Is Slow Fashion Creating A New Trend?

Chitra Balasubramanium analyses the latest trends in the Domestic Garment Industry and how the usage of sustainability has brought focus on business efficiency...

- Chitra Balasubramanium

Indian retail especially for apparel has been growing at a healthy six per cent per annum as per a Technopak Study and has been estimated to be worth USD 865 billion by 2023. Thus for India, a retail segment that innocuously comprised of homegrown brands has now become the talk of the world. The McKinsey Report in the earlier year had a specialised segment devoted to India’s ascent in the field of fashion apparel. This explains how Indian apparel retail is attracting the attention of apparel retailers from across the world. These emerging trends can be broadly grouped as business-centric and technological usage of sustainability.

BUSINESS-CENTRIC

With global retail giants establishing themselves in India, the business aspects and global trends have also assumed relevance in India. One such growing trend in retail is a conscious wave towards sustainability by going green, re-using, re-cycling, and reducing waste. There is a huge market for second-hand dresses especially relating to brands. Upcycling old clothes, exchanging them, and doing it through the brand has also gained much prominence. This has created a greater demand for transparency and ethical sourcing. Even packaging of the product, use of recycled paper for wrapping and doing away with plastic is gaining popularity. Another growing concept is for long-lasting fashion which reduces our tenacity to throw what is not required, thus reducing consumption.

BUSINESS EFFICIENCY