Paris And Milan Fashion Weeks to be Held Virtually

Due to the current pandemic, many shows, events have been either cancelled or postponed to a later date. This situation has financially affected many luxury fashion-houses.

Many prominent fashion shows such as Paris, Milan and London Fashion Weeks were cancelled earlier this summer due to the pandemic. This has caused huge financial losses and to avoid this in the future the organizers have decided to make the best use of digital platforms to showcase their collections. Paris is considered to be the hub of global fashion and London is definitely a powerhouse when it comes to fashion as well as money. The luxury life in Milan is definitely one of the best ones in Europe.

Paris Fashion Week is set to take place in a virtually from July 9 to 13 as per Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Milan and London Fashion Weeks have also joined the club by conducting their events in video format and it is scheduled from July 14 to 17 and July 12 to 14 respectively.

Milan Fashion Week will be virtually displaying their spring/summer 2021 collection from July 14 to 17, but as per The Giorgio Armani Group, Milan Fashion Week’s men’s collection will be held in September and it will be a regular fashion week with limited physical audience but with majestic grandeur.

Analysis

Hosting a virtual fashion show will undoubtedly help the designers and luxury brands to showcase their collections but can be a costly affair. In the virtual fashion weeks, the fashion brands will showcase their autumn/winter and spring/summer collections using catwalk models. People will get a chance to buy these only after 6 months or so and in this span of 6 months or more, the desire to purchase often gets withered away. 

Necessity is the mother of all innovations therefore brands can capitalize on this opportunity by using the ‘See Now, Buy Now’ model. ‘See now, buy now’ can be called as a disruptive business model because it promises the customers that they can buy their preferred garment instantly when they see them on the designer catwalk show. This model was first implemented by Burberry in the September 2016, for their spring/summer 2017 fashion shows. This model uses the momentary desire of the attendees to grow steadily and convert into purchasing decision; this is the reason why ‘See now, buy now’ results in higher sales.

This model is a great driving force for attracting the Gen Z customers by satisfying their instant gratification that ‘I want it now’.  This model will be ideal for the present pandemic struck market because it helps a brand to achieve its short-term sales targets. It also generates a higher price tag for luxury fashion apparels by creating a hypothetical scarcity.

This is also an opportunity for top Luxury digital platforms to reap the benefits of ‘See now, buy now’ model in various fashion weeks and help retailers to achieve their financial objectives.

There are two main limitations in this model, the first one is that there is no surety that the customer will desire to buy it when he/she sees it , the second one being that the supply chain analytics may not be accurate enough so the company may not be able to react to excess demand (where they don’t have accurate amount of stock) and on the other hand they may also suffer from excess stock where they are unable to attract customer’s eye.