Open Access Research Article

Effectiveness of Fashion Industry in Post Pandemic World

Rajeev Kumar*

Amity School of Fashion Technology, India

Corresponding Author

Received Date: August 15, 2020;  Published Date: September 08, 2020

Abstract

The current health crisis has made many things “you took for granted” come to a halt, words of fashion designers, adding how one needs to re-look and re-imagine things in the future. Virtual shopping platform launched for those who would like to shop from the comfort and safety of their homes. This paper attempt to a new initiative, the impact of the pandemic on the industry, and also suggests ways to bounce back.

Keywords: COVID-19; Pandemic; Innovation; Sustainability; Re-look; Re-imagine; Virtual shopping

Introduction

COVID-19 has put the apparel, footwear, and textile industry’s sustainability transformations on pause, as businesses reel in light of this pandemic. As indicated by the International Monetary Fund, 2020 is probably going to be the most exceedingly terrible year for the worldwide economy since the Great Depression. Fashion executives and business pioneers are currently focusing on crisis management and contingency planning but must shift towards re-imagining our industry altogether. How dramatic shifts in the global economy and consumer behavior in the post-corona virus world impact fashion and what can be done to rewire a fashion system that is no longer working?

Even before the corona virus disrupted financial markets, upended supply chains and crushed consumer demand across the global economy, fashion industry leaders were not optimistic about 2020. The industry was already “On High Alert” and administrators communicated cynicism over all geographies and value focuses in our yearly report, The State of Fashion 2020, released late last year. But fast forward a couple of months and design’s standpoints have gotten significantly and out of nowhere more depressing. As an industry, we are now on red alert.

Pandemics have had a deep impact on fashion and the art of dressing up. Sounds hard to believe. Well, and then consider the fact that even as the world struggles to cope with Covid-19, masks have been added to most wardrobes. And gloves seem next on the list. No, we are not being flippant. This isn’t the first time when that a sickness or disease has affected the manner in which we dress. Also, it won’t be the last. Throughout recent centuries, individuals have changed closets to adapt to ailment and diseases, from hood to trims to shoes.

The Crisis is Influencing Our Day by Day Lives, Imparting Nervousness, and Vulnerability in The Brains of Almost Everybody

This unforeseeable philanthropic and money related emergency has rendered recently arranged techniques for 2020 excess, leaving design organizations uncovered or rudderless as their pioneers stand up to a disorientating future and defenseless specialists face difficulty and desperation. With this uncommon Corona virus Update to The State of Fashion 2020, a position has taken on what our “new ordinary” will look like in the result of this dark swan occasion, analyzing surveys, data and expert interviews to provide insight for fashion professionals as they embark on the 12- to 18- month period after the dust settles.

It is in the developing world, where healthcare systems are often inadequate and poverty is rife, that people will be hit the hardest. For laborers in ease sourcing and style fabricating center points, for example, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Honduras, and Ethiopia, expanded times of joblessness will mean craving and infection.

The interconnectedness of the industry is making it harder for businesses to plan ahead. Similarly, as China crawled through recuperation, episodes compounded in Europe and the US. In any case, it is in the creating scene, where human services frameworks are frequently lacking and neediness is overflowing, that individuals will be hit the hardest. For laborers in minimal effort sourcing and style fabricating center points, for example, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Honduras, and Ethiopia, broadened times of joblessness will mean appetite and infection.

Despite the Fact that the Span and Extreme Seriousness of the Pandemic Stays Obscure, It Is Obvious that the Fashion Industry is Exactly toward the Start of its Battle.

The crises are influencing our day by day lives, imparting tension, and vulnerability in the brains of nearly everybody. Without a doubt, buyer cynicism about the economy is across the board, with 75 percent of customers in the US and Europe accepting that their money related circumstance will be affected adversely for over two months. In spite of the fact that the length and extreme seriousness of the pandemic stays obscure, it is clear that the style of business is exactly toward the start of its battle. By making blows both flexibly and request, the pandemic has prepared an ideal tempest for the business: a profoundly incorporated worldwide gracefully chain implies organizations have been under monstrous strain as they attempted to oversee emergencies on various fronts as lockdowns were forced in fast progression ending producing in China first, at that point Italy, trailed by nations somewhere else around the globe. A stop on spending is exasperating the gracefully side emergency. Across the board store terminations for an industry dependent on disconnected channels, combined with customer intuition to needs fundamental over optional products, hit brands’ primary concerns, and drained money saves. Indeed, even online deals have declined 5 to 20 percent across Europe, 30 to 40 percent in the US, and 15 to 25 percent in China.

The corona virus additionally presents a design with an opportunity to reset and totally reshape the industry’s value chain also a chance to reevaluate the qualities by which we measure our activities.

Presently, the subsequent “isolate of utilization” could quicken a portion of these shopper shifts, for example, a developing hatred toward squander delivering plans of action and increased desires for reason driven practical activity. In the meantime a portion of the movements we will observer in the style framework, for example, the advanced advance change, in-season retail, season less structure and the decrease of discount are for the most part an increasing speed of the inescapable things that would have happened further not far off if the pandemic had not helped them gain speed and desperation now. The corona virus likewise presents style with an opportunity to reset and totally reshape the business’ worth chain also a chance to reconsider the qualities by which we measure our activities. We anticipate that topics of computerized speeding up, limiting, industry union, and corporate advancement will be organized once the quick emergency dies down. Significantly in the wake of seeing influxes of bankruptcies, industry pioneers should get settled with vulnerability and increase their future-sealing endeavors as the potential for additional flare-ups and lockdowns loom.

Five Themes from the Corona Virus Update

Global Economy

Survival instincts: Recuperation from the pandemic will correspond with a recessionary market, convincing style players to increase versatility arranging and adjust their working models. Organizations enduring the quick emergency will have made strong and fast intercessions to balance out their center business before searching out new markets, vital chances, and future pockets of development in a worldwide manner industry experiencing a sensational change.

30 Percentage of design industry workers who see their organization’s anticipating recuperation post crisis reaction as inadequate.

Rebate mindset: As profound limiting sicknesses retailers for the rest of 2020, 10 years in length develop of deal shopping society will be exacerbated by an ascent in hostile to industrialism, an excess in stock, and destitute purchasers hoping to exchange down or go to off-value channels. To arrive at progressively economical and frustrated purchasers, brands must discover innovative approaches to recapture worth and reevaluate their more extensive business strategic.

56 Percentage of customers who said uncommon advancements were a significant factor when looking for garments in the month paving the way to 29 March 2020.

Digital escalation: Social distancing has featured the significance of advanced channels like never before and lockdowns have raised digital as an earnest need over the whole value chain, however, except if organizations scale up and reinforce their advanced abilities in the recuperation period of the emergency, they will endure in the more extended term. Customers will keep on requesting more in this space and brands must act quickly to convey.

>70% Year-on-year increment in live gushing on Chinese online business site Taobao since the outbreak of Covid-19

Darwinian shakeout: The emergency will shake out the powerless, encourage the solid, and quicken the decrease of organizations that were at that point battling before the pandemic, prompting enormous floods of solidification, M&A action, and bankruptcies. To make sure about their future, organizations must adjust to the new market condition by assessing divestment and securing chances to fortify their center and catch whitespaces that rise up out of the reshuffle.

80% Percentage of fashion companies who might be in trouble after more than 2 months of store closure.

Innovation imperative: To adapt to new limitations, relieve the harming effect of the pandemic and adjust to monetary and buyer shifts, organizations must present new instruments and methodologies over the worth chain to future-proof their plans of action. Fashion players must saddle these advancements and scale up those that work so as to make radical and suffering changes to their associations and to the more extensive industry after the residue settles.

90% Percentage of fashion industry workers that see their organization’s making arrangements for post-emergency recuperation as insufficient.

Fashion’s Third Coming: 12 Predictions for Post- Pandemic Style

The next major fashion shows will be a live online event, without the usual celebrities, front row regulars and industry wannabes [1].

The last two times there was a move in style and the manner in which we shopped and dressed was after the first and afterward the Second World War. The current wellbeing pandemic will be the world’s third significant effect on design. Following are the expectations:

Fashion influencers will change

The pandemic is as of now compelling fashion influencers to alter their substance. Before long, there will be all the more genuine individuals as influencers, not famous people, socialites, or excessively photograph shopped and made up self-declared fashionistas. Online photographs frequently look great since experts make them look that way. That is impractical with social removing. Style related posts in this manner will be all the more genuine, basic, and sensible. The curated stylish individuals have energized against might gradually vanish and improve.

New shopping patterns will emerge

As stores and shopping centers have been closed, numerous brands will discover operational costs taking off and benefits winding up in a sorry situation. It will be some time before individuals will feel good shopping in shut spots, utilizing basic zones, lifts, and elevators. Accordingly, more brands should go on the web or grow their online reaches to guarantee their product moves off the distribution center racks. The web-based business wave and live spilling should at last consolidation, making both web-based shopping and social associations intuitive, experiential, and progressively. Online fashion shopping and the substance will, in this manner, become all the more captivating, vivid, and social.

AI and tech will change shopping

Inadequately prepared and impartial in-store beauticians and shopping aides will, at last, be supplanted by PCs and applications that will assist you with assembling a look or complete a buy. There are likewise murmurs of stores going ‘savvy’ with voice orders, just as bigger retailers utilizing guides to explore their floors and shows. This implies the shopping experience will have a considerably less human interface and individual collaborations.

Local will rule, not global

Imports have been hit and this may just be a good thing. The more local designers, brands and tailors you buy, endorse or use, the better, because the country’s economy will revive faster. This may give a truly necessary lift to natively constructed, little, medium, new, or even enormous and set up Indian brands. With limitations, we are probably going to see less mass-created garments and accessories. Indian fabrics will be looked for after and utilized broadly in the coming months and years.

Luxury brands will collapse

The bubble was going to burst anyway, and the pandemic will ensure it does. Expect extravagance brands to go delayed on new dispatches, begin downsizing activities and closing stores. Estimate an extraordinary decrease in costs, which implies high road brands, may simply turn out to be progressively reasonable to the majority. First of all, spending will be on need and not extravagance. Individuals will pick amount over quality and return to wearing garments that are sans whine (simple to wash), sans germ (hostile to bacterial fabric will become mainline), solid (which keeps going longer), and progressively reasonable (or low maintenance).

Recycling is now fashionable

To begin with, don’t anticipate that new collections should change as every now and again or be as broad as they were. Industrial facilities are closed, so creation cut off times will be remembered fondly. On the off chance that you are fixated on changing your looks, figure out how to blend, coordinate, and reuse. During the lockdown or on the following long end of the week, put forth the attempt to lay all your garments and frill out and see what can be assembled stylishly. It’s entirely fine to rehash your garments since it lessens your carbon impression as well as in light of the fact that it causes you to spend less. Plans themselves are probably going to turn out to be increasingly fundamental and moderate. Expect to see not so much bling but rather more simple clothing.

Ready to wear will beat custom made

Both brands and fashioners should embrace quicker procedures to sell and produce pieces of clothing and frill rapidly and beneficially. Ready to move structures, maybe made to gauge for a variety of body types, will be the most grounded pattern for the following not many years. Fashioners and brands should guarantee they make garments that fit well for practically all forms and sizes, without burning through their customers’ and their own time and cash.

Fashion professionals are in for a reality check

Enormous spending plans on a solitary shoot or show will not, at this point be plausible or conceivable, influencing picture takers, models, and hair, cosmetics, styling, and creative faculty. The individuals what freelance’ s identity is as of now managing delayed and dropped work and up and coming undertakings on inconclusive hold. Area, goal, and open-air shoots will be supplanted by basic studio shoots, so get ready for style spreads to appear as though catalog pictures.

Trade fairs and runway shows will be irrelevant

Practically all the significant public exhibitions and fashion weeks have been dropped or deferred. This converts into a significant change in the yearly style schedule. Before long design shows will get unimportant and have constrained or no patrons. Runway fabulousness is probably aware it will be dead. The following significant designs show will be a live online occasion, without the typical famous people, first column regulars, and industry wannabes. No more pre-and post-show parties or long fashion weeks. Some fashion weeks will just not occur or be downsized to turn out to be more exchange and industry-specific shows.

There will be sales, discounts and special offers

To endure, brands and designers are probably going to receive forceful markdown approaches which, in any event in the medium term, could hurt the extravagance situating of brands that didn’t have a concession model. Garments and adornments, even marked ones, will all turn out to be progressively open and reasonable.

Medicinal services will beat beautifying agents

Major perfume, makeup and grooming brands just have begun fabricating hand sanitizers and other individual consideration items. So, expect new item dispatches to accompany purifying and hostile to bacterial properties. This will incorporate new definitions for antiperspirants, bath powders, cleansers, shampoos, cosmetics, hair care, skincare and face, and body washes. Individual cleanliness items are probably going to rule store racks and your dressers for some time. Items that are normal and natural will be favored over those that aren’t. The buyer is going to begin taking a gander at the wellbeing and cleanliness advantages of the items they purchase.

Wellness will be the new buzzword

The craving to stay safe will be more grounded than at any other time. Anticipate a flood in close to home preparing for wellness. The vibe great and wellbeing factor from moving methods more individuals will go to a private or little gathering to move classes to feel positive just as revive and energize both the brain and body. Essentially, options like yoga, contemplation, and treatments will be progressively looked for after. There will likewise be a tremendous interest for home back rubs and treatments just as private arrangements for even the most fundamental prepping needs – facials, eyebrows, waxing, hairstyles, and shaving. Open and shared spaces like salons, pools, and saunas will be avoidable at least for the short and medium-term.

The Trend Forecast

Fashion and grooming trends are determined from factors and data including social and economic conditions, news, the environment and overall awareness. The pandemic has thrown up the following predictions [2]:

1. A subtle color palette: Expect the arrival of pastels for daywear. For ladies, pale peach, pink, lemon, and mint green for the afternoon and gem tone for the evening. White, sky blue and dim for men, with naval force blue and beige for formal and business wear.

2. Minimalism: Embroidery will become luxury and clothes will be simpler. People will shift to solids over prints and patterns. Prints will go digital with geometric patterns replacing floral altogether.

3. Fitted shape and form: Expect a structured silhouette for both menswear and women’s wear, with an accentuation on a cozy or tight fold over fit. Fastens or zip on work, easygoing, and leisurewear. Full sleeve over short sleeves fit for shirts and tops.

4. Back to the basics: Accessories will turn into an extravagance, to wear less Jewelry, moderate watches, and footwear that is tough. The result: wear one unmistakable adornment. Wedding and merry wear will return to an increasingly great and vintage look and feel.

5. Clinical look: Makeup will become as normal as could be expected under the circumstances. A shading re-colored mouth and eyeliner for ladies; unbiased or skin-hued nail clean on short nails with positively no nail workmanship. Hairdos will be flawless – with hair either tied up or set up into the clouds. Normal or no hair shading rather than an accentuation on hair and healthy skin. For men, the clean-shaven look is back. By and large, the look will be less emotional or captivating.

Excerpts

The biggest impact Corona virus has affected the fashion industry in a huge way

The greatest effect is mental, no matter how you look at it or businesses, workers how would we obtain stuff going ahead; the vulnerability has made everybody hazard unwilling. Be that as it may, to maintain a business you need to face challenges. Be that as it may if there is a component of dread due to the vulnerability around the pandemic; things like the feeling of the purchaser, would individuals like to go out, what the number of garments you make, how would you keep your representatives utilized; it influences everybody in the flexible chain. What’s more, with the income arriving at a total halt, how would you set cash back into the business? There is no course of events for this. That makes you frightful of things to come and it’s something we as a whole need to address the mental effect of your monetary and mental prosperity without knowing what’s on the horizon [3].

Changes are required for the fashion industry to retaliate

The fashion industry should make many rather large changes, some of which will accompany a type of self-reflection. The abundance should be cut; there was such a large amount of attempting to offer 10 things to the buyer regardless of whether they need just two, promoting out items through deals, propelling 16 assortments every year or in any event, and thinking, how about we have such huge numbers of style a long time in one nation. Every one of these cycles and patterns, garments being substantially more costly and unrestrained, we should re-take a gander at the part our ravenousness plays in this biological system.

Do we truly need and need this much stuff, and how would we merge the two? We have to reconsider and alter out a ton of the commotion, which will be critical to the business that is confronting its most troublesome occasions. How we sift through this industry to make space for good, legit, true names with uprightness that have direction versus simply making business as the usual stuff.

Initiative steps towards the change face of the industry in the wake of the pandemic. Will physical stores witness much lower footfall for a long time to come, or perhaps even be rendered useless?

Well, the short answer is yes, at least for the foreseeable future till things change. Perhaps there will be a vaccine, perhaps people will be so fed up of living life like this with their hands tied behind their backs that in a way they sort of jump back, become more resilient; it’s contingent upon so many factors. But, in the long run, I don’t think the experience of a physical store can really be replaced by online shopping. For now, we are trying to do the most we can to instill a sense of security and safety and make sure that our customers feel that they can still shop even if they are not comfortable coming to a physical store. The human soul tends to bob back and be stronger than we give it acknowledgment for.

While providing a 360-degree view of the product to the customer, many still believe in touching and feeling the fabric/trying it out before paying a certain amount. Such a model will be successful in the long run?

All things considered, the facts confirm that nothing can supplant contacting a fabric/textile or piece of clothing and giving it a shot or the experience of setting off to a store, smelling the scent, tuning in to the music, the lighting. In any case, web-based shopping works for many individuals; it is advantageous as individuals from over the world might not approach physical stores as you just have such a large number of. So, despite the fact that you can’t encounter it in our stores, you can in any case attempt the piece of clothing. Obviously, the perfect circumstance is individuals step out, go out on the town to shop, make an evening of it, however, given the requirements, this is actually all the better we can do.

The Fashion Design Council of India or FDCI has as of late declared a ‘computerized style seven day stretch of India’. Will physical fashion shows/occasions might be a relic of days gone by?

Fashion weeks and shows have had more promising times. Regardless, it’s the ideal opportunity for them to be refreshed. Pander to a couple of select individuals that are welcome to see it, and such that isn’t equitable. Out of the blue, it had lost a smidgen of its appeal. Additionally, if these proceeds for the following two years and individuals are dubious about being in jam-packed spaces, at that point this plainly won’t work. Need to discover an arrangement that is available to a great many people, maybe from the protection of their homes, live gushing. Thus, on the off chance that design week for stockiest to get more business, for instance, at that point maybe there is an alternate method to contact them, and a style week isn’t the best approach to do it any longer. So, these things should be 100 percent rethought [4].

Biggest lockdown lesson

Key learning in the entirety of this simply needs to kick back and consider all the things underestimated. Not just the huge things, even only the seemingly insignificant details like sitting with all the young ladies from with group and having a lunch break or interfacing with ace and tailors. All these seemingly insignificant details currently appear as though such an overwhelming undertaking is everything disinfected, meeting individuals and giving them an embrace, sitting in cafés, and heading out to shows and cinemas; every last bit of it appears to be incomprehensible at the present time. There’s this dread of attempting to discover a foe can’t see. Little things like strolling in the city and grinning at a total outsider and them grinning back now everybody is wearing a cover it just appears such an unfriendly spot. It doesn’t appear to be an open, warm, inviting world at the present time. This equitable gives me a ton of something worth mulling over

There is that strain to work inside a framework. It reexamines how to function. It never truly appeared at design weeks at any rate and, obviously, we don’t complete 16 assortments and make season-less garments, so in that sense, we are on top of things, yet we might want significantly more to get things done at own time, speed and volume. Envision when you began the name to make some lovely garments when something propelled [5].

The fashion industry works in an affectionate manner that incorporates fabric acquisition, karigars, and fashioners. Will it continue as before later on as well?

For a long time to come, everything will change. Individuals aren’t simply going to bounce on a plane and proceed to sit with the weaver since they couldn’t comprehend something that you were attempting to disclose to them or for relationship-building. Flexible chains will be interfered with; things are going to take longer. We were so hyper-associated prior. Be that as it may, don’t think about this as a ceaseless story. We will have the option to get from where we left. We simply need to attempt to make sense of how to get the pieces and proceed onward.

The pandemic has also brought about a fashion trend masks so much so like they are now being used to make a fashion statement. Safety is more important than the fashion aspect of it.

Fashion is always evolving. What trends coming out of the pandemic?

The thing about trends is that they are trends, they are cyclical, flippant, fleeting, so I don’t know really. I hear a lot of talk about how clothes will become more minimal, practical, artisanal, people will focus more on how to source locally and it would be a good thing. In season-less, timeless clothes that don’t follow fashion cycles, trends and color forecasts and don’t think that anybody should care about such things. It just adds to the messiness. We should hold our covetousness under tight restraints and be aware of what, how, and why we produce. Those are the greatest changes that will occur [6].

Conclusion

Indeed, even before the COVID-19 crisis, sustainability did not come easily for many companies in fashion. But to survive this pandemic and emerge stronger, leaders in apparel, footwear, and textiles must incorporate sustainability within stabilization and new growth strategies, rather than retreat from commitments. The post-COVID consumer will prioritize trust and purpose and will likely evaluate companies based on how they acted during and after the crisis. Transparency will be highly relevant for all stakeholders. Sustainability will be enabled by technology and can be leveraged to drive innovation across design, supply chain management, and new business models. Scale, integration, and industry agility will demand collaboration and standardization. This crisis is a rare chance to accelerate and build on collective efforts. Companies that have not yet prioritized sustainability must use this moment to transition, as a way to establish competitive advantage in a recovering economy with refreshed consumer priorities. For those further along on the journey, now is the time to safeguard progress, maintain essential practices, and recommit to central goals. And for the trailblazers who encourage collaboration and lead industrywide sustainability initiatives, their vision and action will hasten transformation within the entire sector. While the road ahead is not yet clear and open inquiries stay as governments and society explores the pandemic, a significant exercise of the COVID-19 period will be that wellbeing, security, and thriving are naturally aggregate interests instead of individual ones. And the apparel, footwear, textile, and fashion industries are no different. It won’t be easy to manage a once-in-a-generation economic crisis while taking aggressive action on behalf of environmental and social concerns. But leaders who successfully weave sustainability into their business strategies will leave a lasting legacy: that of a rebuilt and more sustainable fashion industry [7,8].

Acknowledgement

None.

Conflict of Interest

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

References

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  3. (2020) Fashion trends during and post-pandemic: What is and will be trending?
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  6. Neustaeter B (2020) What post-pandemic fashion may look like.
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  8. Sharma S (2020) Payal Khandwala: Post-pandemic, the fashion industry must edit the excess, be more mindful.
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