it is isn't going to be so difficult," said Citigroup's Cochrane.

Goldman has extensive experience within the group, where she has previously run both Monki and Arket. Work has already begun to reinvigorate the brand and navigate through the current crisis.

Last month, she launched an internal workshop to plan out a new brand identity, aiming to modernise the company's look and feel while retaining its heritage. In an interview, Goldman said COS' digital transformation has accelerated as a result of store closures caused by Covid-19, but she is also betting on the company's network of physical stores to remain important points of contact and communication with customers.

According to retail data firm Edited, COS' online sales have picked up this year, with products selling out online in the UK faster than they did a year ago.

Changes and developments are needed in many parts of our business.

Meanwhile, Goldman said she's made creating a more inclusive culture one of her core areas of focus. COS has announced plans to establish a forum to allow employees to speak up on issues of racism or other forms of discrimination. It's establishing an internal working group to suggest and initiate further actions the company can take and reviewing its recruitment, development and retention processes.

"Any type of harassment or inequality is totally unacceptable," Goldman said. "Naturally we have policies and processes, and if they don't work, we have to reassess to really make it clear to the organisation and to act when or if things like this happen."

Whether these actions will prove more successful than previous diversity and inclusion initiatives will be a test of Goldman's leadership. The new managing director acknowledged that she will have to work to establish trust within the company.

"As a new leader, when you want to create an open environment and an inclusive culture, that takes time. And I, together with the leadership, have to create trust for people to be able to speak up," Goldman said. "I started in February and we are in a very challenging situation... I know changes and developments are needed in many parts of our business."
Related Articles: Inside H&M's $4 Billion Inventory Challenge Cos Undergoes Executive Shake-Up Inditex: Agile Fashion Force

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COS: From 'High Street Céline' to Stagnation

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H&M's upmarket sister brand was once a proof point for the Swedish group's ambitions to diversify away from its core fast-fashion business. But COS executives have struggled to keep pace with a shifting market while managing a troubled internal culture.

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H&M are extremely transparent with their processes. This page includes a list of over 700 of their suppliers and factories., this is where I found the groups top countries for garment manufacture. The main 3 were China, Bangladesh and India. The group split their supply base into 2 Tiers. Tier 1 is their suppliers and factories, Tier 2 is their fabric mills and the group have full traceability on all of these.

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As a global fashion company we have a responsibility to manage our supply chain impacts. We work with suppliers to move beyond compliance and towards continuously improving environmental and social performance. We have the most influence where our relationships are strongest.

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WGSN: Key Items - Women's Dresses S/S 22

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WGSN: Key Items - Women's Dresses S/S 22

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This article was on WGSN was helpful for confirming my dress choices in my range. Including in this article is the 'Knitted Midi' which featured on a lot of the catwalks for this season and was essential to get into the range. It is a great transitional piece with it's knitted fabric, it can be worn across multiple seasons. Another dress featured in this article was the Vacay Maxi which has also featured on a lot of the catwalks. This was also essential to place in my range as it also suited the trend and the & Other Stories customer perfectly.

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Collection Review Key Items Womens Dresses SS22

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From taking this test a couple of months ago, I feel like have already developed in some of the areas and have a lot more knowledge than I did before starting the course. The key areas that I have developed in are:

- Industry Skills - I am more confident in this now, with knowing what skills are required and developing them through my assignments.

- CV & Applying for Jobs - I developed more knowledge in how to write a good CV, by using the CV 360 Tool and talking in class about key skills to talk about.

There are a couple of areas where I will still gain more knowledge from class including, Interviews and Following Up.

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This is the Circular Fashion Partnerships website and this is what I decided to write about for my countries sustainable initiative. Upon reading, it was interesting to see that not only is the initiative focusing on Bangladesh but that the H&M Group are one of the partners. The initiative involves capturing waste from production and re-routing it back into production, so that less waste is produced. Really interesting and well supported initiative that is a step closer to a circular fashion industry.

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The Circular Fashion Partnership is a cross-sectorial project to support the development of the textile recycling industry in Bangladesh by capturing and directing post-production fashion waste back into the production of new fashion products. In addition, the partnership seeks to find solutions for the COVID-19 related pile-up of deadstock and to engage regulators and investors around the current barriers and economic opportunities in the country.

The partnership facilitates circular commercial collaborations between textile and garment manufacturers, recyclers and fashion brands operating in Bangladesh. A successful business case will demonstrate a decrease in textile waste and increase the use of recycled fibres, distributing value throughout the fashion value cycle and generating economic benefits in Bangladesh by accelerating the fibre recycling market.

Global Fashion Agenda leads the project in collaboration with Reverse Resources and BGMEA and with the support of P4G.

Under the headline theme of Redesigning Value, we've invited a varied community of global fashion leaders to share their insight, experience and pioneering perspective. All 62 carefully selected voices from around the world are given the same set of questions for thoughtful responses.

The Next Gen Voices format, presented by Pandora, gathers a varied collection of thoughts and viewpoints from a selected group of previous Youth Fashion Summit participants. The Youth Fashion Summit is an international sustainability platform for fashion students, founded in 2012 by Global Fashion Agenda. Every year, this growing community convenes to generate ideas and demands to the industry, and here within Next Gen Voices, the same spirit remains from a selection of passionate young leaders.

The Fashion Pact: 1-year later

Manny Chirico (PVH. Corp., Chairman and CEO), Bruno Pavlovsky (CHANEL SAS and CHANEL FASHION, President), Sonia Syngal (Gap Inc., CEO), Paul Polman (IMAGINE, Co-Founder and Chair), Monita Rajpal (Veteran Journalist, Editorial Director and Founder),

Redesigning value in the fashion industry: Business models and power dynamics

Leslie Johnston (Laudes Foundation, CEO), Bala Murugan Palaniyandi (The Freedom Fund, Programme Advisor), Jocelyn Wilkinson (Burberry, Responsibility Programme Director), Sandrine Dixson-Declève (The Club of Rome, Co-President), Marina Colerato (Modefica, Founder),

ROUNDTABLE [BY INVITATION ONLY]

#consumption #systemchange #transparency

The objective of this roundtable is to provide industry and European Commission representatives with the opportunity to discuss the various options envisaged for upcoming political and legislative measures on product transparency designed to ensure efficient sustainability claims at product and brand level. It is a key topic concerning the matter of trust and the importance of creating a level playing field for the apparel and footwear industry.

BREAKOUTS I - CHOOSE ONE BELOW TO ATTEND

Redesigning value: Looking beyond shareholder value

BREAKOUTS II - CHOOSE ONE BELOW TO ATTEND

CFS Originals are pre-produced segments created by Global Fashion Agenda; they will take you behind the scenes, where you can meet the creative minds shaping our industry. CFS Originals is designed to provide entertainment, engagement, and education for all viewers.

Click below to add the full 3:00 - 4:15 PM CEST Originals segment to your calendar, and scroll down to learn about each segment of CFS Originals.

Under the headline theme of Redesigning Value, we've invited a diverse community of global fashion leaders to share their insight, experience and pioneering perspective. All 62 carefully selected voices from around the world are given the same set of questions for thoughtful responses.

The Next Gen Voices format, presented by Pandora, gathers a varied collection of thoughts and viewpoints from a selected group of previous Youth Fashion Summit participants. The Youth Fashion Summit is an international sustainability platform for fashion students, founded in 2012 by Global Fashion Agenda.

Every year, this growing community convenes to generate ideas and demands to the industry, and here within Next Gen Voices, the same spirit remains from a selection of passionate young leaders.

Fashion on Climate CEO session

Joey Zwillinger (Allbirds, Co-Founder and Co-CEO), Dee Poon (Esquel Group, Managing Director, Brands and Distribution), Rakhil Hirdaramani (Hirdaramani Apparel, Director), Karl-Hendrik Magnus (McKinsey & Company, Senior Partner), Morten Lehmann (Global Fashion Agenda, Chief Sustainability Officer), Samata Pattinson (Red Carpet Green Dress, CEO),

ROUNDTABLE [BY INVITATION ONLY]

The German EU Presidency has informally expressed a wish for "a smart mix of voluntary and mandatory measures and a smart mix of governmental and entrepreneurial measures" in the harmonisation of due diligence standards in the EU. The European Commission is also drafting a legislative proposal, with a draft report ongoing at the European Parliament level.

This roundtable aims to better understand these wishes and to provide initial input from the industry to EU institutions.

BREAKOUTS I - CHOOSE ONE BELOW TO ATTEND

Designer Challenge: How to create a 100% 3D printed sneaker?

BREAKOUTS II - CHOOSE ONE BELOW TO ATTEND ONE

Who are the partners?

How does the project address environmental sustainability?

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Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) is the leading forum for sustainability in fashion. GFA is behind the largest business event on sustainability in fashion, the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, which has been leading the movement for over a decade.

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A interesting read from the International Transport Forum, talking about low carbon road freight. This article discusses how research into more environmentally fuels is not advanced enough to produce a solution to the freight issues. It states that pilot projects are needed on things such as 'Electric Roads' and 'Hydrogen, electric batteries' to scale up these technologies before they can be put to use.

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My results from the assessment state that I am highly resilient, knowing myself and my limitations. That I enjoy facing challenges and addressing events head on is another statement from the skills test. With this I find I have grown in certain areas through facing challenges and being able to bounce back from them well.

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According to my results my personality type is Assertive Defender. This personality type is sensitive but has excellent analytical abilities, well developed people skills and receptive to change and ideas. This coincides with the Skills assessment test I took on personal resilience, which also highlights a skill for being able to adapt to change and receive it well.

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The factory visit supported me with the Sourcing strategy as it enabled me to understand the critical path from a factory/suppliers view. In particular, I learnt how they have such a large part in the process, all the in between areas of making a garment.

Firstly we learnt about audits,  and how important they are to enable the company to work with the supplier to make improvements and not just let them go if something isn’t up to standard. It was also interesting to learn about a suppliers KPI’s as they are different to what we would see as buyers.

The next think we learnt about was how suppliers cost their garments. The costing is made of up of both direct and in-direct costs. Direct costs include Types of fabric, how much fabric, trims, labels, packaging, hangers/over bags, transport costs and Standard Minute Value, which is how long it takes the machinist to make the garment. In-Direct costs are the overheads, such as rent etc. The supplier then adds a profit margin to this cost, but expect it to be eroded by errors or negotiation. The manager also explained that the factory will work with the company to make adjustments to garments to make it cheaper to produce.

We were also given some of the key areas to look for when visiting or researching a factory to work with. Some examples of this include, who does the supplier work with? Will it impact your orders?. Move-ons was another area, we spoke about which will be relevant when doing the range plan for the assignment.

Finally, we were shown a system called Optitex, which is a digital system. It enables, design, pattern cutting, stitching together the garment and trying it on a virtual avatar. This is a great sustainable initiative which helps with speed to market as well. It is enabling more efficient communication between the company and the supplier whilst being more sustainable.

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Project 2 Customer Centric - Reflective Blog

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750 million+ members | Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

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Supplier Group:
We were given the brief as the suppliers and had 3 different unit amounts we could offer for a different price.
We knew the buyer would try and negotiate the price so we needed to find what our ideal proposal would be.
Proposal: Our proposal is to offer the buyers a cheaper fabric alternative, as we will get more volume which is more efficient from us but it will only affect their margin by 1%. So we wanted to go with the option of: 5000 units in 8 weeks, at a price of £7.60.  Our lowest we would be able to go was £7.30.
Sham and Emily went to the meeting from our group and were prepared with most of the options that we thought the buyers would offer. They negotiated well and always counter offered what the buyers were asking for, but were also well prepared if the buyers asked them for something else. The buyers also came well prepared to the meeting knowing exactly what they wanted. The buyers were really strong at listening and understanding everything the supplier said. Both teams remained professional throughout the meeting and no one got over invested. They both came to a compromise on the price and left happy.

Agreed: 5000 units at £7.45 per unit, 99% cotton 1% Polyester with a delivery time of 9 weeks.

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Email written to the supplier following the negotiation discussion of our order. The email confirms all the areas that were agreed in the meeting and gives thanks to the supplier for their continued support of the business.

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WGSN: Buyers Briefing: Women's Key Items S/S 22

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WGSN: Buyers Briefing: Women's Key Items S/S 22

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WGSN Buyers Briefing for key items, was used to confirm the core  and fashion choices in my range. These include the Resort Shirt, Workleisure pant, Vacay maxi and Loose Trench. All of these items feature in my range as core and fashion items and this article on WGSN backs up that choice. I wanted to make sure I had a higher percentage of core and fashion items in my range as & Other Stories tend to stock more fashion items and don't buy into as much trend as other retailers as I found out from my Comp Shop.

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WGSN: Catwalk Analytics S/S22 - Print and Colour

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WGSN: Catwalk Analytics S/S22 - Print and Colour

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WGSN Catwalk Analytics for S/S22, used in my trend report to choose the key colours and then in the range plan for justification. I used this to justify my trend colours in my range plan such as Green and Purple. According to this article Green accounted for 6% of the catwalk colour mix and had increased by 29% on previous seasons. Pastels as a colour group had a 25% share of the catwalk colour mix and was 23% on previous seasons.

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Even though this was only recorded I still felt quite nervous and not very confident, in a normal situation I would prepare for an interview so that is probably why I didn't feel as confident. I was happy to see however, that my perceived emotion was enthusiastic and calm throughout. The results said that it did not detect and smiling so that is something to improve on. I found the key points section underneath each question really helpful and was able to tick some of the boxes as I reviewed my answers and had covered what was expected, so that was positive. Key takeaways from this were to ensure that I am smiling, prepare my answers beforehand and to maintain eye contact.

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Sourcing Strategy Infographic

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Sourcing Strategy Infographic

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Project 3 - Sourcing  Product in an Agile Market Sourcing Stategy Infographic

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Sourcing Strategy

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Sourcing Strategy

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Project 3 - Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Sourcing Strategy

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market- Line Sheet for Range Plan

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market- Line Sheet for Range Plan

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Project 3 - Sourcing Product in an Agile Market Line Sheet

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Biomaterials are the Future of Sustainable Fashion

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Biomaterials are the Future of Sustainable Fashion

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An interesting article focusing on bio-materials and how they are being used in the fashion industry. The article delves into different types of bio-materials, some examples include:
Mycelium Leather ( Mushroom Leather)
Microsilk
Cactus Leather
Tree bark Leather
These are just some examples. Brands using these bio-materials include Stella McCartney, Allbirds and Bolt Threads.

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Biomaterials can offer a solution to one of the world's most polluting industries - fashion. It's responsible for more carbon emissions than international flights and shipping combined, amounting to 10% of all greenhouse gasses emitted globally, according to figures from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The carbon-intensive production of animal hide for leather and plastic for synthetic clothing also play a major role in the pollution caused by the fashion industry. Yet leather is often left out of the sustainability conversation, or the fact that tanning, dying and treating animal hides requires toxic chemicals that are harmful to both the environment and human health.

Fortunately, it's becoming increasingly possible to replace both leather and plastic with alternative materials like mycelium, the thread-like underground root structure of fungi, as well as tree bark and cactus. Similarly, algae-based bioplastics are replacing sequins and other plastic materials.

The Possibilities of Biomaterials

Brands creating products from biomaterials are answering the call for greater sustainability in the fashion industry. While many of these new biomaterials are either prototypes or in the early stages of research and design, and far from mass production, biomaterials are challenging the fashion industry to reimagine ways it can reduce its colossal carbon footprint through alternative fabrics.

MycoWorks: Mycelium "Leather"

Using the magic of mycelium, innovative manufacturers are creating leather-like materials derived from fungi - that is neither plant nor animal - at a lower carbon cost than traditional animal hides or plastics.

MycoWorks has created Reishi - a product that can be treated and manufactured like leather while outperforming leather in strength and matches leather in durability and appearance.

Founders Sophia Wang and Philip Ross developed a process that feeds agricultural waste such as sawdust to Ganoderma, a wood-eating fungus species, to coax it to grow mycelium cells in a dense, intertwined structure. Left alone, this mycelium would form mushrooms, but by controlling temperature, humidity and other environmental factors, the mycelium instead produces sheets of durable yet mailable fibres.

"Reishi is not leather. Reishi is more than leather," said Matt Scullin, chief executive of MycoWorks. "We're sort of limited by the vernacular right now. It feels like leather, it looks like leather, so we talk about it as leather - but it's not leather.

"The leather and plastic-leather industries comprise one percent of global carbon emissions. I think the impact we can make with Reishi alone is actually quite significant."

To this point, French luxury house Hermès has partnered with MycoWorks to reimagine its Victoria shopper bag in a leather alternative using Reishi. After a three-year collaboration design process, the revolutionary bag will be available from the end of this year.

"We could not imagine a better partner than Hermès to present our first object made of fine mycelium," said Scullin. Hermès and MycoWorks share common values of craftsmanship, quality, innovation, and patience. Together, we saw the potential of this incredible material."

Bolt Threads: Microsilk & Mylo

Founded in 2009 by David Breslauer, Dan Widmaier and Ethan Mirsky, Bolt Threads takes organic material like corn sugar or sawdust and feeds it to yeast or fungus, which then convert it into materials used to make Microsilk, a biomaterial that mimics silk spun by spiders. Mylo is Bolt's "un-leather" bioproduct which grown from mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus.

In 2019, Stella McCartney worked with Bold Threads to unveil a prototype, not-for-sale tennis dress made from Bolt's Microsilk, and a prototype of her Falabella bag from Mylo for the Victoria & Albert Museum's "Fashioned From Nature" exhibition. She's been working closely with Bolt's team ever since, forming a consortium with Kering, Adidas, and Lululemon to develop and scale Mylo's development.

Until recently, it wasn't possible to create pieces of Mylo that were large enough to cut into pants, and the early iterations were quite stiff. Now, McCartney has now unveiled the industry's first-ever Mylo garments: a jet-black bustier and utility pants.

"We'd already done a bag, so I wanted to do the ready-to-wear to give a bit more insight into how much you can do with this material, and how it can be swept across the industry to actually replace leather," McCartney explained. "And it's just so much better for the planet".

AllBirds: Plant-Based "Leather"

San Francisco-based footwear brand Allbirds is working on what it claims is "the world's first 100 per cent natural plant-based leather alternative".

Originally developed by material innovations startup Natural Fiber Welding (NFW) under the name Mirum, the plant-based biomaterial is now set to be turned into footwear that will hit shelves by December 2021.

Plant Leather is made from natural rubber derived from the sap of the rubber tree as well as vegetable oil, citric acid and fillers like cork and rice husks plus natural pigments. The biomaterials' carbon impact 40 times lower than animal leather while producing 17 times fewer carbon emissions than plastic-based synthetic leather.

"Mirum is unique in that it is the only plant-based leather replacement on the market that does not contain any petrochemicals," the company said.

Cactus "Leather"

Mexican startup Desserto, recently awarded by PETA for its cruelty-free innovation, has developed a naturally-tanned cactus-based organic material that is virtually identical to animal leather, not to mention a boon for the planet, as their production process uses a species of cacti called prickly pears that requires little water to grow and can easily survive in different climate zones.

Founded in 2019 by Adrian Lopez and Marte Cazarez, Desserto developed an animal-free and recyclable alternative by converting prickly pear cactus into smooth vegan leather without the need for herbicides, pesticides, or even irrigation, and is coloured with organic pigments.

In keeping with the houses' efforts to achieve the sustainable goals listed in the G7 Fashion Pact, Parisian fashion house Karl Lagerfeld, founded by the iconic late German fashion designer and photographer, recently joined forces with model, actress, and activist Amber Valletta to co-create a sustainable 11-piece accessories collection for Spring 2021 using Desserto's material.

"I'm convinced that Karl would have loved it," said Valetta. "I love being able to continue his legacy - chic, bold and innovative. It's exciting to see how thoroughly Karl Lagerfeld is researching sustainable practices and materials. They continue to impress me with their knowledge and commitment to design, and producing in a new and conscious way."

Arsayo: Tree Bark "Leather"

Co-founded by founder brothers Ary and Jonathan Ohayon, French vegan brand Arsayo is dedicated to promoting ethical vegan fashion. Their mission is to provide a sustainable and ethical alternative to exotic skins from animals like crocodiles and snakes.

To that end, they have created Exotic Cork Skin, an eco-friendly substitute created from harvesting cork from trees. The line offers two designs ("Cork-odile" and "Snake Skin Cork") that are featured on sleek backpacks ($249) made with cotton interiors and offered in various sizes.

"This new exclusive alternative is a tribute to the beauty of amazing exotic animals with the respect for their life and our environment," Jonathan Ohayon said. "We want to set an example for the fashion industry, and show that animals shouldn't be harmed for fashion."

The brothers have also founded F.A.K.E. Movement, a global platform dedicated to promoting ethical vegan fashion.

Biomaterials are Used to Make Bioplastics & Carbon Sequesteting Clothes

There are many advantages to bioplastics. Firstly, they degrade far more quickly than petroleum-based plastics, taking three to six months to decompose fully compared to the hundreds of years regular plastic requires. Second, the carbon released by bioplastic as it decomposes is also equal to the carbon absorbed by the organic material it was made from, so the overall impact on the environment is close to zero.

One of the resources used to create bioplastics is algae, which, unlike fossil fuels, is not a limited (and heavily polluting) resource. Algae can capture ten times as much sunlight as terrestrial plants, and it grows fast with some species able to double their biomass within a few hours. It can be converted into powder, before being spun into a fibre.

Canadian-Iranian designer Roya Aghighi has invented a living, biodegradable fabric made from algae. Along with a group of scientists at the University of British Columbia (UBC), she has created Biogarmentry - a biofabricated textile that photosynthesizes, which purifies the air around it.

UBC claims it's the first living and photosynthesizing textile, and has created a sheer, cloak-like garment from the material.

"Both fully compostable and more importantly, while living, the material will work to purify the air through photosynthesis," said Aghighi on her website. "Since the life cycle of the living photosynthetic textile is directly dependent on how it is taken care of, the work challenges our current relationship to clothing, while acting as a catalyst for behavioural change."

New York-based designer Charlotte McCurdy, a fellow at Rhode Island School of Design has also looked into algae and its potential to sequester carbon. She has created a carbon-negative raincoat made from a plastic-like material made of marine algae and other biodegradable biomaterials.

"The point is not to make a plastic out of algae," McCurdy said at a talk organized by New York City's New Museum. "The point is to sequester carbon, and it matters how we do that and how those systems scale."

McCurdy is a member of One X One, an initiative that combines style and science to develop sustainable fashion. She recently partnered with designer Phillip Lim to create a seagreen petroleum-free dress, which represents the deconstruction and reconstruction of marine ecosystems. The sequins are made from algae and heat is applied to bind the algae together and form the bioplastic. This is then poured into moulds which become sheets. Once cooled, the sheets of bioplastic are finally cut into sequins.

The dress' colour comes from dyes derived from organic material. The sequins are attached to a fishing net-like mesh created from a seaweed and bamboo fibre called SeaCell, created by natural textile suppliers PYRATEX. Finally, the garment is adorned with mother of pearl, resulting in a stunning statement of sustainable fashion, as eco-friendly as it is striking.

As promising and forward-thinking as these fashion initiatives are, it will take an adjustment of infrastructure to make sure the environment feels the full benefit of fashion made from biomaterials. Changing our relationship with clothing, from one of neglectful fast-fashion consumption to one that involves living clothes made from sustainable biomaterials is the future of fashion.
Stay with The Last Fashion Bible for the latest news and innovations in sustainable fashion. Main image credit: AllBirds
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Biomaterials are the Future of Sustainable Fashion

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Biomaterials can offer a solution to one of the world's most polluting industries - fashion. It's responsible for more carbon emissions than international flights and shipping combined, amounting to 10% of all greenhouse gasses emitted globally, according to figures from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

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Eco-Vero is a sustainable Viscose manufacturer. It is sourced from wood that is natural and renewable and comes from certified sources, the process also has a 50% lower water impact than normal Viscose. Another key fact is that the process uses 50% less carbon emissions than the usual processes which helps in combating climate change. This is a manufacturer that & Other Stories already use in their garments.

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Wood - our natural and renewable raw material, wood and pulp, comes from certified and controlled sources derived from sustainably managed forests. The non-profit environmental protection organization Canopy has consistently ranked Lenzing among the top viscose producers worldwide for our sustainable wood and pulp sourcing practices.

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LENZING™ ECOVERO™: Sustainable Viscose Fibers For Fabrics

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LENZING™ ECOVERO™ is a well recognized viscose fibers brand that practices eco responsible production for a cleaner and sustainable environment. Learn more.

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GOTS is a leading textile standard that is recognised across the world. The ability to have one common standard enables manufacturers to export fabrics and garments with one certification that is accepted in all major markets. The key features of this certification include: Organic Fibres, Ecological and Social Criteria and Third Party Certification. Lots of brand across the fashion industry use this certification.

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GOTS is the worldwide leading textile processing standard for organic fibres, including ecological and social criteria, backed up by independent certification of the entire textile supply chain.

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& Other Stories store locator helped me when planning the store allocation for my range. & Other stories only have 14 stores in the UK. From this I decided, to choose 3flagship stores across the country for my Grade A stores, these include Oxford Street, Liverpool and Edinburgh. The rest of the stores I chose as my Grade B stores and these were the rest of the city stores. I decided to add some Online Exclusives into my range as this is something that the brand already have in place.

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Authentication Form

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Project 3: Sourcing Product in an Agile Market - Authentication Form

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Project 3 - Sourcing Product in Agile Market Authentication Form

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Mckinsey Article on Bangladesh Garment Industry

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Mckinsey Article on Bangladesh Garment Industry

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This article discusses in detail Bangladesh's garment industry. From this article I found out about some sustainable initiatives that are being undertaken in Bangladesh, including the Circular Fashion Partnership. It is also discusses how more than 1500 Bangladeshi companies are now certified by the Global Organic Textiles Standard, which is the second highest country in the world. Another interesting fact was that Bangladesh now has more green factories than any other country in the world.

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As Bangladesh celebrates 50 years of independence, global attention is focused on the remarkable economic and social progress the country has achieved in recent decades. Even with the setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the South Asian nation is on track to become a middle-income country within the next few years.

The ready-made garment (RMG) industry is a mainstay of this economic success story: Bangladesh is today one of the world's largest garment exporters, with the RMG sector accounting for 84 percent of Bangladesh's exports. This comes on the back of the sector's rapid growth and modernization over the past decade-as well as the strides it has made in improving conditions for the country's approximately four million garment workers.

However, the pandemic has stalled the sector's progress at a crucial moment, just as global shifts in fashion sourcing threaten Bangladesh's position in industry supply chains.

Ten years ago, in 2011, we published our report, Bangladesh's Ready-made Garments Landscape: The Challenge of Growth, for which we had collaborated with the Bangladesh German Chamber of Commerce and Industry. With this article we want to take stock of Bangladesh's RMG sector-examining its growth to date, highlighting the big challenges it has navigated since then, and suggesting the transformative steps that are needed if the sector is to maintain and renew its economic vibrancy in the decade ahead. To support this stocktaking we have conducted a series of interviews with sourcing executives of leading global fashion brands and retailers.

From tragedy to transformation: Looking back at a decade of growth

The transformation of Bangladesh's RMG sector over the past decade was catalyzed, in part, by a series of workplace tragedies that took the lives of more than 1,000 garment workers and made headlines around the world. The 2012 Tazreen factory fire and the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse highlighted massive problems in working conditions, led some international buyers to stop sourcing from Bangladesh, and prompted the United States to withdraw its preferential tariff agreement.

Today, Bangladesh's RMG sector is a frontrunner in transparency regarding factory safety and value-chain responsibility, thanks to initiatives launched in the aftermath of the disasters-including the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, and the RMG Sustainability Council. These measures led to the closure of hundreds of unsafe, bottom-tier factories and the scaling-up of remediation activities in many others.

These steps helped restore Bangladesh's attractiveness in the global apparel-sourcing market, leading to a decade of rapid growth. Ten years ago we forecasted a growth of 7 to 9 percent. Indeed RMG exports from Bangladesh more than doubled, from $14.6 billion in 2011 to $33.1 billion in 2019-a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent. (It is worth noting that this growth was within the range we forecast in our 2011 report, a collaboration with the Bangladesh German Chamber of Commerce and Industry.) Over this period, Bangladesh's RMG industry increased its share of global garment exports from 4.7 to 6.7 percent. This is within the range we forecasted in our report, however it also shows that the country has not captured the full potential we had foreseen ten years ago.

Our regular surveys of chief procurement officers (CPOs) in the fashion industry indicate that Bangladesh's attractiveness as an apparel-sourcing destination remains potent-yet the country has faced increasing competition in recent years, which could compound the challenges of the pandemic. Although our 2019 CPO survey pointed to Bangladesh as the top global sourcing hotspot, Vietnam was close behind, and was the preferred sourcing country among US executives. Although comparable data for global exports in 2020 has not yet been published by the World Trade Organization, data from European and US imports indicate that Vietnam likely overtook Bangladesh in 2020-pushing Bangladesh's RMG industry out of its position as the second-largest garment-exporting country in the world after China.

Tackling the big challenges

A key strategy for the sector's growth over the past decade has been to diversify customer countries and move to more complex products and value-added services. Bangladesh's RMG sector has made progress in broadening its customer portfolio to manage risk and adapt to changing demand patterns in the global fashion market. However, Europe (62 percent of export value) and the US (18 percent of export value) remain Bangladesh's RMG industry's leading customer markets, although dependency on the US has decreased. There is room to increase exports to nontraditional markets, particularly as traditional markets are showing lower growth in apparel retail sales.

Several sourcing executives we spoke to for this article highlighted the progress that Bangladesh's RMG sector is making in diversifying and upgrading its product offerings. For instance, there is now greater capacity to produce garments made from synthetic fibers; manufacture more complex products such as outerwear, tailored items, and lingerie; and provide new washes, prints, and laser finishings. Entry into these new segments has been supported by the changing rules of origin for preferential trade with the EU, allowing for the use of imported fabrics. There also has been some increase in vertical integration of the supply chain, with the result that more suppliers are now able to offer lead times below the standard 90 days.

The country's RMG sector is by no means homogenous, however. Bangladesh's advanced manufacturers are characterized by a high degree of entrepreneurship and strategic management; these firms have made investments in productivity improvement, digitization, automation, and sustainability, and they operate according to international best practices. In contrast, the small operators that make up the majority of the market typically focus on CMT; they tend to lack financial security and lag in management capability, and have also been hit hardest by the pandemic.

Encouragingly, sourcing executives of leading global apparel brands and retailers have partnered with their Bangladeshi suppliers, helping them to improve efficiency and sustainability.

A second major challenge facing the sector has been worker empowerment and the gender gap. Digitization of wage payment has increased, and there have been marked improvements in employment rights. Though the gender gap remains an issue, when it comes to opportunities for career progression from entry level. There is greater focus on gender diversity, as well as opportunities for upskilling and career progression today. However, progress has been slow, and COVID-19 has highlighted, and perhaps exacerbated, the precarious position of many Bangladeshi apparel workers.

Turning to compliance, factory and occupational safety, and transparency, the Bangladesh garment sector has shown enormous improvement. Factory buildings not only have become safer, Bangladesh now has more green garment factories than any other country, although these factories' share of the country's apparel exports remains low.

The sector's participation in new initiatives regarding climate change and circularity have advanced the sustainability agenda, for example through the Circular Fashion Partnership, a multi-stakeholder initiative aiming to scale up recycling of production waste. Furthermore, more than 1,500 Bangladeshi companies are certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard, the second highest number in any country in the world.

Finally, infrastructure remains one of the biggest issues facing the RMG sector. For its apparel industry to prosper in the future, Bangladesh will need to strengthen transport, energy, and digitization infrastructure.

In the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, Bangladesh dropped from 79 in 2010 to 100 in 2018 in the overall ranking. By comparison, Vietnam improved its ranking from 53 to 39 over the same period. Several major infrastructure projects that are under development could significantly improve Bangladesh's position. These include the Padma bridge, scheduled to open in 2021; and Bangladesh's first deep-sea port, the Matabari development, which is expected to be functional by 2025, complete with a new container terminal.

Looking ahead: Transforming in a time of change

Bangladesh's garment sector has every prospect of remaining one of the world's largest RMG manufacturers, and continuing its impressive story of growth and improvement. However, the country's apparel industry is facing headwinds, and will need to take decisive action in several areas if it is to prosper. It will need to rise to the challenges of competing without preferential trade access; meeting decreased demand from traditional customer markets; and making a fundamental shift toward a demand-driven and more sustainable sourcing model.

Some of the international buyers we spoke to believe the industry is not moving fast enough in this direction. Others are more positive: they feel that, given the resilience and adaptability Bangladesh's manufacturers have shown in the past, the RMG industry will be able to navigate the necessary transformation, though structural changes will be inevitable.

As Bangladesh graduates from least-developed to middle-income country status in the next few years, preferential access to European and other markets is up for negotiation. Additional tariffs would be seriously disruptive for the RMG sector, but levelling the playing field with competing markets could also trigger a much-needed focus on productivity, as well as investment in digitization, automation, and sustainability.

Some global executives are reducing sourcing from Bangladesh, as their sourcing volume reaches a tipping point in their dependency and supply-chain risk on the country (which is further heightened by the pandemic), and owing to loss of competitiveness in some product categories. There is also an increased focus on nearshoring for greater flexibility and speed. That said, Bangladesh's larger and more advanced suppliers may benefit from advances in flexibility, productivity, digitization, environmental sustainability, worker welfare, and innovation. One sourcing executive told us: "Speed is becoming more important, but only a minority of suppliers in Bangladesh understand that." If they are to remain competitive, many suppliers will need to invest in upskilling, vertical integration, digitization, and automation to unlock speed and transparency.

Sustainability, too, is becoming ever more important, with increasing consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, and concerns about climate change and social justice. In 2020, Bangladesh ranked only 87 out of 115 countries in the World Economic Forum's Energy Transition Index; transforming the Bangladesh RMG sector into a climate-neutral industry will be a major challenge, requiring enormous investment into renewable energy and the grid.

There will also be regulatory changes to contend with, especially in the EU. Suppliers will need to ramp up R&D and innovation: to drive product upgrading and diversification in areas such as technical materials and functional innovation; and to pursue sustainability by focusing on circularity, innovative fibers, and operational improvements.

In our past sourcing surveys, consolidation towards more advanced suppliers to deliver on flexibility and sustainability gained traction.

Consolidation of Bangladesh-owned factories has been accelerated by COVID-19 (Exhibit 3), which has heightened the polarization of progressive suppliers and small enterprises-impacting the capacity of the whole industry to transform.

Some sourcing executives mentioned a shift of sourcing volumes towards foreign-owned factories in Bangladesh, especially for more complex or technical products and synthetics. They are also looking for suppliers who continuously invest in sustainability, worker welfare, and transparency.

Bangladesh's RMG sector has achieved impressive growth and transformation over the past decade, overcoming significant obstacles along the way. Today, however, it faces a new set of challenges, amid a global pandemic and a shifting global apparel-sourcing market. In the years ahead, the industry will need to embrace a more holistic transformation, in partnership with manufacturers, international buyers, worker representatives, the government, and other stakeholders.

As international buyers navigate the rapidly changing environment, they are tasked to work with more advanced suppliers to develop demand-driven, more sustainable supply chains. To do so, they will need to build deeper, truly strategic partnerships, while pushing to overcome the past decades' deflationary dynamics in global apparel retail markets.

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What's next for Bangladesh's garment industry, after a decade of growth?

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Pandemic pressure and shifts in global markets have brought stiff challenges to the garment industry in Bangladesh. The sector will need to innovate, upgrade, and diversify, investing in flexibility, sustainability, worker welfare, and infrastructure.

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The colour wheel for & Other Stories current product mix, taken from Edited. This what I used to plan the colours for my range. From the colour wheel I could see that & Other Stories have a large mix of black and neutrals colours so I made sure these were most heavily featured in my range. The next largest mixes were green, blue, pink and purple which are also key colours in my range, so I made sure to have an equal mix of these.