The fashion industry has evolved in a number of ways over the past year. While the lockdown lifestyle has played a huge role in shaping the future of the industry, we’ve also found fresh fashion trends that are inspired by celebrity culture and societal shifts.
In this report we’ll cover:
- Trends in the fashion market: Is haute couture taking a back seat?
- What’s trending in men’s fashion this year?
- How consumer taste in different styles has changed in recent years
- What’s causing the growing interest in formal/office wear?
Trends in the fashion market
To gain a better understanding of how fashion is changing, we used Brandwatch Consumer Research to break down online conversations by the different elements that make up the fashion market: Haute couture, luxury, high street, bridge brands, economy, and fast fashion.
How did we define each fashion market?
Haute couture: Exclusive, custom-fitted clothing constructed by hand.
Luxury fashion: High-quality, designer items sold at a high price point.
High street – Clothing that is readily available for purchase (think chain and department stores).
Bridge brands: Also known as affordable luxury and stands between high street fashion and luxury fashion.
Economy: The mass-production market. The brands within this category are low-priced.
Fast fashion: Replicates and mass-produces high-fashion designs at low cost. The majority of well-known and affordable brand names belong to this category.
Overall, we saw a strong declining trend in conversation volume around the fashion market as a whole from 2019 to 2020. The number of mentions discussing the nuances of the different fashion markets decreased by 12.3% when compared to the number of mentions in 2019 (from 30,188 mentions in 2019 to 26,479 in 2020).
It’s pretty clear that people had more to worry about in 2020 than what they were wearing, although there was still plenty to learn from online discussions on the topic.
While the fashion-related conversation was down overall, we also saw a change in the content of those online mentions.
The fashion market social chatter in 2020 was split more or less evenly between fast fashion, luxury fashion, and haute couture (at 30%, 32%, and 34% respectively when compared to the total number of mentions for all categories).
If we compare these numbers to the previous year, the haute couture market has lost close to 52% of its mention volume (down from 19,046 mentions in 2019), where luxury and fast fashion gained 57.7% and 84.6% respectively.
So as fast fashion and luxury fashion saw their share of voice increase, what were people discussing within those categories?
Fast fashion: Practicality
When it comes to fast fashion, one notable trend seen within online conversations was related to practicality: “looked both couture and sporty”, “hands-on sensibility and ready-to-wear”, “streetwear”, “street style”. Consumers are interested in finding a perfect blend of style and usability – something the fashion industry isn’t always known for. We’ll be exploring the rise of streetwear later on in this report.
Luxury fashion: Men’s style
One of the most prominent trends that we saw emerge in luxury fashion in 2020 was around men’s fashion. When we compared conversations around the luxury fashion sector in 2019 with the data in 2020, we noticed that mentions of “men’s fashion” and “men’s style” saw a 379.7% increase. In 2020, the discussion around men’s fashion made up 11.23% of all mentions of the luxury fashion sector. This inspired us to do a deep dive into luxury men’s fashion, and men’s fashion in general.
What’s been sparking conversations about men’s fashion in the luxury sector?
2020 saw a lot of buzz around Gucci’s new dress for men that’s challenging gender stereotypes. The brand has been at the forefront of fighting against “toxic masculinity”, recognizing and addressing the negative psychological consequences for men who are pressured by society to live up to traditional ideas of what being a man should look and feel like.
In recent years, many artists and brands have come forward to shed more light on the issue, offering their support in the quest to challenge male stereotypes. For example, Jaden Smith became known for publicly challenging gender norms and styling himself using a mix of masculine and feminine aesthetics, BTS’s Jin actively professes his love for pink, and brands like Gucci and Gillette openly address the concept of toxic masculinity in their clothing and advertising respectively. Another key name here is Harry Styles, who made many fashion headlines last year when he appeared on the cover of Vogue wearing a Gucci dress.
Another widely discussed event in fashion took place at London Fashion Week Men’s, when ethical brands presented men’s clothing made out of waste and recycled materials during one of the catwalks.
A growing number of fashion brands are starting to recognize the importance of sustainability in fashion manufacturing, in response to our culture of overproduction and mass consumption. On average, people buy 60% more clothing items than 15 years ago and, according to industry research, by 2030 the global apparel and footwear industry will grow by an estimated 80%. This could come at a huge cost to the planet.
A quick search for “sustainable men’s fashion” in Buzzsumo across 2020 returned the most-engaged-with content on the topic. Headlines included:
- “Men’s Fashion Week in London: Social justice and sustainability”
- “Prince Charles & Mr. Porter Launch Sustainable Fashion Collection”
- “16 sustainable, ethical, and eco-friendly fashion brands for men that you’ll actually want to wear.”
What’s trending in men’s fashion beyond the luxury sector?
We also used BuzzSumo to learn more about the trending content around men’s fashion in general last year. Here’s what stood out most:
1. The rise of streetwear in men’s fashion
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in streetwear for men, popularized by the likes of Justin Bieber, Drake, Pharrell, Kanye West, ASAP Rocky, and others. The shift toward more casual fashion has definitely accelerated during the pandemic as stuck-at-home consumers started prioritizing comfortable clothes.
One of the top headlines we discovered using Buzzsumo talked about how the rise of streetwear is potentially bringing back cargo pants for men.
2. K-pop’s fashion influence
K-pop’s influence has been growing rapidly over the years, and it’s reshaping the fashion world (and retail at large) at the same time. Male K-pop artists are known for openly experimenting with new colors and styles and breaking beauty stereotypes by taking gender out of the makeup equation. It is no wonder that South Korea leads the world’s male beauty market. K-pop isn’t just changing fashion, it’s also driving hype around particular brands. Last year, one of the most popular Korean boy bands (BTS) received a lot of attention from the media when Louis Vuitton invited them to their Men’s Fall-Winter Fashion Show. Fast-forward to 2021, and last Sunday the BTS members appeared at the Grammys wearing Louis Vuitton from head to toe and making a serious splash in fashion publications like Esquire and Vogue.
3. A bumpy ride for Brooks Brothers
Brooks Brothers, widely thought of as a classic clothing brand for men and an American staple retailer, filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Besides the ongoing pandemic, a growing shift toward casualization in men’s fashion may have played a role in the fate of the business. That said, they have since been acquired so there is still hope for the brand.
How has our taste in clothes changed?
We also investigated different fashion styles to determine whether there’s been a noticeable shift in interest over the last year.
To help us better understand current preferences, and how they compare to previous years, we defined several categories that represent popular fashion styles.
The chart below shows the change in mention volume for the most commonly-discussed fashion styles from 2019 to 2020.
From the chart above, three categories were leading in mention volume in 2020: Streetwear, sportswear, and formal/office wear.
We examined these three categories further and, starting in January of 2020, you can see a clear growing trend.
The streetwear category saw a significant increase in mentions (+308% in 2020 compared to 2019). Meanwhile, sportswear mentions were up 123% and mentions in the formal/office wear category increased 67%.
Streetwear
The three most-mentioned brands that were seen in conversations about “streetwear” are:
- Nike – 7179 mentions
- Gucci – 1525 mentions
- Adidas – 1525 mentions
One might find it surprising to see a luxury goods name like Gucci make the list of the most-talked-about streetwear brands. But in recent years, a lot of luxury brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton have started incorporating streetwear styles to appeal to wealthier millennials.
Let’s look at the top 2020 headlines related to streetwear. We used Brandwatch’s Buzzsumo to discover headlines that have received the most engagement in 2020.
There are a couple of themes to point out here.
Firstly, pop culture has had a major impact on streetwear conversation in the last year, with the controversial figure Joe Exotic casually suggesting he might become the face of a new fashion line as well as K-Pop star Jackson Wang launching his own fashion brand.
And the top headline across all the sources we studied went to a student in the Philippines whose newly launched brand ‘Coziest’ is rapidly growing and gaining followers across Facebook and Instagram.
Beyond the massive engagement number, what makes this article different is that 99.9% of all engagement with the article happened on Facebook.
Had we sorted our data based on a specific channel such as Twitter or Reddit, we could have painted a completely different narrative that might only represent the views of a specific online community. By looking across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest, we can get a much more holistic view of what is making waves online.
At the time of that article’s publication, Coziest’s Facebook page had 10k followers. Today it’s liked by 48k and followed by 50k people.
As a young college student, the founder of Coziest, Richard Zshornack, believes that you can build up your confidence when you are comfortable with what you wear. The Coziest brand message feels genuine, authentic, and extremely relatable to its audience. And by featuring his friends and frequently modeling the clothes himself on social media, this young entrepreneur has propelled the brand to unexpected growth and recognition.
It says a lot about the power of social that the top story in streetwear in 2020 went to a relatively lesser-known brand. Social commerce has democratized the market and made it easier for emerging brands to make an impact.
What else were people saying about streetwear online?
As an interesting comparison, we also looked at the most popular phrases in the news and on Twitter side-by-side using Brandwatch Consumer Research, and, as you can tell, the conversation is very different depending on the channel.
Where the media in 2020 was mostly focused on Fashion Week coverage, the conversation on Twitter seemed to discuss culture more generally with topics like black culture and Asian influence on streetwear gaining traction.
The conversation on social embraces the exciting and new, while the media is more focused on established brands, events, and names. The world of fashion has always seen a tussle between trends that emerge from groups of regular people (bottom-up) and what the gatekeepers of style put on runways and in magazines (top-down). Analyzing how trends emerge on social and in the news is a fascinating way to spot where fashion is going and how the two influence each other.
Sportswear
The sportswear category saw a 123.5% increase in mention volume in 2020 when compared to the previous year.
To have a better understanding of what was buzzing in the news about sportswear last year, we used Buzzumo to find the most engaged with headlines and content. Here’s the top ten:
There are a couple of themes in these headlines that are worth exploring
Values over profit
The top three most engaged with headlines in 2020 talked about the same event: Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle cutting his own salary to $10K so retail employees could continue receiving regular pay.
Amid the ongoing pandemic, while brick-and-mortar locations remained closed, this CEO made an unprecedented move by practically eliminating his salary in favor of the company’s “catastrophic pay” program that supported retail employees who found themselves temporarily unable to go to work. The company’s sales fell 18% to $2.5 billion in 2020 worldwide.
Today’s consumers care about whether companies treat their employees right, and a move like this is likely to be received positively by consumers. It could potentially translate into an increase in sales in 2021, too.
A success story: ‘Gymshark’
Here’s another story to highlight from the top ten. A sportswear brand that was started in a family garage by 19-year-old Ben Francis back in 2012 has secured investment from a private equity firm after receiving a valuation of more than £1bn in 2020.
The brand, that’s been heavily relying on social media influencers from the start, now has 5.2m followers on Instagram and close to 2m followers on Facebook. Meanwhile, a quick search for ‘Gymshark’ in Buzzsumo showed that there were 36% more articles mentioning the brand in 2020 than there were in 2019 (from 3,723 to 5,058 results).
While Gymshark’s story is a big success, it’s not entirely unexpected. When a brand message feels authentic and relatable to its audience, success tends to follow. A couple of great examples here would be Patagonia, Away, Supreme, Glossier, and Everlane. Perhaps Coziest is next on the path to success?
Office wear re-imagined
What’s causing a growing interest in formal/office wear?
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the world to re-imagine what a professional wardrobe should look like, accelerating the casualization of fashion along the way. But 2020 doesn’t mark the death of office wear. In fact, it could be quite the opposite. As per the chart introduced earlier in this report, the conversation around office wear has gone up 67% last year when compared to the volume of mentions in 2019.
This Guardian article has received a lot of engagement for discussing the “domestic goddess 2.0”. The piece describes how the WFH environment doesn’t mean you have to settle for a pair of sweatpants and call it a day. Instead, a new approach to comfort while working is to put a luxurious twist on it.
“Fashion matters because we still need to put ourselves together in a way that lifts our mood and raises our game. That’s more important than ever.”
The idea is to power-dress even when you are at home to inspire positive emotions, spark creativity, and also, to simply feel good!
One of the top headlines for “lockdown workwear” we found using Buzzsumo featured Meghan Markle who was praised for her polished, minimalist look during a recent TV appearance. The article suggested that while it might be unclear when we’ll get to see an office again, those of us looking for inspiration for our next Zoom outfit should look no further than the Duchess of Sussex.
While many more formal brands may have suffered during the pandemic, there’s definitely an opportunity to engage those looking to upgrade their WFH wardrobes.