Sustainability: What does the fashion industry expect in 2021?

Over 2020, a year in which fashion has shown that it can reinvent itself. Fashion is one of the sectors that has suffered the most from the economic vicissitudes of a society that stayed at home and that has considerably reduced its social relationships, the key element in changing costumes.

"We use fashion to socialize and this fact is getting more and more difficult," said Custo Dalmau, creative director of Custo Barcelona, ​​during the last Madrid fashion week; Although, he added that despite the change in our way of living, "a good product will continue to have a future." The truth is that fashion and its industry go beyond the cash register and much is expected from 2021.

Companies have changed their strategy, also the way to show their designs to the client, shows are now "fashion films". Brands are entering the world of sustainability without fear, they are clearly committed to quality fashion and #slowfashion, and definitely, digitization has knocked on the door.

The annual report on the state of fashion 2021 from the consultancy McKinsey and BoF (The Business of Fashion) published this month of December indicates that with the pandemic, fashion executives are planning a variety of scenarios and expecting a rapid global recovery. To the point that large firms such as Elie Saab and even Óscar de la Renta have sold their collections in Amazon's high-end e-boutique.

The report points out that many fashion companies during the crisis have taken the opportunity to reshape their business models, optimize their operations and refine their proposals for customers. The sector is now seeking to reinvent itself by taking giant steps in a structure. In Spain was slowly sliding towards the digitization and internationalization of companies and which is currently moving like lightning searching for alternatives, new ways of creating and displaying trends.

Modesto Lomba, president of the Association of Fashion Creators (ACME), has assured that the crisis caused by COVID19 has arrived when they had not yet fully recovered from the previous economic crisis. In his opinion, the gaze has settled on caring for the environment, which implies: responsible consumption, investing in quality and not so much in quantity, because this contributes to preserving not only the environment, but also the trades, as a fundamental part of the heritage cultural. Lomba recalls that Spain is one of the few European countries that preserves an important handicraft fabric that accumulates the knowledge of many generations of artisans.

"The author fashion sector is a great standard for these trades, collaborating with artisans so that techniques are not lost and that industry remains alive," he says, which is why it is expected that next year changes are generated in consumer habits that help to keep alive an industry that generates wealth and jobs in the country.

The founder of Slow Fashion Next, Gema Gómez, an expert in instilling sustainable values, says that she has never heard so much about sustainability as now. So sustainability is a clear consumer trend. It is clear that the fashion company that is not responsible and transparent in its value chain (from the selection of raw materials to the point of sale, through the working conditions of the workers) has no future.

In terms of textile #sustainability in fashion and interior design, mycelium will play an important role as a reference material. The mycelium is the thallus of fungi, commonly formed by highly branched filaments that constitute the nutritional apparatus of these living beings. Its multiple industrial applications range from a new type of ‘leather’ with which to manufacture bags, shoes or sofas, to its use for packaging different products. Adidas, Stella McCartney, Lululemon and now Kering have teamed up to invest in this new material.

The innovation in raw materials, that reduce the enormous dependence of fashion on livestock, is one of the many issues that journalist Dana Thomas delves into in her book Fashionopolis. The price of fast fashion and the future of clothing (Superfluous). The volume, published in Spain in January 2020, has become the new bible in terms of sustainability.

In conclusion, the most relevant dynamics in fashion industry for 2021, will start with:

• present smaller and more sustainable collections

• blur the seasons

• substantial increase in e-tailing (sale of retail products on the Internet)

• as well how to bet on creativity and diversity.

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