Temperature Taking: Production Pivots and New Models
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the denim business has needed to rapidly adapt to a new way of operating. Trade shows and in-person meetings have been off the table, and employees had to adjust to working remotely from home.
Denim has also pivoted, as companies transferred their production over to personal protective equipment. From a retail perspective, labels and consumers are relying more heavily on online commerce and connections.
During this challenging time, we’ve seen women leaders in both business and government rising to the occasion with particularly effective strategies for handling the crisis.
Women are also disproportionately represented in the apparel business, comprising 80 percent of the 75 million-strong workforce.
In light of this, Carved in Blue is presenting a series of talks with women holding creative and business roles in denim to hear how they are navigating the pandemic.
During the third edition of Taking the Temperature on May 26, panelists from around the globe joined to share their thoughts on everything from the future of fashion seasons to what types of products will resonate with consumers after social distancing measures relax.
Here is some of what they had to say.
On consumers’ post-COVID wardrobe choices:
“We’re living in an era of this deprivation—deprivation of social outings, deprivation of having fun with our clothes—and the idea is that when this is over, or when we start to explore more socially, we’re going to take advantage of those opportunities. So that certainly does not scream legging to me; that is the occasion for dressing up,” said Naomi Goez from Joe’s Jeans.
On being able to pivot during the pandemic:
“I think we need to think globally, make locally and think about how we do it in a sustainable way,” said Christine Rucci, Godmother of Denim.
On COVID-19 as a catalyst for change:
“This is the time when all those things we said we were going to change, like reduced sampling and moving over to CAD, we need to do that now. And if we come out and we’re the same, then we’ve learned nothing. So this is the opportunity to make bigger changes permanently that we didn’t have the discipline to do prior,” said Allison Charalambous from Lucky Denim.
On denim’s position in the push for fewer fashion seasons:
“When it comes to denim, it is originally designed for durability so it’s seasonless. Maybe there cannot be a better timing to remind us that what we deal with, denim itself, is a seasonless product,” said Sinem Celik from Bluprojects.
On the future of trade shows and travel:
“We’re a very tactile industry, and touching and feeling something from afar, it poses a lot of challenges, but we’ve had to get super creative. We’ve created tools, we’ve got digital libraries, digital renderings, but at the end of the day, there isn’t a replacement for that face to face interaction,” said Cindy McNaull of Cordura®.
Stay tuned for more discussions in this series. And watch the talks from May 12 and May 19.