Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2024 collection at Paris Fashion Week 2023
Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2024 collection at Paris Fashion Week 2023
Image: Stefano Rellandini / AFP

And so it came to pass. Donald Trump is back in the White House as the 47th president of the US, and with him comes the kind of uncertainty that is no doubt giving executives across the world a headache. And all because of one little word with a huge impact: tariffs!

As he signed a slew of executive orders on his first day in office, directly after his inauguration, Trump appeared to be keeping his promise on tariffs (many thought it would be the usual bluster). He announced the establishment of the External Revenue Service, which will be tasked with collecting the increased tariffs he wants to charge on imported goods as a way of “punishing” foreign nations when necessary, and to allegedly put “America first”. According to his theory companies will be forced to bring manufacturing back to the US if the cost of importing goods is high. It’s unclear whether he’s aware that there is already an agency collecting tariffs. It’s called Customs and Border Patrol.

Trump’s tariffs are on everyone’s mind and lips across all sectors, and fashion is no exception. An article in The Cut at the end of 2024 reported that it is a concern for the industry’s executives. “In recent days, several CEOs of fashion and beauty brands have spoken publicly of their concerns about one of the central points of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign: steep, widespread tariffs that many economists say will push up the prices on everything from bikes to couches to, yes, fashion. What will these taxes mean for shoppers when we’ve already seen many clothing brands become more expensive, often while feeling disappointingly cheap?”

Trump tariffs aren’t the only potential big shift for fashion. As consumer confidence in the world’s leading luxury markets — the US, the EU, and China — dwindles, brands are looking elsewhere for growth. India is the one market everyone is talking about. It has the world’s fastest-growing economy and middle class, but as Imran Ahmed of The Business of Fashion points out in an interview on the Rapid Response podcast: “All of the factors that have made it hard for brands to penetrate the (Indian) market are changing.”

He adds: “The one thing that brands have to contend with, whether they’re luxury or mass market, is the vibrant local fashion industry in India. The way people dress in India is more of a cultural fusion.

“If you walk the streets of Shanghai, most people wear Western clothes. If you walk the streets of Delhi or Bombay, people are wearing a mixture of Western handbags or shoes with traditional kurtas or the clothes Indian people have been wearing for decades, thousands of years.

“Trying to figure out where you fit into the Indian customer’s lifestyle is what a lot of brands are contending with. There is a lot of local competition, so the Indian market is on the precipice of something big, but it’s not going to be easy.”

What’s also not going to be easy is to find new areas of growth without really addressing the obvious concerns that luxury fashion’s prices just don’t make sense any more. It’s like putting Band-Aid on a festering wound. As Ahmed put it in the same podcast, the industry is in a “full-blown crisis”. I’ve covered how this is playing out in a few previous columns towards the end of 2024, looking specifically at the falling fortunes of big brands, for whom 2025 doesn’t look so rosy.

Shake up

In addition to all that, as New York Times’ chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman points out: “This year will be a year of seismic change in fashion.” Why? “Starting this month, new designers at eight global brands, including Calvin Klein and Chanel, will be making their runway debuts. As they will at Bottega Veneta, Lanvin, Givenchy, Tom Ford, Alberta Ferretti and Dries Van Noten — with the possibility of more open spots being filled at Fendi, Maison Margiela, Helmut Lang and Carven in the coming months,” she writes. 

This wave of musical chairs isn’t limited to the creative side either. CEO turnover has been a recurring theme, and continues to be, which is perhaps a sign that the brands are aware that change is required, and pronto! According to a Business of Fashion report on Jonathan Akeroyd’s departure at Burberry in July last year, after less than two and a half years at the helm: “Burberry is rowing back on its plan to target high-end customers after a slowdown for the luxury market, and will now target less wealthy consumers.”

The report continues: “The company has been trying to reposition itself as a high-end luxury brand but that turnaround has failed to bear fruit. The fashion house has jumped from one creative director to the next and also switched CEOs in its bid to rejuvenate the brand.”

There are many more examples I don’t have the column inches for, but what’s clear is that the seismic shifts in geopolitics, most prominently heralded by the uncertainty of this new Trump era, won’t leave a lot of sectors of society untouched, and fashion is no exception. No-one knows where it all might land; only that a reset is not only necessary, but well under way. 

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