What is the future of menswear week? Suspected to decline

On January 7, the men's wear week in London in the fall of 2019 officially closed.

In addition to shortening the time to three days in this season, London Men's Week also emerged with emerging designer brands such as Delada, Art School and C2H4, but at the same time, Burberry, which hosted London Fashion Week a few years ago. The departure of brands such as JW Anderson has made this season's London men's wear week a lot dark.

The big names are gone and the influence is declining. This is a common problem faced by Men's Week.

Launchmetrics, a fashion and luxury brand marketing solutions provider, recently released the media influence data for the fashion week, and said that the rise of the current gender-free fashion concept and the trend of the merger of men's and women's fashion shows are raising questions about the future development of men's wear week.

According to data collected by the supplier in June 2018 in New York and London for the Spring/Summer 2019 Fashion Week warm-up, the two created the sensational effects of print media, digital media and social media. Media influence income of 2.1 million euros and 5.8 million euros.

In the company's view, big names and influence figures are the driving force behind men's wear week, such as Jon Kortajarena in New York; fixed men Hu Bingham and David Beckham in London Men's Wear Week in London; Xenia Tchoumitcheva in Milan and Colton in Paris Haynes.

After the debut of Virgil Abloh's first Louis Vuitton menswear collection, it generated an impact value of 18.2 million euros, followed by Dior, Versace, Prada and Valentino.

But for today's men's wear week, losing support has become the biggest crisis.

“The changes in the retail landscape and the digitization of the industry are undergoing major changes, which largely affects the future of Men’s Wear Week,” said Alison Levy, Chief Marketing Officer of Launchmetrics. “The brands are now under greater pressure and they need Deliver new products to stores more quickly to maintain customer loyalty to the brand, and the integration of menswear into women's weeks to maximize the return on investment of the brand."

Samantha Dover, an analyst with consulting firm Mintel, also said in an interview with AFP reporters: "The merger of men and women and the digital fashion show not only reduce costs, but also make the brand more complete."

Gucci, who left Milan Men's Wear Week as early as 2016, merged with the men's and women's fashion show. In recent years, he has played the concept of gender ambiguity, which not only helps the brand to further transform into youth, but also more clearly reflects The overall design style and image of the brand.

Burberry is also one of the brands that has recently turned into a men's and women's combined fashion show. Especially after Riccardo Tisci took over, the brand made its debut in the design of 134 sets of men's and women's clothing, which caused a heated discussion in the media.

“Today, the trend of co-education provides more opportunities for brands to increase their media influence from 2x to 19x,” added Alison Levy.

From a data point of view, there is also a lot of evidence that this is indeed a successful strategy. With more than 50% of the media, publications, blogs, and other channels with women as the primary audience, brands that display both routes have access to more audiences. In contrast, although Menswear has also produced a number of influential people who are attracted to attention, their audience is still far less than the impact of the merger.

However, many people believe that there is still a need for menswear week, but with the departure of big names, the future menswear week may provide more platforms for emerging designers to display their clothes. As for the influence, it depends on the ability of the designers.