Future of Fashion: the retail industry of tomorrow
Fashion, by definition, is always changing. It’s an industry that needs to keep moving to survive. Collections come and go with the seasons, bringing with them a fresh wave of trends that may lose their allure by the coming year. But in recent years, more than ever, the industry has stepped up a gear.
There has been a seismic shift in the industry recently, brought on, among other things, by technological advancements and increasing pressure from consumers for improved transparency and higher social and ecological standards.
In this long-form series, FashionUnited will be taking a closer look at the different sections of the fashion industry - from sourcing to designing, manufacturing to retail - observing the way the sector as a whole is evolving and, more importantly, where it is headed. This is the first chapter of a series.
Digital fashion collections, experiential retail, 3D printed garments, trend-predicting AI, robots, and an ever-growing awareness towards social and environmental issues. The fashion industry is changing fast. Turn away and you might miss it.
The UK retail industry is facing a prolonged period of difficulty. It seems we can’t go a week these days without hearing about another British brand falling into administration or another broken record for lowest footfall on the country’s ailing high streets. The UK lost 70,000 retail jobs in the final months of 2018 according to the British Retail Consortium, while research compiled by the Local Data Company (LDC) revealed that the high street suffered an historic loss of 2,481 stores in 2018, up from 1,772 in 2017.
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