Is fashion going to change direction as we slowly head into a post-pandemic world? Is it going to take more responsibility for the impact it has on the environment? After this extended disruption, is the fashion consumer going to change their patterns of consumption?
These, and many other questions, keep popping up in multiple forums. In response, one looks back to the recent past, when we were confined to our homes, living our professional and social lives on our laptops. In a digital world without a physical presence, clothing took a backseat. Comfortable sweatpants and pyjamas became our daily attire. Freed from physical discomfort and the tyranny of fashion, many of us swore that we were never going to give up the comfort of the easy, stretchy clothing we were used to. We imagined ourselves slouching into a comfy, relaxed future in joggers and Crocs.
Now, as life begins to return to some sort of normalcy, we begin to see how anxious most of us are to resume the normal pattern of our lives and revert to the comfort and reassurance of old habits. While some new trends may emerge, by and large, the pandemic has mostly served to amplify certain trends in clothing that had already emerged, and give them a boost. Some trends will have an impact on the environment, since there are renewed concerns about the relationship between fashion, textiles and our physical world. Others relate to the relationship between fashion and the human body, and the many ways we use attire to express our identity.
One such trend that now seems unstoppable is the proliferation of athletic and performance clothing, which has already had such a major impact on the way we dress. Consumers are now demanding both comfort and performance in all their attire. The joggers, sweats and trainers we wore every day of our confinement have shaped the expectations from our clothing, establishing the predominance of fashion inspired by athletic wear in all our wardrobes. We discovered how efficiently sportswear performed as leisurewear. Our bodies became used to a comfort level difficult to find in other forms of clothing.
Elastic waistbands, stretchable clothing, footwear influenced by sportswear—these are attributes that are now going to shape the wardrobes of many professionals, who have started returning to work after a year of Zoom meetings in sweatpants.
In menswear, this is going to affect that professional staple, the formal suit. The business suit had already begun to see a decline with the casualisation of fashion. Post-pandemic, that decline is going to be even more rapid. Comfort and performance are going to increasingly shape the vocabulary of clothing.
However, human nature is highly contradictory. And fashion, as the most visible manifestation of human identity, is just as diverse and contradictory. Hence, there is another emerging trend in fashion—clothing that responds to the contrarian impulses of those consumers who are tired of dressing down, and are ready to go out and celebrate. They want to forget this painful period and dress up exuberantly to do so. Tired of a year of being locked in and isolated, they are celebrating their freedom by swapping their flip flops for stilettos. As fashion responds to this, we are beginning to see this renewed exuberance on designer runways, with richly embroidered occasion dressing and statement-making wedding attire. The ornate and the excessive is, however, juxtaposed with pared down, comfort clothing in other collections.
At the economic level, the pandemic has affected consumption patterns of vast swathes of the population. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots has increased substantially in this period. The less privileged have faced job losses and hardships. Incomes have reduced for a large number of professionals. Discretionary spending has shrunk for this segment and all non-essential purchases have taken a backseat, in contrast to basics and essentials.
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Simultaneously, at the other end of the spectrum, a tiny percentage of population has seen the opposite effect on their fortunes. The wealthy have seen their incomes multiply. Riding a wave of stock market highs, their appetite for luxury consumption has only increased, but having had little opportunity to spend their incomes due to the imposition of lockdowns, travel curbs and closed borders; we are now beginning to see results of this pent-up demand.
Meanwhile, the affluent are splurging on expensive fashion clothing and accessories. They are more than happy to spend lakhs of rupees on a handbag or richly-embroidered lehenga. Reports say several international luxury fashion brands have seen such buoyancy in sales during the pandemic, with some leading brands even raising prices of their best-selling products.
At the other end of the spectrum, ‘fast fashion’ manufacturers and retailers—regardless of criticism and increasing awareness of its environmental costs—are going to thrive and grow. Budget constraints are driving more and more consumers to look for bargains and inexpensive clothing.
One must hope this will not necessarily mean the lessons of sustainability are going to be ignored. The pandemic has served to bring home the delicate balance we have to maintain with our deteriorating environment. A virus that suddenly sprang out of nowhere, and a polluted and rapidly-warming world, have taught us how fragile human existence really is. We cannot continue to deceive ourselves that we are in full control.
As the awareness of sustainability continues to grow, one hopes it will influence manufacturers to focus on conscious and mindful manufacturing technologies. Simultaneously, the consumer will have to educate themselves in textile and garment production processes, if ‘greenwashing’ is to be kept in check. If every fashion consumer could realise that every single rupee they spend has the power to effect change, fashion activism could spread outside and beyond the small tribe of sustainability champions.
To incorporate greater sustainable practises in India, we have to sensitise policymakers towards maintaining the delicate balance between industrial and artisanal. This is an economy where millions work in the handloom and handicrafts sectors, which were seriously affected by lockdowns. We cannot exult over stock market highs, while millions wither away without employment and basic necessities. While on one hand, sustainability demands that we protect traditional forms of knowledge and livelihoods, we would be extremely short-sighted if we do not appreciate the relevance of the crafts and the role of the small-scale producer in fashion. Besides possessing a lighter environmental footprint and providing employment, this is a sector which is a repository of traditional forms of knowledge, an integral part of our cultural identity.
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As the fashion industry moves beyond mere rhetoric of sustainability, designers will have to search for creative solutions to issues confronting us and give us fashion that allows us to express our identities in ways that are sensitive to the world around us.
(This appeared in the print edition as "A Masked Zeitgeist En Vogue")
(Views expressed are personal)
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