Seasonless is the future!
It’s our birthday month, and on the 24th it will be CWJ London’s 2nd birthday! We are officially going to have hit the 2-year mark, it has flown by and been a constant learning curve.
To celebrate this month all blogs are going to be dedicated to all things CWJ. I want to give background and detail behind the brand and the reasonings behind why we do what we do at CWJ London.
Today I’m going to talk to you about why at CWJ London there is no SS or AW.
Fashion seasons started as 2 then they added pre-fall and resort giving the fashion industry 4 ‘deadlines’ to work towards.
This is four collections that have to be designed, developed, made, sold and cleared ready for the next season to start. If you then think a bit more realistically fast fashion brands don't just work to seasons, they drop a new collection almost every week. There is no defined season anymore, and with travel so widely available fashion brands are needing to and are producing winter coats in summer and slip dresses in winter.
Are seasons needed? Does it encourage us to be a throwaway society?
"it's so last season!"
When starting my brand, I knew that I didn’t want to follow the trend. I was making and designing everything myself and the amount of work I was putting into this, there was no way I could just throw it away each season. I wanted my customers to love their pieces and keep them for years and years not use for the summer and then never again. This is when I researched further into the idea of slow fashion.
Slow Fashion – Is a ‘global movement’ advocating the slow fashion production and consumption with more respect given to the people and environment. It opposes fast fashion business models and industrial manufacturing. Relying on local craftsmanship and helping to preserve the local crafts and environment while providing value to both producers and consumers.
Why I have seasonless collections.
Instead of producing large collections every few months I have a core selection. I am slowly adding styles and offer all existing styles in a variety of different colours. On top of this I have a very limited amount of pre-made stock, which is mainly produced for the local markets I attend. Most of my sales are made to order allowing me to make the products specially according to my customer's wants and needs. This then gives more meaning to my products and my clients are a lot more likely to have and cherish their CWJ products for life.
What are the benefits of being a seasonless in the fashion industry?
Well for one I am able to spend as much time as needed to perfect my products. They are well designed and well sampled to make sure that they are ‘fit for purpose’.
It reduces the impulse purchase. There is no rush put on my customer to buy now or potentially loose out. With fast fashion brands everything is going, going gone, people therefore are more likely to buy something and then not even use/ wear it. I mean have you seen all these memes about having ‘investment’ in asos returns. Funny at a glance but thinking more seriously, it really isn’t, and as a society this is fundamentally what we need to change.
Less waste and no clearance sales. At CWJ London we are mostly made to order, this really helps reduce waste as products are made specifically for someone. There is also no stock that needs to be ‘thrown’ at customers or even worse just throw away to make room for new collections.
Less waste is something that I always try to improve in many different aspects of the brand. Next week I am going to explain some different ways I achieve this, from editing designs to re-using materials.
