From Globalization to Localization

Working two retail jobs I am regularly folding or hanging up clothes thrown in a pile or on the floor. Looking at these large pile of clothes I cannot help but think about the people who made them and how they would feel with the way their hard work is treated. Instead of being admired and respected, each piece is no more than a mess filling the store. People are continuously buying cheap clothes that in the end are meant to fall apart, just to be trendy. Are companies selling to customers supporting those developing countries making the clothes by providing jobs, but at what price, is it hurting more than helping? What will we be taking away from our job force by offering production, making, selling, and buying jobs to other countries?

SUPPORTING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, BUT AT WHAT PRICE?

People in today’s society are constantly trying to keep up with trends while staying under budget, which means cheap, low-cost apparel. Companies are happy to use developing countries such as Bangladesh or Cambodia because they can make large volume goods at a low cost to fill the needs of their customers. 

Livia Firth ‘The True Cost’ Exec. Producer and UN Leader of change talks about her trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, she says “we visited the factory in Dhaka, it was a game changer we were absolutely shocked because there was only one entrance to the factory. There was an armed guard to check workers on the way in and out. Inside there were three floors crowded with women and all windows had bars first thing you notice is that 'it's so hot', if anything happened like a fire there is no fire escape they cannot get out the windows can’t open. 

The women had to produce 100 pieces per hour they had only two toilet breaks a day if they called in sick they would not be coming back to work the next day they were fired. This is my first time being exposed to this harsh reality of how the clothes were being made miles away from my home. Once you experience that you go home you can’t close an eye and say ‘ill go buy this anyway’”.

I am surprised to see that factory conditions in developing countries such as Dhaka have not changed much, considering the collapse of Rana Plaza that killed 1,127 workers and left another 2000 injured. If companies are going to continue to outsource they need to make sure that people are given proper human right and better working conditions. A lot of the people working in those factories are happy they can have a job and make money, but they should be able to do that without the fear of being injured or dying. They should be allowed sick days, frequent breaks and lower quotas of quantities. Factories should be properly constructed with extra fire exits and be allowed to have windows open.

START SUPPORTING OUR ECONOMY

`                Is fast fashion hurting our Canadian job force by outsourcing to keep up with consumer demands? Sandro Contenta writes in The Star about one Canadian manufacturing company that had to shut down their shirt making business “At precisely that moment, in this very same factory, the owners of John Forsyth Shirt Co. told 110 employees that a century of shirt-making would end. The company, established in 1903, was closing its factory — the latest victim of a Canadian-made garment industry decimated by globalization and, in Forsyth’s case, government decisions.”

                  Forsyth’s is just one example of Canadians losing jobs to globalization, businesses keep sending their clothing production outside Canada. What about the Canadians that are looking for work and the people who want to start their own business, for people looking for production factories that would like to design locally?   Wazana owner of Second Denim Co. “credits business success to being flexible in production according to fast changing trends, keeps his company domestic for ethical reasons after witnessing how poorly people were treated working in china’s factories. In Wazana’s decision to keep manufacturing locally in Quebec, it’s not about money to him it is about supporting the local job force.” If more companies were to produce and fully function in Canada, owners would know what the working condition are and be able to supply jobs to people in our country. There are a few manufacturing companies in Canada such as C&O Apparel and Toronto-based WS&CO. The government needs to start thinking about supporting our own economy, which means having the programs to train people for production jobs to allow the possibility for more Canadian bread companies to succeed.

Having clothes made in developing countries are boosting their economy while the job force in Canada continues to suffer.  Apparel companies continue to mass produce need to be the first to start working ethically if outsourcing or start sourcing locally to support our own economies. Ethically if the companies continue to mass produce people will continue to buy. The government should create a lower limit on how much production is done overseas to equal out opportunities.

Creative burnout and its diminishing effects on the creative process

Designing a line for a season tasks designers with the daunting exercise of creating a ludicrous amount of clothing to show on the runway with a fair portion of the line never making it into production. The arbitrary cycle of creation and destruction regarding both clothing samples as well as designs for garments has largely been accepted as the norm for many well established fashion houses. These designs, created for the sole purpose of being sent down the runway, are then archived into the label’s history and are likely never used again. It’s easy to surmise that designers would feel a healthy amount of creative burnout after experiencing this exhausting cycle season after season.

This issue is further compounded due to a commercial shift from bi-annual collections to a multitude of seasons in a year. I recently had a lengthy discussion with Paul Shkordoff, co-owner and co-buyer of Working Title, about his thoughts on this issue.

“We’ve moved away from just simply two seasons [fall/winter and spring/summer] to add pre-spring, resort, spring, summer, pre-fall, fall, winter, holiday – something like that. It’s not just the number of pieces per season, it’s the number of pieces per season multiplied by the number of seasons in a year. This is what a lot of designers are talking about when they burnout.”

One would imagine that as a designer or even as a design team, it would be extremely difficult to keep up with the creative demand expected by company shareholders or the industry norms. Looking at Comme des Garçon’s showings for Fall/Winter 2016, the audience is treated with over 70 looks split between the Homme Plus and Shirt sub-lines. Robert Geller showed over 30 looks and relative newcomer John Elliot showed 36 looks. Breaking it down further, each look is separated into upwards of five to six individual garments with little crossover between styles.

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"It’s not just the number of pieces per season, it’s the number of pieces per season multiplied by the number of seasons in a year. This is what a lot of designers are talking about when they burnout."

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A recent example of the effects of creative burnout culminated in world-renowned fashion designer, Raf Simons, parting ways with Dior after three and a half years of collaboration. Simons worked with Dior while so working his personal label. In his 2015 Business of Fashion interview surrounding his exit, the Belgian designer revealed that he only had one design team while working on six collections a year. “There is no more thinking time,” Simons complains. “And I don’t want to do collections where I’m not thinking.”

The industry culture surrounding fashion shows in general must be analyzed as well, with a number of brands or designers regarding the fashion show with as much importance as the pieces in the collection itself. The spectacle and showmanship these shows provide to the media and public alike further solidifies the brand’s image. It is essentially the most expensive promotion expense incurred and it happens twice a year. “Having to juggle that [fashion shows] on top of making samples and making sure production is okay – it’s another big issue. In terms of adding that on top of getting pieces ready for the show; the whole endeavor is tiring and stressful,” Paul muses. 

At this point in our conversation, I was beginning to think of the effects of creative burnout from a consumer perspective. The definition of consumer in this scenario not necessarily meaning the end user, but as a consumer at some point along the fashion supply chain. I asked Paul if as a buyer, he was able to tell if a brand he was working with was experiencing the effects of creative burnout.

“A lot of times it shows in the quality of the pieces, where a lot of designs aren’t well thought out and pieces don’t end up as they should be. The easiest way to tell is if you see pieces that lack inspiration or lack the inspiration that they usually have. Often a designer will just recycle pieces because they’ve got nothing left, these are common ones.”

Paul’s answer implicates the creative burnout is experienced by others along the supply chain as well; it isn’t exciting to enter a showroom and see iterations of the same collection every season. Just like as an end-consumer, it isn’t exciting to buy the same iterations of the same collection every season. It almost feels like the industry has buried itself in a hole, especially in regards to how the current logistical process of luxury fashion works. The generally accepted notion is that labels have six months in advance to create and show an entire collection before working on the next. Retailers then place orders six months in advance in showrooms where samples are placed physically and within the next season the merchandise will arrive.

The industry has confined itself to work within such a rigid schedule that changing it at its core is an endeavor that’s frightening to tackle. To uproot the commercial foundation that the fashion industry has built itself on could spell disaster not only for the fashion houses but for retail stores as well. “Part of the reason there is that [six month] calendar,” Paul tells me,  “is so stores can plan their buy and budget it and put things together, but so that brands also have enough lead time to make all the product.”

I inquired about further difficulties stores may face if brands did away with the schedule altogether. “For a store,” he continues, “it makes it very difficult because we aren’t working on that [untraditional] calendar so we can’t budget any money for a brand that is sort of in between buying calendars.”

All this isn’t to say that a shift in the core schedule wouldn’t work. After all, a good way to keep customers buying product year-round is to continually get new product in. Paul reiterates my point, saying “one of the goals of retail is to have product coming year round, as opposed to it being stagnant – ideally you want a steady flow of product, that’s how you keep customers coming back.”

He continues, outlining the ideal situation that could be the result of this shift. “Given that situation, there’s a way to work around it. It will require a lot of work and planning – if all these different brands want to work on different calendars and somehow it ends up being so that you have product year-round – it’ll be a large shift in how things work but I don’t think it’s impossible.”

This begs the question; whose responsibility is it to pave the way for this change in industry culture? To shift away from the rigidity and outright excess that causes creative burnout? Surely it would fall in the hands of younger and newer labels to break this mold. An already established fashion house would never dream of altering the formulaic systems that have proven to be commercially successful, albeit creatively volatile.

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"If all these different brands want to work on different calendars and somehow it ends up being so that you have product year-round – it’ll be a large shift in how things work but I don’t think it’s impossible."

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Surprisingly enough, Burberry spearheaded such a shift in traditional industry standards by announcing a change in their business model wherein they will show both menswear and womenswear collections twice a year, but without the six month incubatory period normally associated with shows. This means that the shown collection will immediately be available to purchase online and in Burberry stores, appealing to a more consumer centric culture. The implications of Burberry’s change in their business model is immense; one of the oldest and most recognized fashion houses in the world is open to experiment with the formula.

It is this openness to experimentation that I believe will lead to an overhaul of the industry standards. While creative burnout is impossible to fully eliminate, its effects on designers, consumers, and everyone in between can be diminished if such rigid structures weren’t in play.

‘Cause I Got A Blank Page Baby

FASHION magazine’s Associate Designer, Nicole Schaeffer, on her cool career, the digital fashion industry, and the ultimate intimidator.

No one handwrites anymore. Long gone are the days of penmanship and the swift looping together of letters with the stroke of a feather—ahem—okay, pen. In the January 2016 issue of Canadian Business magazine, handwriting expert Carole Tovels explains, “by using the computer constantly you’re not using your handwriting skills anymore…you’re losing your flexibility and legibility, and your ease of writing”. Screens, keyboards, and touchpads now dominate and their functions are integral to the lives of billions of people around the globe to communicate and carry out day-to-day activities. We are waking up with our smartphones, tablets, and laptops, going to sleep with them, taking them into the shower with us, and panicking at the nightmarish thought of going a day without them.

Navigating the first stages of a career can be just as frightening as separation from the devices that have virtually become an extension of the human body. In our fast-paced, hyper-connected world, we feel lost without the instant gratification of obscenely fast information at our fingertips, and the outcome of the future is no exception. For young people entering the workforce there is no guarantee of what tomorrow will bring, and neither Siri nor Cortana can provide any certainty.

Thankfully we are not alone. And sometimes, we are in the exceptional company of those who inspire us to make our own impact on the industry we are tiptoeing or blazing into. This issue, we caught up with Nicole Schaeffer, a cool-as-they-come Torontonian and FASHION magazine’s Associate Designer. A resume lit up by a Bachelor of Design from Ryerson University, internships at FLARE magazine, The Society, and Narrative PR, the latter two of which she also worked at, on top of her current design role at Canada’s number one fashion and beauty magazine, tells us that she not only makes paper look good, but looks really good on paper. With her equal love of both writing and designing, we’re willing to bet she has pretty fancy handwriting too.

Lucky for us, we’ve exchanged notes of our own kind with Schaeffer, and been given a sneak peak into the behind-the-scenes of her highly coveted position. A typical day starts with a digital team meeting where current news and fresh ideas for web posts are shared. “If we are in production for the magazine (2.5 weeks a month) my focus is on designing pages; taking editors copy and laying it out on the page, along with selecting art that will make it the most compelling. When we’re not in production, we’re shooting products that will be featured in the next issue with our in-house photographer, as well as banking images and GIFs for Instagram,” she says.

In line with the most striking of handwritten words, she calls the career path that led her to where she is “anything but linear”. The now savvy FASHION magazine associate describes learning how the magazine was put together in the first few weeks on the job as “foreign territory”, due to a lack of professional design experience. Though she shares that with a poised optimism, a belief in seizing opportunities, and a proven initiative to seek out new ones, all of her positions have landed her in her current job with a well-rounded skill set.

Schaeffer’s experience represents the reality of entering the Canadian job market in which, “Employers do not expect students and new grads to have a lot of work experience”, though they are, “drawn to applicants who have some real-world experience”, as reported by Virginia Galt in The Globe and Mail (November 27, 2015).  Galt highlights the importance of leveraging all part-time work, summer jobs, volunteer work, and personal connections for those making the transition from colleges and universities into the competitive workforce. As well, The Globe writers Don Drummond, Ross Finnie, and Harvey Weingarten report individuals joining the workforce now “will likely have many jobs and several careers before they retire,” raising the importance of general competencies that “provide the fundamental and foundational skills that are transferable across jobs” (October 20, 2015).

Diversification of your skills is especially critical for graduating students as industries evolve to meet the needs of consumers. In the fashion industry, there’s been a significant shift in power in recent years, largely attributed to the rise of celebrity culture, fashion bloggers, fast-fashion retailers, and smartphones, as examined by Karen Von Hahn in “R.I.P. Tide”, in the March 2016 issue of FASHION magazine.

Our it-girl comments, “Everyone is desperately trying to determine which way the tide is going to go. If trends are dead, and fashion weeks are dead, then is the consumer, and not content, king? I don’t think anyone knows right now, but it is my belief that there will always be a place for a long-lead, thoroughly researched articles and beautifully laid-out pages. We live in such a digital age, the premium placed on something tangible like print has made it rarer than ever—that has to count for something, doesn’t it?” In adaptation to the rapidly changing activities of the industry and consumer engagement with print and digital media, Schaeffer describes that she and her team are looking to provide content for whoever their readers are, be that in print, online, or on social.

For young aspiring fashion students, the FASHION magazine designer advises, “The road is long, and not as glamorous as it seems. Salaries are not lucrative. You will have multiple internships. You will need to take criticism and work independently without direction. Your successes will not always be acknowledged. Everyone in this industry is not here for the accolades, but because they love it—they eat, breathe, and sleep fashion.”

Searching for a job and stepping out from the comforts of classrooms into the “real world”, no matter the industry, can feel intimidating, but we all start somewhere. Schaeffer’s ultimate intimidator? A blank page. “Where to start? Nothing makes me procrastinate more than a blank page,” she says. “However, if you can force yourself to put something on the page, regardless of whether it works or not, you at least have a foothold you can build on.” You cannot forecast, control, or Google the future, and you’ll never know if you never try, so put your pen to paper and, “Just keep going and revise later. Revising is always easier than building”.