THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD FASHION INDUSTRY IN 20 YEARS HAEGEON KANG M2DI
INTRODUCTION
F
ashion reflects everything. It is a mirror of the world. In other words, fashion has been influenced by society, economics, art, religion and so on. Fashion became an industry after the Industrial Revolution. With the development of new technologies at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the sewing machine and the factory system of production and today it has become an international industry through globalization. Fashion is also a part of history which repeats itself, and this aspect allows people to predict the future of fashion. In 2012, the world’s biggest environmental issues center around climate change and increasing pollution because environmental damage is threatening all of the world's civilizations, though people are suffering from the world-wide recession which is shifting the geographic center of the global economy. Then, how will the future of fashion look in the coming decades considering all these issues? Although, it is very difficult to predict the future these days, it is also known of fashion companies to prepare for their upcoming business ventures. For this reason, in this essay, I will analyze the issues that are currently happening in a variety of areas and, based on these, forecast the future of the fashion industry in 20 years.
As a result of the recession, the world is facing several crises. Unemployment is one of the serious issues. Global youth unemployment has reached its highest level on record, and is expected to increase through the coming years. In particular, jobless youth and the long-term unemployed are more likely to have serious problems in several aspects such as the atrophy of people’s skills and lower future wages. This is also connected to another problem that is the unbalance between the age groups because, by 2050, most countries will have three dependents for every four working-age adults. This will affect the clothing industry’s global workforce and consumption behaviors in the next coming decades. For instance, old Chinese people rely on the working population is 11% in 2011, but the percentage is expected to rise to 19% by 2025 and this will cut manufacturing capacity of China. In that case, rising costs of clothing production is obvious, so fashion companies will search for new countries for production to replace China. Fashion brands will not set up their target groups with ages. The new different age groups have a variety of tastes. They do not wear clothes that former old generations used to wear. There is no significant style gap between young and old people. The new older generation not only keeps young styles but also adopts the new trends. On the contrary, young crowds dress much like adults.
Asia is becoming the main market in the world economy and China is at its center, while the Western world is fighting the global recession in which almost all the Western economies are shrinking. China stimulates the growth of the world's economy. The rapid change of China’s industrial structure from agriculture to trade made this possible and China’s economy is expected to grow for the next two decades. According to economic experts, by 2030, China’s economy may be twice the size of the US’. China is planning to move their production to other developed countries in order to move toward a knowledge-based industry like other East Asian countries. China, among other developing countries may become a “leading dragon” due to its size.
In 2030, China, the world’s clothes making mecca will become the world's largest clothing consumer. Lower skilled labor will move to Vietnam, Malaysia and Bangladesh. China is producing more value-added products. Moreover, as it creates more services to attend a bulging urban population. Although, the fashion world is still ruled by Western brands, they are targeting and appealing to Asians. For this reason, the main fashion styles have changed. They are inspired by Asian religious and cultural ideals. In Western countries, luxurious and small designer brands will more focus on producing customized clothes for the wealthy few than now, because normal Western customers do not want expensive products that are selling in Asia.
Climate change has significant implications for all industry and society including, energy, resources and food and people will experience the result of these accumulated problems within 20 years. The long periods of food shortage keep the prices very high and there is no sign of recovery for the food issue. World readers are provided with a report of the global food production concerned with the climate change to tide over the situation. Most governments are supporting wind and solar power companies because of the concern about pollution and climate change caused by the use of fossil energy. The fashion industry is another victim. For example, designers and fashion experts fear the increasingly unpredictable weather. It makes the framework for the fashion calendar meaningless because of the kaleidoscopic weather. Fashion companies will fight with the results of climate change after 20 years. Their biggest problem will be the high prices of common raw materials like cotton and wool. These raw materials are dependent on agriculture and irrigation for their production, and thus commodity prices continue to soar. To make matters worse, high energy costs will make agrichemicals for agriculture expensive. As a substitute, organic fibers will be used widely. However, enough organic material will not be produced for the whole industry, so recycled fabrics will also be a part of the supply. Therefore, new clothes will cost a lot of money and they will not be produced as much as before. For this reason, clothing rental service will be a new business field. Since the weather difference is a little, there will be no S/S or F/W collections. Fashion companies do not separate collections by seasons anymore. Some of them will even make all season collections.
Many people and most companies are trying to find ways to move toward sustainable fashion. Fashion brands are creating sustainable fashion strategies and campaigns to raise people’s awareness and classify emerging business models for sustainable consumption and they have been successful. This also begins from a social level. For example, The National Center for Science Education presented a proposal to make public school teachers teach climate changes including information on the shortage of materials, energy, etc. For this reason, people are becoming more aware of sustainability from an earlier age. However, organic or sustainable clothes are not yet popular due to its high price as most sustainable materials and concepts are lead by haute couture and individual designers. In 20 years, sustainability will become the central focus in the fashion industry. Customers will not buy clothes if they are unsustainable because people care about environmental effects, so it will be hard to find clothing without an eco-labeling. Companies will not be distinguishing themselves apart by marketing related to sustainability since it has become mandatory. Sustainable fashion will not be lead by high fashion brands. Commercial companies will establish offices to research and develop new environmental materials and production. Old clothes will be re-produced on a large scale in highly mechanized factories and customers are also active in sending their old garments back. Fashion companies without sustainability will not survive in the industry.
Nowadays, technology is everywhere in fashion from production to retail. Fashion has been changed with the development of technology and now the whole fashion industry looks different than before. For example, automated productions took over the traditional production. The internet created a new way of retailing. A lot of designers are trying to combine clothes to functional technology. Among all these fields, people are focusing on sustainable and healthy fashion, since environmental issues, such as climate change, are at the top of the global agenda. According to Levi’s, jean companies’ highest interest now is making jeans without any harmful effects on the environment. They are developing a washing machine with no water and non-toxic dying ingredients. Green fashion technology will be developed in various stages in the coming years. After two decades, new sustainable and functional technology will be introduced in every aspect of fashion. Manufacturing systems will be fully automated so that there are only a few engineers at clothing factories and they are also using only renewable sources of energy while eliminating harmless emissions. A certain level of chemical free processes is required by law to protect the environment. This trend will even penetrate into normal people’s lives so they will also have eco washing machines at home. The importance of the internet upon fashion is that it will become even more powerful and make fashion trends always global. However, this will make duration of trends’ much shorter as it could change in a day or even a few hours. For this reason, trend research will be more important for fashion brands.
In addition, the trend of the model’s world is also changing. Big fashion companies and photographers do not want to work with young and vulnerable models anymore. This is because young models often cause problems due to drug addiction, or show up late and end up wasting a lot of money and time. In order to avoid these problems, educated models are becoming more welcome in the fashion industry these days. Modeling business trends are affected by the global economy. Models’ salaries are decreasing under the global recession and model agencies themselves take a high percentage of their pay but the agencies are also fighting to survive. There are a lot of anti-skinny model movements but luxurious brands will still request thin models to distinguish themselves from the norm. Smart models will found a model union to protect their rights and set the standard for modeling wages. Every model will be a member of it and companies have to join as well and agree with the union’s rules to work with models. Only a few top world class models are in model agencies where they are entitled to royalties. Most brands still prefer skinny models but they are not allowed to models which are too skinny due to the union’s health rule. However, the model union also has regulations for companies. For instance, models who show up late or cause problems can be disqualified as professional models so no companies are harassed with models’ inappropriate behaviors as models are not suffering from gross abuse like sexual harassment that has been perpetrated as the norm in the model industry.
CONCLUSION In conclusion, the fashion industry will be struggling to overcome problems caused by environmental damages and move to its center from Western to Eastern countries with the move of the global business hub. Climate change will have the biggest impacts on various stages of the fashion industry from raw materials to manufacturing and from manufacturers to consumers and even after the end of garments’ life and among these changes the green technology will play a key role. Probably, the real future would be different from the scenarios in this essay. However, this is certain that everything should be sustainable in the future. Fashion companies that are currently going well without sustainability, better start preparing for the green fashion world. No fashion brand will survive without sustainability.
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