Minimalism: our generation’s alternative to Zen. How’s it going to affect fashion business?
What is minimalism?
Minimalism as a lifestyle can be summed up as a reduction in the ownership of tangible, material objects to concentrate on intangible, immaterial experiences or high-quality, meaningful objects. There’s a link between this and the original art term, although it’s more conceptual than aesthetic.
In fashion, there’s a distinction between this lifestyle term and minimal style – simple forms, clean lines and monochromatic palette.
Minimalism as a lifestyle has the potential to seriously affect fashion businesses, because it encompasses new ways of purchasing, wearing and experiencing material objects like clothing.
Why would it affect fashion businesses now?
Graph showing the popularity of minimalism-related search terms
Minimalism is ancient, moving from Eastern religions to Western hippies across time and space. What’s interesting about this mutation of minimalism, especially for fashion, is that consumption is an integral part of it.
The debate might be about what you don’t buy, or the quality of what you own, but either way this minimalism is still ok with consumption. The Nife en l’Air highlights some of these problems in her post On Perfection, discussing the link between consumerism and perfection processed through minimalism. Although minimalism strives to reduce the number of objects in life, minimalists still make choices about which objects to own, meaning it has the ability to affect fashion businesses because it affects how and what we buy.
Minimalism is also gaining popularity. Facing economic pressures, growing awareness of depleted resources and a genuine desire from humans to be surrounded by less crap, minimalism has the potential to be a widespread ‘movement’.
What should fashion businesses prepare for?
Here’s the quick summary - keep scrolling for more details.
- Fewer real visits, more digital browsing
- Shifting basket and item spend
- Quality becoming an influencer
- Brand and service communicating quality
- Display for versatility and integration
- Marketing ‘repeated stories’
- Radical impact on ecommerce
- Multiple-use, flexible garment design
Fewer real visits, more digital browsing
My personal style development board on Pinterest - digital browsing in action
There’s no set rule for how many garments are in a minimalist wardrobe, but popular numbers are less than 50. With only some of these changing just once a season, minimalism will push shoppers into buying less regularly and taking fewer physical shopping trips. That means less opportunities of casual footfall or attracting customers through window display and greater need to make those rare shopping trips a memorable experience, maximising spend through promotion of higher-priced or exclusive pieces.
While shoppers will take fewer physical trips, online window shopping will continue or rise in popularity as consumers curate then select their purchases pre-trip. Fashion will be consumed, but through images and video rather than physical items. Pinterest is the example of consumers collecting and curating new style pre-purchase.
For fashion businesses, it’ll be an opportunity to see what their consumer demographic are curating and make sure stores are stocking relevant items. Customers will consume fashion twice – once online in images and then in-store in physical garments – so businesses will need to make sure these experiences match and enhance each other.
Shifting basket and item spend
Caroline of Unfancy’s winter capsule wardrobe - eight additional pieces to her existing collection - was bought in two trips with a budget of $250
Minimalism strives to reduce the quantity of material items you own, but often encourages stepping up the quality. Fewer shopping trips will mean greater spend per trip, more items per basket as customers buy everything for the season at once, and a greater spend per item as consumers search for quality. Shopping trips for a ‘wardrobe refresh’, with consumers buying one or two new season items, might also feature a greater spend per item.
Overall that sounds like it’ll average out for the current shopping pattern of ‘frequent trip, low value items, low basket spend’. But the new, minimalist shopping pattern will change what fashion retailers need to do to win customers.
Greater basket spends will mean greater desire to feel that spend is valuable, which fashion retailers can demonstrate through shopping environments and service. Greater spend per item means each piece needs to resonate – items will have to be something consumers really, really want, meaning fashion businesses will need to truly understand and respond to their customer base.
Finally, the willingness to spend more per item means consumers will need to have that price ‘proved’ through product quality.
Quality becoming an influencer
Pure Collection, a cashmere retailer, demonstrate quality through their ‘Goat to Garment’ editorial
Because minimalism places quality over quantity, greater focus will be placed on the quality of garments. Fewer items in wardrobes means each item has to work harder, making textiles a high priority area for quality control. Design and packaging will also be scrutinised as conscious consumers select and purchase items more judiciously.
This is an opportunity for fashion businesses to review their supply chain and make small but noticeable changes: selecting higher grade cloth, using better photographers and designers, refining marketing strategies to target and sustain relevant audiences.
For consumers where ethics and minimalism intersects, provenance will become more important: they’ll want to know where the item was made, by who, and the ethics of production. Some fashion businesses will find quality through improved provenance – another opportunity to review supply chains in all areas of the business.
Brand and service communicating quality
Some fashion retailers already demonstrate quality through service - like personal shopping from Harvey Nichols
As quality becomes a stronger consumer focus, the importance of talking about quality will increase. Fashion businesses will use brand to do so, just as they use brand now to talk about their values and identity. But service will become more useful as a personal, expert communication channel.
Service will become more important as consumers look for ‘proof’ they’re spending money wisely. The current low interaction high street model will need to shift to a high interaction, relationship-based model – almost more like personal shoppers. To manage this change, fashion businesses will have to revise training, internal communication, hiring, brand education and retention tactics to make sure every staff member is able to communicate brand quality intelligently and creatively.
Display for versatility and integration
Digital display platforms, like the Stylebook app, could become unique for each brand, integrating seamlessly with in-store displays.
In store, visual merchandising and store architecture will more accurately represent the consumer’s way of dressing and shopping. Merchandisers might demonstrate the versatility of a garment by displaying it multiple times, styled different ways. Displays will more closely echo consumers’ wardrobes by drawing on the way luxury brands present items now – for example, fewer items on rails that are replenished more often.
Consumers will be adding to a strong, streamlined, existing wardrobe when they shop, so it’ll be essential fashion businesses have display tactics that demonstrate how products will integrate seamlessly.
Fashion retailers might investigate outfit images their consumers are creating through visual social media (like Instagram) and then replicate those combinations in store. Service relationships might focus on intimate knowledge of individual customer wardrobes, with staff helping them make good product choices. Or customers might store images of each of their garments online, which would then be accessed through in-store tech and the proposed purchase visually integrated into the closet.
Marketing ‘repeated stories’
The ‘multi-coloured noise’ of marketing content will need to be refined and focus on repeated stories
Fashion regularly produces beautiful items on which to base content, making it a marketing dream. Minimalism promotes fewer beautiful items bought less often, so fashion marketing will begin to address how to tell repeated stories about one or two items.
Marketing strategies will become deeply personal, telling individual consumer’s stories of a garment owned by many to a mass audience. Alternatively, strategies will focus on infrequent but in-depth content exploring a new aspect of the same garment each time.
Just as consumer desire for product quality will rise, so will the desire for marketing quality. This is an opportunity for fashion businesses to reconsider and refine their ‘multi-coloured noise’ – the overwhelming production of ads, editorial and digital content.
Radical impact on ecommerce
Asos’s As Seen on Me production and curation tool may become more important in keeping minimalist consumers ‘in site’
With consumer focus on high quality fashion experiences across products, brand, marketing and service, minimalism has the potential to seriously change ecommerce. Online fashion transactions can’t (currently) replicate the experiential quality of in-store shopping, including face-to-face service. Contemporary minimalism also promotes reduction in digital interactions as a way to clear mental space.
Fashion businesses will have to step up their online presence in a way that’s non-invasive to capture consumers before seasonal shopping trips. Hyper-personalised content sent direct to the consumer will be one way to integrate with the minimalist lifestyle, helping give customers the fashion experience they crave, not simply more fashion objects.
Pure ecommerce brands (like Asos) will develop more curation and production tools to keep consumers ‘in site’, rather than on external social media platforms, allowing them to play with style yet develop strong brand relationships. Fewer options will be automatically displayed in search, echoing the minimalist wardrobe, and each garment will have richer content attached to it: editorial, ‘how it was made’ videos, ways to wear and reasons to buy.
Multiple-use, flexible garment design
Jaeger’s reversible wool coat is a luxurious example of minimalist-friendly flexible garment design
Rather than minimal style, fashion design influenced by minimalism will begin to look at garments as multiple-use objects. Clothing will need to be multi-functional and trans-seasonal, enabling it to be worn all year round in a variety of ways. An example could be a reversible coat, or lightweight wools that can be worn in summer or winter when layered.
Depending on the intensity of widespread minimalism, fashion designers might need to incorporate re-fashioned elements into their garments: trims, hardware or sections that can be updated without buying (and disposing) a whole item. It’s a traditional way of making designers will revisit to cater for consumer desire for the new and less wasteful, more flexible garments.
What’s next?
Fashion businesses can ignore the growing trend of minimalism, or take pre-emptive action on some of the points above. Demographics are important: if your business’ customer base isn’t likely to take up this lifestyle trend, you aren’t going to have to make changes.
But some actions - like communicating quality through service - are important even if your brand won’t be affected by minimalism. More competitors means greater need for a true USP that isn’t based on price, which will be affected in the future by increased material and labour costs.
For more on minimalism, take a look at my Evernote collection. I’d like to hear your thoughts - do you think this lifestyle trend has the opportunity to change the fashion industry? Tweet me @ebsnare or find me on LinkedIn.
Featured image by Hilde Skjølberg via Creative Commons.