Lessons and Conclusions from Moscow Fashion Week and BRICS+ Fashion Summit

The third Moscow Fashion Week and BRICS+ Fashion Summit highlighted the problem of the almost complete absence of shoe brands at the Week events. Is there a chance for our shoe industry to grow to the level of fashion, and for Moscow Fashion Week to stand on a par with world fashion weeks, - ponders the director of the Be In Open fashion institute Alexey Bazhenov.

Alexey Bazhenov - Founder of the Institute for Fashion Industry Development Beinopen, leading expert of the project "Rain Engineering of the Fashion System" of the IRKI HSE

Moscow hosted events that were designed to reform, unite and reboot the fashion industry of countries where there was no fashion. These were Moscow Fashion Week and BRICS+ Fashion Summit.

Overall, the message of the events is right – to use fashion and economics as a tool for establishing cultural ties with the outside world, which are now fewer than before. But as we know, the level of trust in Russia is very low, so in the fashion industry everyone remains in their bubbles, and the example of these two events clearly shows the contradiction of the goals of the organizers of different communities and businesses.

Manufacturers from the light industry feel like aliens at Fashion Week, not understanding who all these people are and how this business works. For many years, Moscow Fashion Week has not been visited by leading Russian brands - 12 Storeez, Monochrome, Ushatava, Befree, Lime and many others. That is, in fact, all the key fashion brands with the highest weight are not integrated into the event. Therefore, the event itself is transformed more into a PR event and a platform for growing new neutral, not too underground brands - and this is basically not bad.

The event's slogan also contains the idea of ​​an "elevator" - lectures, a market, shows, a showroom. But nevertheless, if the main event of Moscow, according to the mayor, does not have the main brands, then the event does not fall into the economy, but falls only into cultural diplomacy.

At the same time, as usual, there are enough competencies in Moscow for everyone to think that everything is working out. Lots of shows and visitors, good PR coverage. But in general, of course, the event does not get out of the rut of unsuccessful attempts to make an effective business event, which are fashion weeks and professional exhibitions in Paris.

The idea of ​​combining a fashion week and a summit – two events that the Fashion Fund organizes under the personal supervision of the mayor – is not bad. It is logical that international speakers are brought in to talk, and at the same time they watch the shows, broadcasting that fashion exists and is discussed in Russia. They even signed an agreement to create an international fashion federation, without, however, referring to any values ​​or memoranda explaining what all the fuss is about.

Errors

As always, there are several key mistakes that almost completely reduce the effectiveness. Firstly, the business program is written by professional teams, including those with the competencies of the Fashion Fund and Skolkovo, but without competencies in the fashion business. This is not a business conference, in which the main thing is the best practices of entrepreneurs (with sales figures, investments, marketing channels) and professional networking (people can sell or buy something to each other, or find options for partnership interaction).

Here is the program of the BRICS Summit: https://program.fashionsummit.org/. It is very easy to check - see what the advertising coverage was and how many entrepreneurs and businessmen knew about this business conference and participated in it. Businesses participated only as speakers (self-promotion), because the program topics were more cultural - about the clothing culture for a wide audience, and not cases of starting a business in Jordan, Brazil or South Africa. And at the Fashion Week lecture hall, fashion historians attract more viewers, that is, b2c topics for beginners (do it yourself). All this can somehow be accepted at Fashion Week, but for BRICS Fashion Summit it is definitely ineffective, because these “those interested in fashion” cannot do business together. This means that the investments did not justify themselves. Businessmen did not waste their time on the topics that were formulated and did not fly in, because they did not see the commercial sense.

In summary: the forum topics themselves do not build business relationships within the partner network, do not stimulate the growth of mutual trade turnover between countries and do not provide an exchange of best practices using case studies.

Effective and ineffective deliveries

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Therefore, I cannot say that these were effective visits. They brought a person, spent 300 thousand rubles, for example. Maybe even without a fee, just for a ticket and accommodation. It should be a person who can potentially either purchase, or invest, or produce, or help with sales. At business conferences, all participants should be potential partners.

For example, we bring together a chain of businesses that participate in the creation or promotion of middle-up and premium brands with bright storytelling. These could be manufacturing networks, department stores, international showrooms, retailers, marketing agencies, platforms. And already at the level of speeches and topics, we need to immediately build a partner network of businesses that can work together. The entire conference is best practices and networking. There were practically no such business cases, so there were practically no business visitors either.

Fashion Week as a B2C Festival

It seems to me that BRICS Fashion Summit should be a business event, not a leisure one. But Fashion Week and its lectures could well be a more bitus event, since integration with exhibitions and business events has not yet worked out. And at Fashion Week, a lot depends on the shows themselves. I have singled out three bright shows that I know about (others, perhaps, I just did not notice). These are Measure, Fashion Rebels and Gapanovich. Everything for them - from individual inviting to styling - was at a good level.

And there were many shows where there were just clothes, as if they were not even bad, you could feel that everyone worked hard. But there was such weak stylization that the viewer would not want to meet these people from the catwalk, say hello and communicate. These were just models showing clothes. These shows did not create role models, they did not feel the role of stylists who put together the image of a modern person - whom you want to be like, whom you want to meet. Maybe this is due to the immaturity of the brands themselves, the lack of storytelling and brand platform, maybe this is for many other reasons.

This lack of stylization makes the clothing show a bit pointless, because if Fashion Week is a PR event, then its result is bright images. Otherwise, it’s like shows at the CPM exhibition or a model in a showroom – maximally functional, simply showing the buyer how the item sits on the body. But at CPM, shows are aimed at sales, they are without stylization, so as not to interfere with buyers looking at the goods. And if you are aiming for PR, then you need storytelling and, of course, you need such strong brands and images that other strong brands and people will follow. And in this sense, due to the existing mistrust, strong brands do not follow Fashion Week.

What about shoes?

If we talk about shoe brands at Moscow Fashion Week, there are none at all, but most likely they are not needed. First of all, this is due to technology - Russia has almost no domestic technologies, and foreign ones are too expensive for small print runs of new brands. Secondly, we have very few shoe designers, this is a special engineering specialty in many ways, and it cannot develop in a vacuum without production, experimental workshops, etc.

However, the situation may probably change, because there is obviously a demand from consumers. Befree recently introduced a permanent line of shoes. Our manufacturers could also create collaborations with strong clothing brands and release lines with joint branding.

In this way, factories would learn not just to replicate a product, but to work with an image and shape consumer desires, and brands could experiment with the product, releasing collections at a good level. My colleagues at the Project Office of the Beinopen Institute for Fashion Industry Development are working on such collaborations.

What will happen with the fashion week and the summit next? Moving to Yekaterinburg?

It is not entirely clear to me how the fashion week will develop further. It is interesting that the governor of Yekaterinburg joined the race for the fashion capital and it turned out very well for a start. In general, this is the right decision, because Yekaterinburg, thanks to a number of its features (business orientation, high vestimental culture) has become such a fashion capital. Several unicorns, bright and strong brands familiar to everyone, have grown up in Yekaterinburg. This year, Yekaterinburg Fashion Week brought together several strong brands and showed that the organizers generally have taste. A strong federal Fashion Week as an event that shapes the picture of the world should be supported by strong brands. There is a possibility that Yekaterinburg Fashion Week may become such a fashion week if Moscow does not learn to work with trust and build, integrate strong brands into joint work.