How do fashion seasons work? The contradictions of a system that many would like to abandon

The coronavirus pandemic, with the crisis in the fashion industry that has taken its back, has prompted many designers to criticize the model of seasonality in fashion. The current calendar of fashion shows, orders and production is a complex mechanism, modelled on the needs of the many parts that make up the industry, who sells, who produces and who buys. Its main purpose is commercial: to present the collections to buyers, to produce them industrially and to get them to retailers according to the most structured, efficient and synchronized schedule possible. The whole process has a very tight pace: industrial production continues throughout the year, as well as design processes and distribution, following a calendar divided into two main and two secondary seasons. To give a concrete example of how the fashion calendar works, you can analyze the path followed by the SS20 collections currently on sale in stores.

The life cycle of a fashion collection

With four collections a year and a cycle of design, production and distribution in perpetual movement, brands are forced to create new products throughout the year. This, in turn, results in an overproduction of clothes that retailers are forced to dispose of through large discounts applied only a few months after the goods arrived in the store - with the effect that the customer who paid a high price for their boss finds it depreciated even half four months later. A phenomenon against which Dries Van Noten and another group of designers and buyers have lashed out, demanding that the present retail crisis become an opportunity to curb the rhythms of the current production cycle and return to a slower fashion and a longer-lasting type of product, both materially and aesthetically.