Dries Van Noten leads petition to change fashion calendar and deliveries
Belgian designer Dries van Noten is leading a group of designers who are pressuring the fashion industry to reshape the system of launching collections in-stores and end-of-seasons sales. The proposal's aim is to adjust collections timeline with the real need of consumers and to end the early sales markdown.
In a Zoom call, designer Dries van Noten, Lane Crawford chief executive Andrew Keith and Altuzarra chief executive Shira Sue Carmi hopes to shift the entire fashion calendar.
Just yesterday, they released an open letter calling for the industry to realign fashion deliveries with real-world seasons and push back markdowns. Fall/Winter collections would be kept in stores from August to January and the Spring/Summer collections would remain from February to July, to coincide with the actual beginning and end of the seasons in Europe, while keeping the sales period at the end of the seasons, in January and July months.
“It is not normal to buy winter clothes in May. It doesn't make sense to me, ” said Dries Van Noten in the Zoom meeting, “It’s not normal to work with the design team on a collection that hits the shop floor one month and a half before it’s discounted at 50 per cent.”
Signatories to the letter include a lengthy cross-section of industry players, from Marine Serre, Craig Green, Gabriela Hearst and Mary Katrantzou, to retailers such as Nordstrom, Bergdorf Goodman, Holt Renfrew, Mytheresa, Harvey Nichols, Tory Burch and Pierre-Yves Roussel.
The group has posted the petition online at ForumLetter.org and is calling for more signatures in an informal display of unity.
