Has the pandemic accelerated the shift towards a more sustainable fashion industry?

Photo: Anastasiia Chepinska

Photo: Charles Deluvio

The last two years have for a lot of consumers around the world, meant less visits to physical store and more time at home. Less time to dress up and variate your clothes for different occasions. For some it might also have meant limited financial opportunities. Some might have saved more than they have consumed. But has this truly lead to a change and what are the key areas of the transition?

More people bought and sold second hand (for economic or other reasons)

As economic crisis often do, this crisis also led to a decrease in clothes consumption, but an increase in thrifting. This according to the ThredUp report. According to the report the market for secondhand apparel and accessories will double in the next five years to $77 billion, growing 11 times faster than the broader retail sector by 2025. The increase can be explained by more consumers finding a cheaper alternative to conventional fashion but also a result of more people selling their clothes online. If this has to do with the economic need or just pure interest we can only speculate.

Fast fashion supply chain difficulties

According to the student Samantha Casey of San Diego University; the fashion industry was particularly hit by the Covid-19 restrictions because of fast fashion supply chains through factory closures and supply chain bottlenecks. Since many fast fashion supply chains utilize one country to produce raw materials and others for garment production, the countries that do not produce their own textile raw materials were hit even harder due to the bottleneck at the beginning of the system. The COVID-19 ramifications on the fashion industry was different from previous economic recessions and health crises due to its bilateral nature. The impact permeated both supply and demand.

The fast fashion industry was losing money. Kleiderly explains that; in Germany, fashion brands were losing 1.5 billion euros per day. Online shopping only increased in the UK by 22% (compared to 2016), which is lower than expected. This left the fashion industry in an inventory crisis.

Consumers became more aware

Another trend we’ve seen the last few years where the pandemic also could have accelerated the changes (due to more time spent online and on social media, assuming people do get access to new information and not just stay in their bubble) is the eco-consciousness. More consumers are becoming more aware.

According to Strategy and Businesses; In their 2019 Global Consumer Insights Survey, just 35% of respondents said they chose sustainable products to help protect the environment, 37% said they looked for products with environmentally friendly packaging, and 41% said they avoided the use of plastic when they could. PwC’s survey results show percentages 10 to 20 points higher in response to similarly worded questions. A study by creative research platform Visual GPS, in conjunction with market research firm YouGov, also indicates a shift during the pandemic. That survey finds that 81% of people polled expect companies to be environmentally conscious in their advertising and communications, and 69% of respondents said they were doing everything possible to minimize their carbon footprint (up from 63% just a year earlier).

These three key areas are not only promising from an environmental point of view, they truly tell us where fashion is heading and if fashion companies want to stay in the game, they have to become more resilient towards crisis and chocks, more eco-friendly to meet consumer demands and above all provide as much circular alternatives as possible. The pandemic is of course far from something good, but sometimes bad times are planting seeds for good times. For the fashion industry, we believe so.