Category: Fast fashion

  • AllSaints Founder: The World Cannot Afford Fast Fashion

    Stuart Trevor is the Founder of AllSaints and STUART TREVOR, his eponymous sustainable fashion brand that launched in 2023. He joins Natalie to talk about why he decided to launch a clothing brand that doesn’t produce any new clothes.

    They discuss:

    • What inspired Stuart’s move into sustainable fashion.
    • A founder’s vision and being clear on what makes your brand special: AllSaints was a success in part because “there was nothing else like it”.
    • Why longevity, not price, is the key to unlocking value in apparel.
    • Which high street brands are the biggest offenders when it comes to UK clothing waste?
    • Demand coming from LA consumers after the wildfires.
    • The importance of authenticity when launching a fashion brand.
    • Why Stuart has a problem with M&S pants.

    Bio:

    Stuart Trevor started his career as a fashion design student in 1985, aged 19 won the Smirnoff Fashion Awards at the Royal Albert Hall and became the first ever designer and buyer for REISS. 

    Aged 28, he founded AllSaints. Many of the clothes that feature each week in the top 10 bestseller list of the high street brand today were designed by Trevor over 20 years ago.

    ‘AllSaints was my baby, I created that look from scratch, all inspired by my teenage years. That best selling biker jacket started out as a vintage find, the ramskull was my first logo design, a cross between my love of animals, pirates and punk rock and it took over the world!’

    ‘Inspired by a childhood obsession with Bowie, Kate Bush & Adam Ant, customising hand me down clothes gifted from my mother’s church friends. I learned to sew at 9 years old in Dundee, my ambition from very early days was to create the world’s greatest rock n roll brand. I’m still on that mission and I’m determined to make it happen’ 

    ‘Now I want to create something that brings the same joy, even more pleasure to people whilst doing what’s right for our planet’

    Trevor started customising vintage finds, then began creating small quantities of reworked outerwear in limited edition from a small factory in East London. 

    ‘People want to have more fun, rediscover the magic of fashion, buy clothes that will last, that have the smallest possible environmental impact. We make this possible.’

    The first STUART TREVOR collection was shown at an exclusive launch party during London Fashion Week on 15 September 2023. It was a huge success with over 750 people from all across the world turning up, hanging out and sharing their favourite thoughts about sustainability, music, art, fashion, design and culture. 

    We’re mentoring the youth of today with a similar passion for the future of fashion – we’re not going to change our love of fashion and design, we’re determined to change how we affect the planet by creating a better world.

    It doesn’t get much more sustainable than this!

    Links:

    STUART TREVOR

    Retail Technology Show

     

    Find out more about the Retail Disrupted Podcast by visiting retaildisrupted.com

  • Ikea Roblox, Walmart Drones & AI Update, Pretty Little Thing Charging for Returns

    The interview from this episode originally aired on The Globalist from Monocle Radio. Natalie discusses the latest global retail stories with Georgina Godwin:

    • Ikea’s Roblox venture: the launch of a virtual store and how Ikea has become the first brand to offer paid work on the gaming platform.
    • Walmart’s tech update: innovation in delivery – drones and at-home delivery – and the beta launch of a generative AI-powered shopping assistant.
    • Pretty Little Thing becomes the latest UK retailer to start charging for returns.

    You can listen to the original episode of The Globalist Episode 3352.

  • Goodbye Free Returns. It’s Been Costly.

    H&M is the latest fashion retailer to start charging shoppers for online returns. Jonathan De Mello, Founder & CEO at JDM Retail, joins Natalie to explore whether the days of free returns are really over. Why has bracketing (ie. buy 5 items, return 4) become normalised? Hint: retailers, you created a monster. And will charging for returns will be enough of a deterrent to reverse the buy-to-try shopping mentality?

  • Fast Fashion’s Fast Checkout

    Boris Planer, Head of Consumer and Market Insight at the trend forecasters WGSN, joins Natalie to discuss the state of German retail and in particular why department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is closing nearly half of its stores.

    Natalie also breaks down Inditex’s annual results, exploring topics such as:

    • Self-checkouts in non-food retail. Inditex’s plans to eliminate hard tags on its clothes is expected to speed up the checkout process by up to 50%. Will it work? Who else is looking to cut friction at the checkout and how? Will we see more general merchandise retailers invest in solutions like self-checkout, scan & go, and equipping staff with mobile POS devices?
    • The importance of human touch in digital stores.
    • Innovative features of the Battersea Power Station Zara store, opened late 2022, including two-hour click & collect, an automated online returns point and RFID-enabled fitting rooms.

  • Shein is the Epitome of Mindless Consumption

    Shein is the Epitome of Mindless Consumption

    The many juxtapositions of Shein. It aims to be accessible through low pricing – but at what social and environmental cost? It launches a resale platform – but with questionable quality and an average selling price of around £5, can throwaway fashion really be resold? And now Shein has opened its first ever permanent store – but isn’t this just a ploy to grow online sales?

    The Shein store launched on 13 November in Tokyo’s Harajuku fashion district. It is a significant, though unsurprising, move in the world of digitally native fast fashion. From Dallas to Dublin, Shein has experimented with a number of pop-ups around the world, where it’s had the opportunity to somewhat demystify the brand and engage with shoppers in the flesh. But, make no mistake, the real goal here is for bricks & mortar to generate a halo effect and drive e-commerce sales.

    In fact, shoppers are not able to buy anything while in-store, but instead can browse clothing and scan QR codes to make an online purchase. Shein is certainly not the first online fast fashion brand to recognise the value in having a physical presence these days: here in the UK, Boohoo and Missguided have dabbled with bricks & mortar, while just last month Asos was said to be exploring the idea of opening its first UK shop in a bid to shift excess stock.

    But Shein isn’t just fast fashion. It’s uber-fast – dare I say disposable – fashion. Through its “test and repeat” model, Shein is able to produce and distribute products in as little as a week. An eye-watering 10,000 new SKUs are added to the site on a daily basis and, here in the UK, it sells around 30,000 products every single day.

    Cheap and cheerful may resonate with shoppers in the current climate – but certainly not all. There is a growing resistance to throwaway fashion. We’ve hit peak stuff. Shoppers are increasingly thinking twice before buying new. Resale and rental (and, to a lesser extent, repair) are becoming mainstream. We are shifting from mindless to mindful consumption. Shein, however, is the epitome of the former.

    Its model of pumping out single-wear fashion to be shipped around the globe is entirely at odds with the fact that we are living in a climate emergency. And if, like me, you watched the new Channel 4 documentary on the brand’s catastrophic rise, you might have come away absolutely terrified. Our addiction to buying clothes is unsustainable.

    In addition to Shein being a driving force behind the “wear-it-once” culture and contributing to environmental waste, it has also come under scrutiny for its working conditions and copyright infringement, as well as exploiting tax loopholes without which it would not be in a position to offer such cut-throat prices.

    Shein is now one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the US and earlier this year, it was valued at $100 billion – essentially Zara and H&M combined. Controversies aside, Shein is a major force in the fashion world and now has its sights set on bricks & mortar. Let’s hope it cleans up its act.

    This article originally appeared in Retail Week.