Fashion's new world order: reinventing the iconic fashion system

This paper addresses the iconic and established business model that has evolved in the fashion industry, which embraces the constructs of fast fashion, high frequency drops into retail stores and the associated relationships with seasonal appropriateness and design analysis. These issues provide for the timely consideration of alternate business systems that will support positive and sustainable practices within the fashion industry. Over the past fifty years there has been a radical shift in the system of fashion; fast disposable fashion is now the norm rather than the exception. Fashion has moved from an historical formulaic process of two significant collections a year of spring/summer and autumn/winter, to multi layered delivery drops on a fast track turn around. The year is punctuated by the constant flow of new product that quickly fills floor space in anticipation of quick turn around sales. Major retail outlets now have over-arching markdown strategies embedded into their buying systems and fashion obsolescence is a reality of the industry. The contemporary business model for most of the millions employed within the modern day fashion sector is an exceptionally fast paced industry, where a team scans the world for styling ideas, adapted from those that already exist so as to reinterpret as their own. Ideas from all tiers of the fashion world are reinvented and regurgitated into variations on a theme.