What fuels our addiction to fashion?
Vogue Business
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Why are we so obsessed with new clothes? And even if we don’t want new clothes, why are brands so good at convincing us to buy them anyway?
Fashion’s role in climate change is less about what the industry makes and more about why it’s able to sell so much of it, according to research published by an academic team that describes climate change as a behavioural crisis as much as a scientific one.
Now, recent research argues our addiction to style is core to the climate crisis.
Joseph Merz, chairman of the Merz Institute and senior fellow at the Global Evergreening Alliance and colleagues published a study last year arguing that human behaviour is at the root of the global environmental crisis.
While it’s common knowledge that climate change is man-made, the researchers wanted to explore the psychology behind what’s driving us to overconsume.
What does this mean for fashion?
The applications of this research for the fashion industry span customer engagement to internal operations.
The role of marketing is a key focus in the Merz study, which explains that marketing’s historic use was to spotlight the functional reasons to buy specific products.
And fashion has capitalised. Brands are estimated to spend between 5 and 10 per cent of their revenue on marketing and advertising to attract customers into their stores and to buy the latest trends. But it doesn’t need to be this way, Merz says.
The research adds fuel to already growing calls for fashion to change its business model — for the industry to use the creativity it’s built on and apply it “to creative business transformation”, as Katia Dayan Vladimirova, senior lecturer at the University of Geneva and founder of the Sustainable Fashion Consumption research network, told Vogue Business earlier this year.
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8 个月Being new to the digital and social fashion space, I directly feel the demand algorithms put on posting consistency and I feel it is hugely impacting the consumption cycle. In order to reach customers your content output has to be timely, consistent (up to 1-2x a day!) and feel fresh/capitalize on of-the-moment trends. The influencer economy has put enormous pressure on creators to consistently hawk new items, and the efficacy of the medium compounds the issue! As a result, consumers are psychologically bombarded to consume more during a time where inflation and economics restrain their spending power.... enter fast fashion... I am so interested to read the comments on this one!
Visual community manager (CM) Graphic Designer. Creative Comunity manager. speaker and Audio Visual Communication. Promoter of Public Relations and Advertising. Model Promoter Speaker.
10 个月so perfect.... wonderful charms?????????
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10 个月I want to leave my hard deeo earned insights into this.
'New' clothes only need to be 'new' to you!! Try buying sustainably, try pre loved, for example. They can make you happy too! ????