Business Fashion Environment Summit 2025

0:01 [Music] The global fashion industry is valued at $1.84 trillion in 2025, contributing 1.6% to global GDP. But growth has a cost, and we're starting to feel it. Welcome to fashion in 2025. An industry caught between acceleration and accountability. Fast fashion is still booming. A 150.8 billion market growing 10.7% year on year. More drops, more plastic, more pressure on people and planet. Emissions rose 8% last year, the

0:46 first increase since before the pandemic. Luxury is losing ground. 50 million consumers left the luxury market between 2022 and 2024. Blame greedflation. Blame growing scrutiny over labor and ethics. As resale rises, so does the demand for value, not just a logo. Behind the scenes, confidence is crumbling. 80% of executives don't expect improvement this year. Tariffs, wars, climate disasters, all disrupting supply chains. Climate volatility is disrupting sourcing, logistics, and labor. From droughts in India to floods in Bangladesh, climate change is no longer abstract. The gap

1:31 between fashions, marketing, and reality is wider than ever. Europe generates over 12 million tons of textile waste annually. Now under extended producer responsibility, brands must pay for collection, sorting, and recycling. The true cost of fashion is becoming visible. 2025 is a year of creative reshuffleling. 13 creative directors are out. 16 are making their debut, but still 81% of appointees are men. Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Matia Blazy at Chanel, Demna at Gucci, Pierre Paulo Picioli at Balenciaga. The shakeup sparked a creative wakeup. Designers like Duran Lantink and

2:17 Hodakova are gaining recognition for radical upcycled visions. Runway shows in 2025 were bolder, more emotionally charged than we've seen in years. A reminder, fashion's core strength is creativity. Tech is no longer a side tool. It's central. Brands using AI for demand forecasting saw 85% more accurate predictions, leading to 50% less overstock and a 30% drop in storage costs. AI is helping brands make less and make smarter. Fashion in 2025 is at a crossroads between illusion and accountability, speed and care, financial caution, creative turnover, ethical regression, digital

3:03 acceleration. This isn't just another trend cycle. This is fashion's defining decade. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the business fashion environment summit 2025. Good morning everyone. Yes. Well, I was going to say that I hope you're feeling wide awake after um seeing this short little video, but I can hear that you're feeling wide awake. Um, trust me, we really try to frame it in an optimistic way, but the truth is we really are at crossroads. Not just in fashion, but in society at

3:51 large. Chaos and change. These are the words that have come to define 2025 so far. And today, we will navigate this together. We'll begin with systems, the economy, geopolitics and supply chains uh that shape fashion reality. Then we'll move to design and innovative materials where the future is being crafted literally upgrounds. Finally, we'll arrive at human dimension well-being purpose intimacy,

4:36 what it means to slow down in the world that never stops. You might recognize that we're not just talking about sustainability. We're talking about empathy, intuition, the qualities that make fashion human that no AI can replicate. And to open the day, we will look at shifting generations. How are they redefining what value means? Please welcome Octavian Zions, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, presenting our joint reports. [Music]

5:34 Hello everybody. Super nice to see all of you here with us today. I see quite a fair mix of generations present. I see some Gen Z's. I see some millennials. I see Gen X, couple of boomers here and there, but I don't see so many Gen alphas. But a good news is that we will talk a lot about this generation today. But let me kick us off with a little story, a short story. Imagine there is a 13-year-old girl actually on a beautiful Saturday morning sitting on a sofa browsing through her tablet and buying some items

6:21 in an online game. At the very same moment, right across the street, there is her grandma actually browsing the aisle of a local store, trying to find a perfect birthday gift for that granddaughter of hers. She's thinking about some nice sweater that will be of good quality that will serve the girl for a long period of time. So the young girl is hunting for fun and the grandma is shopping for quality. So two different generations and completely different perceptions of value. So the question is where is that value today? And one thing that is clear is that

7:07 there is no one single view on that. And if you go through any retail store these days, if you go into any online app, you will actually see a myriad, a plethora of completely different consumer groups shopping there. So let me start with Gen Alpha. This is in fact your future customer. Those are people, you know, still living with their parents. Um, they don't have much money. They get money from from their parents, but 60% of them actually already now views YouTube videos related to specifically shopping content. And a quarter of them

7:53 already owns a tablet or a similar device that helps them engage in shopping or content related to shopping. Then you have Gen Z, very interesting group, digitally native group. The group that actually starts just starts their career now and a lot of them already now is very proficient in using AI genai, you know, chat GPT and all that stuff in their shopping decisions. Then you've got millennials. So very pragmatic, very practical shoppers. shoppers that actually value health, wellness a lot. And then Gen X, people at the peak of their careers with the highest disposable incomes, people that value

8:40 trust, value reliability, and value brands. And finally, probably the most interesting group, the group that everybody, every brand loves to have are the boomers. Boomers are extremely brand loyal. Actually, in terms of grocery shopping, 76% of boomers tend to stick to the brands that actually they trust. And for apparel, this is 61%. So quite an interesting group to have among your consumers. So those differences are very visible. They are no longer theoretical. And I want to highlight just a few things that we expand a bit more in the report that you can that you can look at. Um we will talk about the approach to shopping and

9:27 fashion of those different generation. The rise of wellness and longevity trends and finally the eating and drinking habits that are also very different. So let me start with this approach to shopping. And what is really interesting looking at those youngest consumers is that they actually value a lot socializing and inspiration. And actually for half of them going for a shopping trip is indeed a team sport. So they prefer to shop together with their friends with the family members. And looking at Gen Z's also half of them admit that they love to splurge in spontaneous purchase once a month of apparel that just makes them feel

10:14 better. So again very exciting group to have among your consumers. And finally, the youngest ones, so gen alphas, the 10 to 15 year olds, they actually admit one/4 of them admits that they tend to visit stores without any specific shopping needs. So they just go there for fun. They go there to socialize. They go there to explore and to feel inspired. And it's also very clear that it's no longer a TV ad that they will see. It's no longer a billboard that will make them buy something. It's much more advice. It's much more recommendation. Recommendation from their friends, recommendation from a family member or recommendation from a

11:00 Tik Tocker or a YouTuber that is no longer a pusher of products for them in many cases is a trusted advisor on that shopping trip. And they get pretty creative in, you know, getting what they want. Because you might say h but you know Gen Alphas, Gen X, they don't have money. Well, they are very smart in actually getting that thing that they want. And one example here is the buy now pay later market. A market that in terms of transaction value is worth over $340 billion today. A market that is going to grow to $600 billion by uh 2030. And the market if

11:45 you look at the generational split of consumers is actually dominated by this young Gen Z consumers. And if they cannot get it new what they actually do is they get it secondhand. And secondhand market especially in fashion and apparel is actually booming these days. This is the market that is growing at 20% growth rate every year since last couple of years which is a spectacular growth rate if you think about this from the business terms. It's the market that is now valued over hundred billion dollars for apparel and fashion and most importantly it's a market that has transformed from you know it's no longer a savings method. It's no longer something to be shy. It's no longer a taboo topic. ly it's pretty cool to buy

12:32 secondhand. And then if you look at some of the numbers around Gen Z's, it's pretty fascinating that a third of them actually admit that they have bought something secondhand over the last 12 months and over 40% have sold something through various platforms or otherwise to the secondhand market to other users. So if you think about that from a perspective, what they are doing is they are treating their closets and wardrobes like a stock portfolio, trading it and curating it and keeping it up to date. And that brings us nicely to another trend that I wanted to flag and you can read more about that in the report which

13:18 is health and wellness. And if you look at the luxury market, we've we've done extensive analysis recently on the luxury goods uh spent among different generations, different consumers all over the world. And it's one very interesting thing. There is one specific category that actually grows the fastest that dwarfs all other categories. And while some time ago if you were thinking about the luxury items you might think about the Rolex watch or a Berkin bag, these days more and more especially for the older generation of consumers true luxury is simply living longer and better. And that category that is growing the fastest in terms of luxury market spend is actually wellness

14:04 and longevity treatments. The growth rates, both historical growth rates and forecasted growth rates, actually dwarfs by far any other items like jewelry, fine arts, cars, private club memberships, you name it. It's just by far the fastest growing segment. And if you look into that space and looking into younger generation, they clearly turned longevity into a lifestyle. a lifestyle that is powered by data devices and daily rituals. Actually over 80% of Gen Z's actually now admit that they use different type of wearables or digital tools to monitor their health status and 50% of them actually engages with those devices or

14:49 digital platforms at least weekly. But for me what is actually the most striking is the left hand side of this chart. So a third of gen alphas actually say that they actively seek ways to prolong their life to delay aging even though they are at the very beginning of their lives. The same as for for Jay-Z. That is pretty pretty shocking. And that health and wellness trends also translates very nicely into what they eat and drink. If you look at alcohol consumption, especially among young people, we see the clear trend of younger people actually drinking less and less alcohol. And you see proliferation of new products either no alcohol versions of whiskey, beers, wines um and also low alcohol products in many

15:36 cases products that have been brought to the market by actually completely new companies, companies created by influencers, by sports people. even have Luis Hamilton coming up recently with his own non-alcohol tequila which is actually I taste is pretty pretty good one. So it's clear that consumers are buying in a different way. But it's not only what they buy is changing, but also how. And clearly, and you can read a bit more about that in the report, AI has played a big role into that with over 50% of Gen Z's admitting that they've already used Chat GPT to assist their shopping decisions. And 80% of them of

16:22 those who use say that they are very happy with that and that helped them a lot. So that leads us to the question whether the future is that AI agents of customers will be negotiating and conducting transactions with AI agents of retailers or CPG brands. And when we talk to many companies in CPG space or in retail space, this is indeed the direction and this is indeed the future as companies are allocating more and more of their AI budgets to agentic solutions. So the time is uh over now so I will not get into more details. I encourage you to take a look at the report, read about all those different consumer groups and

17:07 what companies are doing to win with them and download the report from the Vogue website. And now I would like to spend some time um to discuss some of those um interesting observations with my great guests, panelists and I would love to welcome on stage graa is the CEO of groupness. Karen Martin CFO and chief transformationation officer of stock experience group. Agata Savitzka, director of brand communications from LPP and the man who needs no introductions, PHKI, CEO of PNP

17:53 Paribus. Welcome on stage, guys. Okay, so let me kick us off with the first uh question actually to to all of you. So, every generation has their own cliches, you know. So that Gen Z's are lazy or that boomers don't get tech at all. If you were to be honest, which of those generational stereotypes uh that you once believed could be true in your life actually proved to be completely wrong based on what you see? I don't know Karine, maybe you you you would like to start. >> Well, uh you know, I don't like stereotypes so much. So uh yeah, I think

18:39 the lazy and everything is really something that I profoundly dislike honestly. Um and it's really for me something that goes not just okay generations you have some traits some attitude but I think it depends really on what your values and you know also sometimes your gender your nationality not just your age. Uh I think >> okay Gina about yourself >> actually all cliche excuse my French is usually because you see uh you see many ideas that are circling around that this generation is doing this the other generation that's the boomers are boomers we are yeah or generation X that uh we actually used to drink a lot we were careless about fashion who does not

19:26 care about fashion anyway but uh it's all cliche but what is really important now that it's dramatically changing. We cannot say any kind of uh I would anyway dis disregard any kind of cliche about uh Gen Z or uh Gen Alpha that they are lazy because this is uh employee this is employers perspective that they don't want to work that they don't care about anything they care about environment so there are lots of cliches but the world is changing now at this kind of pace and speed that we have not seen it before and actually business has to adopt. So forget any cliche. It's still it's even more than than before. >> Thank you. A

20:11 >> I agree with you Graina definitely. But one that I wanted to share with you which I think is not uh true is uh from our business retail business is that Gen Z they shop online like we all do shop online and they also shop in physical stores the same as we do. They love to go to stores. They love to spend their time with their friends with their families to see the collections to try them on to spend time. So I think this is worth sharing. >> Mhm. I'm trying to make the banker's view. >> Yeah. From the banking perspective, the surprise was that Gen Z's despite the cliche are very similar to millennials.

20:58 They are conservative. They want to invest their money. They look for safe heavens. they actually need bank support to decide what to do and how to invest the funds. Actually, it's what's interesting is that uh 76% of Gen Z's are trying to save money for the future. 66% actually have savings and uh it's not different than in the case of millennials. So cliche doesn't work here. >> Mhm. >> Can I just add one? We know when you said lazy it into drink in the spirit industry, it made me uh think about how you're putting Jenzi with portable ready to drink uh spirits because it's really

21:46 what they want. So uh for instance, everything that is small like bus in US is just working so well with Gen Z because it's instantly Instagrammable. They can just single serve the cocktail. So for me this is how I would connect this laziness to the drinking habit. >> Yes. Making it easy. And Gra over to you now. Uh in the report uh actually it calls the retail as one space but actually many journeys for different customers and you know young shoppers tend to treat it more like the entertainment what Agata was saying that you know all of them are are are shopping in those physical locations while older ones were a bit more comfort clarity predictability in how they shop.

22:32 So how do you keep both groups happy because they use the same environment? How do you make this without turning your stores into, you know, nightclubs or retirement lounges? How how do you do that? Actually it's it's a very interesting question because uh from first the observations I fully agree with Agata that we can't forget any kind of really cliche on this generation is shopping online and the other is just needs physical uh physical stores because it's all about this touch and this feel and touch experience. It means that you can see something online and then you still want to want to touch it. Otherwise, you would never see any kind of 80 or 90% of

23:20 returns being like a kind of nightmare for e-commercees because then we can try everything at home. We can send it because it's this touch and feel experience which is missing from from e-commerce. But having said so uh physical stores are once uh are one thing but then even within the physical presence I'm not talking about I will park the e-commerce part for a moment but when you look at actually retailers even the luxury brand they have different approach for customers when you enter the store just take it uh take take this perspective they actually the shop assistants are being trained to approach differently different set of customers it's All of course about money. It means how much you can you can

24:05 afford. But still there is a completely set different set of uh uh of treatment and approach more relax more actually how can we help you instead of uh how much money do you do you want to uh spend in our store. And uh last uh from this about e-commerce, we've seen that even the brands that were usually not present in uh in online like Hermes or Dior or Chanel, they put all the luxury stuff including famous bags uh online. But it's done. It's done. It's gone. It's been this has changed. It means that there is this online experience which is fine but maybe for sar glasses

24:53 for clothing or something but there is the real luxury means you have to go to the physical store. So it's again this kind of uh of approach for e-commerce it's returns it's the comfort it's how you address your customer how actually you want to sell the the feeling without this touch real touch and feel experience. So this is the biggest challenge that we face at the moment. Thank you, Gna. And talking about money, Shik, over to you. You've shared some interesting insight about, you know, Gen Z's being similar, you know, to to to millennials, which is a bit counterintuitive. You clearly see how different generations handle money, you know, some chase yel, others chase meaning. Um, but for you, what is actually the biggest

25:38 surprise that you've seen, you know, among those different age groups? And in terms of how they use their money, you know, something that made you a seasoned banker actually stop and and think. That's a very good question. And you mentioned uh some investors chasing values. Actually this is one of the big surprise that that I've got that um even though the younger generations are very focused on culture and values that different companies represent especially when they think of them as potential employers. They are not that keen to look for such kind of value in the way they invest. In other words, if you've got impact investments where yield is

26:24 potentially not as attractive as in the case of more traditional ones, they are not as popular as I would have thought some time ago. So I see a certain paradox in that. At the same time for younger generations the values that the bank represents are important to choose that bank as a partner as opposed to somebody else. So uh notions like uh diversity, equity and inclusion uh ESG are truly important and for that reason are often times used to communicate with uh Gen Z's uh primarily. >> Mhm. And Agata actually you literally

27:10 have Gen Z's and Gen Alpha you know storming through your stores every single day. Um what was the most surprising to you and your team in terms of maybe focusing on this gen alpha how they shop your physical outlets specifically in 2025? Yes, that's also very interesting and uh we look closely into this because this is very important for us to understand those habits and I wanted to share with you from my perspective of uh brand communication and uh our retail what's the booming trend we observing now and this is the trend which is about the viral products because Gen Z and Gen Alpha they are

27:57 mostly um pre they they are still still on Tik Tok. They follow Tik Tockers. They look at Tik Tockers. And I brought this uh nice jacket with me to show you. This is a very nice uh piece from our collection from the beginning of the season. Nice color. Nice. >> Maybe this. He's already look I'm going to buy it later. >> I mean that's the problem. you will not be able because it's gone already. >> It's sold out. But you have one. >> Yeah. Yeah. For you >> second hand. >> So um so so the story is that suddenly we saw that the jacket was the selling of this jacket was like booming. So the

28:43 jacket was gone in two weeks. The total quantity and the regular lifetime of our products in sales is longer. So uh the story is that one of the content creators, she visited our store. She got in love with this piece. She videoed it and posted on Tik Tok and it was so you know appreciated. It was shared. It was liked. It was like customers, our clients were coming to the stores with our stores with the phones and asking for this particular product. So this viral trend is something that it's really important now we observe it and we have more and more products. This is for us also the compass of our

29:30 collections. Those products may be very different from the trendy ones for from the strong ones to very basic ones. And this is the I mean if you want as a brand to understand uh Gen Alpha and young adults, young Gen Z, you need to understand where they are, where they source their inspirations from. >> Yes. And Karine, I bet that every CFO would dream about such products being, you know, sold out, you know, in a viral way without, you know, the company even realizing. So Karen, over to you. a question on actually on the spirits market and alcohol market. As I mentioned in the presentation, the younger generation drink less alcohol recently with those trends. Um, but they

30:18 still want flavor. They want this function, you know, of the of the drink. You have proliferation of, you know, no alcohol but also low alcohol products. You even have Luis Hamilton with his own tequila brand, Almava. I actually tried it. This is really, really good one. three different variants of the product. How do you see that trend uh actually uh developing and you know what do you see this as the impact of that to your company? Is that a threat to the spirits producers or maybe this is one of the most exciting innovation opportunities that the industry has had for for years. So for us it's exciting opportunities definitely uh when you say young generation we actually see that in Europe the consumption is not so

31:05 different between Jenzi and millennials but in US and UK it is so jenz actually consume more but la alcohol ready to drink they go for limited edition uh so for instance for us we are launching lots of exclusivity with japka in Poland with shorti so for Halloween we will have a trick and It's a limited edition. So we hope it will sell out as you said fast. Uh and we see that uh in our industry we are uh offering lower ABV so degree of alcohol constantly but we will not play in the no uh the no alcohol is more for soda uh brands and soft drinks to to play. Uh for us we go for natural

31:50 experience fruits, no additives versus abstinence if you wish. >> So calorie and the health and wellness lifestyle. >> Yes. Exactly. >> Okay. Now I want to ask you about the recommendations. So the report also talks about it that those younger generations actually shop much more based on what their friends recommend, what they see on the Tik Tok, you know, what the influencers are recommending uh them. So, how does the retail industry actually react to that? Are you actually building communities or friend networks instead of loyalty cards and loyalty programs? And how do you make people feel that they actually belong to some some group not only buy the product? >> It's it's all about being recognized. So

32:36 the recognition part place is the more and more um more important actually what Karen and and Agata and Chem mentioned that now the young customers what they look at is the the main source of information is social media. So forget Facebook now it's Instagram and more and more is Tik Tok. So your jacket is not the only story that you know it's something that I want to have something that somebody else does not have. It it may not have to it doesn't have to be very expensive but it has to be different. So it's first point differentiation. Second is that unfortunately all the strengths how to sell something how to communicate to customers how to bring the customers to our stores physical or uh or online cost

33:23 us more and more money. So all the CSOS in this world really start to hate actually Chinese because they are spending more and more money on advertising. Look at the Google ads. Look what is going on with Meta. How much we have to spend to attract the same amount of traffic to our stores. So it's getting more and more expensive. Uh on the other hand we have fast fashion which has nothing to do with ESG with differentiation with something but still they want to look like differently every every day. So um it's a very fascinating time for retailers. It means that try to make shorter lines, bigger choice. Still thinking about how to pack it in this

34:10 ESG environment friendly polyester like stuff. Uh but still it's all about idea. How to sell this idea? Drinks is one thing. Clothes is the second. It's about matching expectation at a more and more unfortunately in a more expensive way and expensive world. I mean marketing expense wise but still it's all about being different and how to address this how to pamper the customer that yes you are buying something but we give you an experience we give you something that you have seen on Tik Tok or some Tik Tok or or someone else uh so you will get it. If not this one then we'll you will have another jacket or whatever it will be the same

34:57 successful. So it's like it's differentiation which is damn difficult stuff to to actually to handle. >> And before I ask the last question maybe Shak over to you you know trust used to mean the family banker and now it might be a tick tocker with you know financial advice and the ring light you know. So my question is what other industries can learn from the banking in terms of staying credible in the times when everybody can become an expert in the field. I'm afraid that banks are perceived differently than retailers. We are treated as utility by younger generations. Uh people want to spend as little time on banking issues as

35:45 possible. They do not want to visit our branches no matter how nice they look because touch and feel doesn't exist in our business. So the exclusive communication channel is debunking up and it's got to be simple, seamless, easy to use, very intuitive. And if you manage to put very simple advice in your app that young people can look at, you stand a chance that they will not follow adviceuh posted by someone on Tik Tok. The comforting element is that despite the age, they are conservative. They don't want to do crazy things with their money. They may test and learn with small amounts playing with

36:31 cryptocurrencies for instance but by and large they are not getting completely nuts and as I said before they think about their future in terms of savings. >> Yeah. So the last question to all of you if you were to give yourself your younger self actually a piece of advice about working across generations what would that be? Karen maybe starting with with with yourself. Um maybe to uh to observe and listen u be the best way. >> Thank you president. >> Listen for sure and learn. Uh look at all the tools that are now a available now. Everybody is talking about AI and not many people are actually

37:17 understanding what kind of support it gives to to you in our personal uh business life. Look at purple perplexology for example or beautiful AI or whatever all the tools that that you can you can use on daily basis to facilitate your your life. So and facilitate the business as well. So look, learn and act fast even faster than uh than than before. Uh last but not least all the apps it's all about looking at what uh what the the stock that we are looking for or the item that we are looking for is available. Uh so it's like easy to go easy to come. What Sheck just mentioned is I try to recall when was the last time that I really go that I went to the bank.

38:03 >> Uh you're very personal. >> Thank you. It's it's just I don't need it. I've got my app. If I have to call the bank, it means that there is something wrong with them, not with me. Yeah. So, it's it's like it's >> never happens. Yeah. >> Never happens. So, act fast, learn, and use the tools that are available. >> I get that. >> Yes. I think what uh it's all very important what you said, but also from my perspective, I think it's top important to be real. to be real to stay in touch with you know what is surrounding you with your audience to in these times when AI and all these technical things are digital things are around us and it will not change so not forget about this human touch I think

38:48 it's stop important >> very hard to add anything I would say test and learn try out new things act fast but also with courage uh and very carefully listen to the feedback and react upon it. >> Thank you. Thank you very much for an interesting and inspiring discussion. And now time to move on to the next panel. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. [Music]

39:41 I open up today speaking of chaos but also speaking of change and in fact chaos can be a catalyst for change. Creativity thrives in turbulence in those moments when old certainties collapse and the new possibilities begin to shape. And today we're here to explore that space in between um when crisis becomes transformation. And there's really no better person to guide us through it than Levie Edelcourt, a visionary who has spent decades reading the cultural undercurrens that shape our world and

40:27 helping us make sense of it. Lee, the stage is yours. Hi, good morning. Very nice to be here. Beautiful autumn weather, amazing crowd, great breakfast, um, and the great disruption. This is the seam of the day somehow. So this presentation which is um prepared for the current times we live

41:14 in um is exactly what I want to share with you because it has many of the ingredients of where we are today. What are the issues? What will be maybe the followup and what needs to be addressed. The first uh story is the great migration. The great migration was bound to happen and the pandemic has brought it earlier to our doorstep. People have been moving out of big cities to smaller cities, secondary cities, even villages. people have bought first country houses which then become their major um uh address and they take

42:01 smaller apartments in the city. So we see a move away from urban life towards a life which is um a strange mixture of urban and rural because the people who come from the urban environment to the rural life. They don't become farmers overnight. They are actually very sophisticated but they surround themselves in a new way with uh merchandise, with fashion, with um furniture and it's a real emancipation because people are going to choose more for their own lifestyle. It's less um sort of governed by the rules of the city and it has a greater liberty of

42:48 interpretation I think. So there is this ease in this life which is more uh connected to the outdoors often even in the smaller cities often they are more green. It means that it's a consumer which is very conscious of of nature because they live more close to nature and therefore also of merchandise. There is a very um important notion of the handmade, the macra, the handmade spoons. There is a spoon trend. I see spoons everywhere and uh maybe because we want to spoon. Um the interiors are therefore a sort of strange mix between a barn and a loft.

43:37 And you see that the materials are rustic but also very sophisticated. Velvet is making a very important comeback, but it doesn't look very shiny. It's more decayed. This presentation is a mix of lifestyle and fashion as you see. So to give you a a great insight of where we are today, we do need differentiation. So there is a lot of um collecting going on where people are buying more of one thing instead of very different things. So there is focus but as well as differentiation. The fathering is a very old trend in the in the meantime maybe 15 years but it's

44:25 still growing and we see fathers being more concerned with babies than mothers. um often pushing their girlfriends to have babies earlier and they are really at the the head of the family at home. Here of course colors are very neutral and soft. Sky blue is going to have a very important future for some reason. Um maybe because it's a color which gives hope and which opens the universe. Just think about sky blue in the future. Blue in general. So these whole households are living with bigger families and friends, sort of extended families.

45:11 The kitchen is still the super important domain as you know. It's not going to disappear. And there is this um fun mix of being at once, you know, conventional but also a bit eccentric since you're living in the country. It is a very easy way of being a very easy sort of wraparound lifestyle. Then there is the great resignation when we saw um from co on that people wanted to work often at home choose jobs which they are auto generating.

45:57 Now of course we go back to the offices but we are still much more free than we used to be before and this is modifying the way we live. Obviously there is a greater freedom in dress, a greater freedom in house. We are nexing annexating parts of the house to work. You work everywhere. You work in the kitchen, you work in the bedroom, you work on the floor, but you do have space reserved to do this. It's a very uh casual but chic situation suddenly in soft color materials and what is very important is the arrival of work wear which is really from um from labor. So

46:45 it's labor which is sophisticated now as fashion. And this is a category, a new category which will grow exponentially in the future. There's the jugar position of life and work. Even in the office, there is the idea of the interchangeable life with kids. Um, I saw the panel with the young people of today, but I'm super fascinated by the youngest kids because they seem to me a very new generation, almost something I've never seen. They're very uh mature. They're very uh entrepreneurial.

47:30 They're very concerned with the planet. They are they seem to be other people. uh I wrote an article about it that maybe there are the indigo kits which we are expecting for so long. It is a fluid way of dressing. So that is very interesting because it's tailoring and fluidity at the same time. It's maybe almost like an homage um to Armani when he started to do this. But it's coming back now and in the recent fashion shows we have seen this fluidity um in on all runways. So it's a life which is functional as well as gentle to us with very soft

48:18 neutral colors and neutral materials and fathers taking care of the family and babies and a sort of house which is very systematic. So you can easily go to work, come back, work at home, work at night. sleep in the morning and so on. So it's we are making our life easier by creating systems. Then there is the great isolation. At first it was a personal choice to remain celibate but now it has become a social dilemma to reckon with since people no longer know how to connect and

49:04 be together. This isolation is manifested in the growth of single units, portions, and products that are designed for educated and creative individuals that spend more time and money on their environment than an average family. This slide says it all. Very elegant, very poised, very lonely. So this is a new part of society where people are alone, sometimes very lonely, often so lonely that they cannot live anymore. So it's almost therefore a a romantic time frame.

49:52 There's this idea of seclusion. But what it also does, it makes that all the merchandise, all the objects and the fashions and the animals and so on are very specifically uh chosen. So it is it is bringing up the quality of products in general. It is asking a very simplified easy way of dressing. It's very introspective. Obviously, lots of scarves. As you know, there is the importance of layering somehow to feel better in your body. So,

50:37 you will have the different layers of garments visibly. This is going to be a major super trend in all categories for the future. It is the influence of the row for instance in its minimalism in its simplicity. Here we have neutral colors including light brown. It's the comeback of percolation. It's a part of the lifestyle of these people is very analog. They like to play cards. They like to play games. They real games. They um read. They're going to back to libraries.

51:24 There's the correlation between day and night. The contemplation of the very sober table settings. The objectification objects are very important here and seen as objects of collection and very interesting um fashions which are sometimes inspired by history. Very important new ways of tailoring. This is a very difficult problem. this loneliness and um we need to address it as a society because it's getting worse

52:10 almost every other day. Young people don't know how to flirt. They don't know how to look at each other. Older people are no longer interested in sex. And so there is a whole regression of societal things which we need to uh somehow rekindle because we have lost um all traditions. We don't have church. We don't have family. We don't have belief systems. We don't have celebrations. We don't have rituals. And this is why society at large is becoming more conventional because we need to hold on to something. So it explains the current political situation also. It's the drama of the loss of tradition.

52:57 Then we have the great medication. We just learned this morning that well-being is such a big investment area. So society is spinning out of control and the accumulation of uncsurmountable problems brings people to to their knees. The breaking news cycles spell out terror and spread fear and have made society sick to the core. The focus on mental health and physical wellbeing is therefore overpowering and the economies of healing are predicting superlative gains for the near future. So this has its influence again on design and lifestyle where it's part of our interiors but also part of um service industry is um

53:46 quasi medical or medical. It's waiting for salvation and as you know the well-being um pharmaceuticals are myriad and becoming more and more important. There's this idea of uh in design of hospitalization where furniture and footwear look like nurses nurse. There's this idea of the fortification of men by giving uh wellness treatments. There is this idea of um objects which look escaped from the pharmacy and re

54:32 redesigned. There's a very um easy style of dress which is like a hospital or a um clinic type of clothes almost close to pajama if you want pajama in kimono and slippers. There's a lot of drawstrings. There's a lot of ribbons and strings. It's very easy. It's pull on stuff. And a lot of shapes are circular and oval. Then we have the great generation because there's hope. At one of the first anti-gun activist

55:18 assemblies, the great granddaughter of Martin Luther King, eight years old then, declared that we are the great generation. And she said, "We will clean up the planet. We will clean up your mess. we are going to do it and we will want to get rid of guns. And this message has stuck and is now motivating a whole generation which is living in this fragmented world completely um flabbergasted by the the amount of problems which are put on their shoulders. uh and therefore they are often activist and use proclamations uh of a very new order.

56:04 They have a precipitation towards nature. They use nature. They think nature. They um know that they are the same as their trees. They know that they're no longer the center of the world, but that they are actually somewhere maybe even in the periphery and that we together with all other species are the new ecosystem. We need to understand pollination of ideas is structural today. It is not just something of the northern hemisphere. It's also very alive even more so in the southern hemisphere and

56:50 we forget about it constantly but they're very important factor for the future. It's um generation which is born with compassion for animals for the other for those who are lost for little plants. They love to work with plant material. They are interested in a in fermentation and the restruction of materials. Yesterday I had a very interesting interview with one of your journalist and we spoke about recycling and in fact we discovered that it's such an old-fashioned word in that uh also

57:38 the idea of recycling is asking for more. It's just saying since we can recycle, you can make, you can produce, which is maybe not what we should say. And we say we also um we're rethinking the the idea of sustainability. And the word says, you know, we want to sustain what we have. We want to sustain where we are, which is no longer possible. So in fact, the word is obsolate because we need to do less. If we want to make it, if we want to survive, we cannot sustain. We have to retract. So it's it's a very different issue by now. Beautiful natural colors here.

58:26 They they um they live what they believe in their fashion in the way or in their lifestyle. They have the notion of amplification of their messages. And there is a lot of um aprons in their wardrobe. And I was very happy to see that uh um Mucha Prada in Mumu gave us only aprons endorsing the idea of work wear. Then there's the great intuition which is uh the role of reason and binary thinking have been attacked from all sides written about in multiple publications and in general associated with old age

59:12 white males and toxic behavior patterns. The overwhelming strength of brain produced content is suddenly scattering and making place for gut feelings connecting the physical form of the brains with those of our intestines. This is about the handmade, the crafted, the unique, the outsider art, the new vision, the unique piece. And it's really uh the human I think uh it's the hand but it's especially the human and the compassion which is um behind this um with Philip we were in uh in this

59:59 summer we did a conference for a big American group and uh the leading idea we had is to tell them that we need more generosity. We need more generosity in the making process. Therefore, we need more time in the making process. So, it's the evocation of um other um ancestral ideas. It's the importance of basketry which will overwhelm I think the design world. It's the working with earth and the working with grass. in a very sophisticated way, in a surreal way, sometimes in definitely in new design, in very

1:00:47 avanguard propositions, in um sometimes coutur is very interested in the handmade and in the crafted as we have seen just two weeks ago. The imagination is at work and it's very sort of fantastic that we are witnessing this return where all the materials from earth and textile come together. It's a beautiful um textiled driven idea with amazing colors and a lot of um original ways of producing such as um

1:01:34 stamping patterns and so on. The great fascination is what we feel when we think about the past because we need nostalgia to be here today. And it's really uh the Bloomsbury period the beginning of last century which is um interesting us in the in the fact that there is much more um art going on much more personification much more color scattered yes but brought together again absolutely design driven pattern driven pattern panic almost the profusion of

1:02:21 material here is important again this idea of collecting the one thing instead of having many different things we look for the exception composition here is major in the making of textile of fashion of art of embroidery of this is an amazing artist Florence Hutchings. I discovered this is I think the vitality of today which is very close to home. She's just painting you know her chairs but it it it really makes you happy these type of works. It's imprecise because it's often randomly made like the table is made by

1:03:08 an old uh robot arm. It's therefore abstract. Weaving is a super important new domain. Textile in general, especially also fiber art is back in galleries and museums. Very much a Polish thing as you know. Beautiful um sort of medium bright colors. Yeah. And sort of a a cloud of fantasy almost. The great veneration in troubled times the past always seems more beautiful than the present. The contemplation of splendid ornaments shrouds the senses and helpers to forget the current overro climate if only for a

1:03:56 moment. Melancholy awakens memories and tins people's experiences. Here we want to be bookish maybe Bloomsberish definitely clothes are inspired uh by the beginning of last century as this apron type garment. There's the reverberation of the past and the reverberation of material. There is opulence. There is choice. There is the importance of tradition and archival finds. Archives are on everybody's minds at this point. Here the colors are more unique and bizarre.

1:04:44 The textiles are very outspoken and taken from archives. It's we are looking for the dimension of things. Everything tends to want to be three-dimensionally. Sometimes with 3D printing, sometimes with handmade things. There is the return of inlay which is a very old technique. Very beautiful finishes today. Magnificent. Everything is made more beautiful. But it's not so glamorous. It's quite um sort of contained the beautiful finish of the fortuni dresses

1:05:31 with this beautiful buttons in glass. I'm working on my new color card. Everything is about habeddashery and buttons are the great great hero of that book. The return of buttons. There is um the use of old textiles to make new garments which is a very important tendency in the vintage world and we see this happen um in Bria constellation. So things are pulled together in a very free way. Then the great celebration. Against all odds and even against the tidegeist, some people need to express

1:06:18 their disorientation by dancing, dining and drinking, celebrating what is left of their beautiful lives. They want to shed all worries in a bachanal of beauty. It's okay. We need to repose our mind. There is a lot of um in pattern and in lighting there's a lot of research for constellations as we see here. So it's uh it's to come back a bit of the mo mobile even in the ear pieces are also like mobiles. Very interesting jewelry. Jewelry also sort of in the house. Jewelry of furniture. Again this idea of

1:07:06 inlay and the ubilation of making things ordinary things more beautiful by just a velvet color and a golden ribbon. uh a lot of the materials are decayed and uh galvanized and of course gold is here the most important aspect and yes um my trend book for 2000 was a golden book and I told my audience then to invest in gold year 2000 so this was a year before 2000 and I didn't listen to myself unfortunately itely otherwise I wouldn't even be here I

1:07:52 guess uh there is this radiant beauty there is um of course the cosmetic industry is very much happy with these tendencies of the glamorization of material of finish of shape of abundance a lot of bronze is becoming important and for some reason I have not yet understood. There is a lot of scallops. So there's many scallops everywhere in all materials and all objects. As we said, a beautiful um bronze treatments. Patination of material is the key word

1:08:38 here. Then we have the great radicalization. Every so often, a new design direction emerges out of nowhere, reaching critical mass in record time because several designers feel the same creative urge. In this case, it is radical reversal from all war materials to metals and other robust materials almost brutalist. So there is a sudden disorientation because it's something which is not as organic and therefore sort of postindustrial almost and there is the forging of this metals so they look very handmade also

1:09:27 using them in lightning. There's this idea of improvisation with this amazing table. I love this table which is having wood and metal and glass and mixing this all in very free compositions. And the same free compositions we see them in interior, in objects, in art and in fashion with very new ways of composing your wardrobe. Just maybe picking out old stuff from your wardrobe, cutting it and pulling it together. There is even the revival of hoops which is also metal driven in lots of fashion at this point. So the dresses and the

1:10:13 skirts they have interior metal uh structures. Here again we look at the oxidation of materials but more rusted. It's sometimes materials are worn and broken and we want to repair them like secretization. It's the impulsion to make very linear design very symbolic and sharp dark. And this brings again and more important here the idea of work wear which is a new category as I already mentioned

1:10:59 then o there's also romance the great romantization and we need this romantization because after all I told you there is a lot of things to um stomach and because we have so many things to stomach we need the yeah the ease These are the beauty delivering beauty to despair. Finding desire in desolation and bringing poetry to political life has influenced several fashion designers for more than a decade and will finally also impact our dwellings. Making house with a swirling vibe of sculpted furniture and decorative textiles.

1:11:47 So here we assist to a society where everything is worked. Her little hair things, her little plron, her teacups, her teapot, everything has motif. But it's still very silent and minimal. It's not just female. It's definitely also male. Maybe even more interesting on males today than it is on girls. So it's the feminization of society which is irreversible even if we sometimes think it's not. Um it is I think because men have become these fathers

1:12:33 they know about the future and they know that they want to hold on to what they have and therefore they have allowed the more feminine part of themselves to come to the four. It's a very good social trend. There is this need for ornamentation which is sometimes natural but sometimes it's also sculptural or even 3D printed. We use all different technologies together in hybrid situations as these plates which are definitely um serial products but they look unique. So

1:13:20 there is sort of balance between the unique and the serial. What I like in the picture on the left is that she is intellectual as well as romantic. There is this uh need to use old vintage fabrics which we see everywhere in fashion in interiors. There's a comeback of um the making of the ladies making like embroidery crochet and so on. It can be very contemporary um strangely sort of taking folklore elements and bringing them to our daily life. This is another Polish thing I know which somebody could really explore

1:14:07 in your country. It's compulsive the way we want to layer all these different work, all these different elements together as one, different materials such as um wear and metallic or different embellishments. It's the amalgamation of materials to bring different um yeah different fabrics. This is by Wit. He is working in London and he has people all over the world who are scouting old p bits and pieces of antique fabrics and then he makes that into this beautiful jackets.

1:14:54 We see the same in the light where do you see the collage of materials. It can be um very wild and creative and a bit disruptive because these trends will have a a big impact also on young people and they don't take this seriously. They sort of disrupt um the message. It's um overload of beauty, you could say like super sugary playing with whites and off-whites in immodderation. Everything is immodderate because it works only because there is a lot. And then finally,

1:15:40 the great animation. For some young audiences, the dire times we live in are so oppressive that they feel the need to divert to another planet, a place of whimsical fantasy where everything is possible and life can be invented from scratch. Living as an avatar, which means changing constantly to collect enough likes, one can step out of reality into illusion, embracing a virtual bubble. It's a form of escap es escapism which leads to eccentricity. It's very nerdy as you can see. Uh I could not find more nerdy than him.

1:16:26 Um and it's also bizarre because suddenly these objects they come from another planet but they are in this world we live in which is between urban and rural. So how does that work? It works and it's uh it's very interesting because it's cartoonish in its uh rendering. It's the compilation of objects all very sort of um pot sort of fat design. A lot of papia mâe since uh we have been in the lockdown people had no materials so they started to use paper and this has brought now a big big array of furniture and objects

1:17:12 which are made out of papia mâe. It's a big big tendency. So this is the cyber nation where people live um in several worlds at the same time and they um dress the part and they um invent new shapes, new materials. Again collage is collage is all through this presentation. Present accumulation illustration again pap very cute cute cute cute things um Asian things it's um the acidulation of um of colors

1:17:59 and it's definitely the fluidity and um sort of elasticity of uh design and material there's humor There's fun, there is hope, there is derision. Again, the sky blue. There is a lot of three dimension as we've seen everywhere. So the fingers are so afraid to become smaller and smaller because we only touch screens. So we are leave we are sort of afraid that we cannot touch anymore and therefore everybody working in materialization is making materials tactile. Everything soap, dishwasher,

1:18:46 plastic bottles, uh paper, anything we touch has much more touch today than it used to have before. And this is a real need we have because we are sort of on the edge of losing our real selves and therefore uh some very important analog ideas are coming back. It's the pixelization of materials. So there's also the hybrid materials using 3D. And finally this is my last slide. This is also sweet and tender and young and fresh and hopeful uh after all because

1:19:34 after all this discussion I have to share with you that I'm mildly optimistic about the future. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That is incredible. It's amazing to see, you know, that there's so much intense behind every object that we surround ourselves by. Um, I want to invite I see that there's some commotion, but I want to invite all the people that are standing. We have a lot of uh seats for you to sit in the middle and I wouldn't miss the next session. Um, I don't need to tell you that the luxury sector is having a

1:20:19 moment of reckoning. We've all seen the headlines of labor scandals uh and the plunging stocks of the major fashion groups. With the rise of dupe culture and growing push back on prices, heritage brands are being forced to rethink what true value really means. To explore these shifts, we have Astrid Venland, the founder and editor-inchief of Miss Sweets, in conversation with Camila Vagner. [Music]

1:21:04 >> Hello. >> Good morning. Oh, it's going to be hard to skip from this poetic calming energy of this presentation to our uh crisis topic. But to start uh I would like you as to describe your enterprise the mist tweet and your journey as an independent journalist just to give our listeners a little bit of context. >> Great. First I want to say I'm very happy to be here. It's my first time in Poland. uh my first day and uh it's the first time therefore that I talk about mistweed to the Polish audience. So it's a moving moment. Um you have in front of you um a dinosaur. I may look good as a dinosaur, but I am a dinosaur because I

1:21:51 am a real journalist. I'm uh a species about to be extinct. I founded my >> Sorry, >> don't say that. New dinosaurs. It's true. Um, >> uh, I founded Mist Tweed as a way to make real journalism survive. I believe in fair, accurate, balanced reporting. I believe in factchecking. I believe in giving the other side a chance to reply. And Mistweed is an independent media. Uh, we have no advertising. So, it means we can write absolutely everything we want, which is what many journalists dream about but cannot. And I founded Miss Tweed in lockdown in 2020. Great

1:22:37 time to launch a business because um uh against the odds everybody thought the world was ending. Great time to launch misweed also because people had a lot of time to talk. They were lock in their house. So they could talk about Rishmo LVMH caring everything that was happening. Um and also I think the business of fashion and luxury has become one of the main pillars of the global economy for France where I live in Paris it's a very significant portion of employment of GDP but also of soft power you know people know France thanks to Chanel thanks to Salaron much more than thanks to alto orus right so um I

1:23:24 think luxury needed a bit like a democracy, a media to hold it to account and um we see uh many groups try to control. I wear the badge of honor of being personally blacklisted by Mr. Bernahu and by Mr. Johan Rupert. I'm very proud of this took years. It took years and uh but it means that I have no access sometimes to fashion shows. It means that uh you know I'm organizing a summit in Oman. They say oh we cannot send you speakers. So it means that I have to work with uh people who are not listed with other brands. So it's not uh not easy. But my readers are

1:24:09 uh the investment community a lot you know uh Wall Street analysts but all the CEOs read misweed. All of them. I know because I have their mobile number and their email. So and and just um to say that I think uh mistweed uh not only is becoming more and more prescriptive but I think in our modest measure we are encouraging freedom of speech but responsible freedom of speech because I think today in social media everybody thinks they can be a journalist. Everybody has an opinion and everybody expresses their opinion and mistweed is encouraging freedom of speech but I think in a responsible manner. You cannot write

1:24:55 anything. You have to really put a filter and I feel that many people don't have any filter at all. They just write any rubbish and that's why people read me because there is so much sorry but rubbish around that your time is the ultimate luxury and my readers they have uh my newsletter only once a week and it's this little rendevu that we do. Uh yeah, but I guess all those voices speaking loudly expressively lately about fashion is also the sign of the commitment and wanting a change among the crisis that I wanted to talk to you about actually. Do you believe the what we call luxury crisis actually exists? Is it real thing?

1:25:42 I think we are going through a moment of deep change and I think um I think it's uh more of a crisis it's an evolution. I think uh there is an evolution in what make us dream and how we want to dress. The reason why I love fashion deeply is because I think fashion is a reflection of our society. And therefore what you see happening in fashion is a mirror. You know designers they have long antennas and they express what they feel like artists. And um I think that right now people are changing the way they buy. They try to buy less, they try to buy better. I think brands need to

1:26:31 really refresh their narrative and they're working on this but it's taking too long because they're are big big multinational companies now and it takes about 20 meetings before anything is decided and I think that right now um brands need to really think about how to inject authenticity uh originality and I must say the last fashion season in Paris was super encouraging because we had new designers Jonathan Anderson at Dior um Matthew Blazy at Chanel which frankly was the most applauded show ever. I mean Chanel, you know, was rejuvenated by about 30

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