The New World Order

The global fashion landscape is set to change irrevocably post-pandemic and those tectonic shifts have also reverberated here at home. Jeffrey Yan examines how the industry at large is adapting and the ways our local and regional designers are responding to this crisis

- Jeffrey Yan

Now that we are still apart, my love for fashion burns,” wrote Alessandro Michele on the 16th of May. While this collective need for beauty burns brighter than ever in these dark times, fashion is also reckoning with a new reality as the world grapples with lockdowns and all the resultant turbulence—halted production, cancelled orders, slashed budgets, shuttered stores, and consumer enthusiasm at an all-time low.

While the global fashion industry at large has been rallying for a long-overdue systemic change, now that the world has been effectively put on pause, our local and regional fashion industry is facing a separate set of problems within this same flawed system. These are not well-funded corporations with the resources to withstand months of economic inactivity. With the bulk of their revenue derived from home territory, a prolonged economic standstill could result in very serious repercussions.

A darling of the Singapore fashion industry, In Good Company, founded by Sven Tan, Kane Tan, Jaclyn Teo and Julene Aw, has seen its sales nosedive. “Before the circuit-breaker, 75 percent of our revenue came from our brick-and-mortar locations. All four stores in Singapore are now closed and even though there has been increased revenue and traffic at our e-store, it would be difficult for it to reach the same numbers as our physical stores. In all, we have seen a 70 percent decrease in revenue from the period of February to April,” says the brand. The apparel label’s overseas business in the region has been impacted as well. “Our international stockists in Thailand, Indonesia and Phillipines are mostly based in malls, which have experienced greatly reduced traffic. We understood when they had to reduce orders; one has even cancelled.”