What we want now. Trendy conjunctures and structuralisms to take into account

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Asking Europeans these days what they want, what their desires are in that segment of consumption that was once defined as luxury, an obsolete adjective that implies comfort and softness in contrast with another disappeared concept, that of decorum and that today, after almost a century of unbridled consumption throughout the Western world, astute marketing has assimilated to the semantic field of merit (“because I deserve it”, “because I am worth it”), is a rather reckless exercise. This dynamic that seemed to lighten the negative impact of spending on unnecessary goods year after year, even distorting it, to the point that spending for personal satisfaction or for a simple whim had become a necessity, for a large part of the world has been abruptly interrupted in the face of a general political and therefore economic instability that has now lasted for four years, of a greater sensitivity to the state of the planet that especially concerns young people and that, combined with a decreased spending capacity, has pushed them towards the purchase of vintage clothes and accessories as regards fashion, and in general towards a substantial revision of priorities. T o understand how desires are orienting themselves, Banca Ifis has developed for the Foglio della moda a large research that photographs the “state of consumption” and that it presented yesterday at the 108th edition of Pitti Uomo with some of the most important entrepreneurs in the sector such as Niccolò Ricci, CEO of Stefano Ricci, the president and creative director of Doucal's Gianni Giannini, the CEO of Pantofola d'Oro Kim Williams, and the result of this impressive analysis that involved 1345 people in Italy, France, Germany and the United States over the age of twenty-five for the entire month of May is that in fact, and despite the fact that men's fashion still gives excellent results, people and in particular Europeans and even more in particular Italians, from 2019 to today have been writing a different agenda. They did not do it just to replace a vicuna coat with a trip, but to have to think more about health .

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Despite all the hairy and somewhat pitiful narrative about silver power, that is, rich people over sixty who should buy clothes designed for people of other generations in contempt of the ridiculous, the note that emerges from the research "What people want now: emerging trends and impact on the market", this is the title, is that an older population cares more about cervical arthrosis than about the belt of the moment. It should not come as a surprise, and yet. Banca Ifis estimates that the effects linked to the decrease in fashion sales, which began in 2020, and the aging, considered since 2011, of the Italian population are worth 4 percentage points for clothing and 3 points for leather goods. Not exactly a negligible figure. It should be obvious that an older population corresponds to a higher health expenditure and that this, especially among the middle class, is equivalent to giving up a handbag or a new pair of shoes but in fact, we who belong to the Western culture of the search for immortality and exaggerated individuality, have buried the memento mori among the dear things in bad taste that we buy cheaply at the markets: a little painting with a skull, a very funny red wax candle .

From our progressive old age derive other considerations that the analysis traces and exemplifies, merciless in its objectivity: in addition to having become old we are, or have been, rich, therefore we have wardrobes that are overflowing. Witty ladies talk about geological eras stratified in their wardrobes, the “legs” of the Seventies and the flounces of the Eighties, but it is a fact that they observe certain archive revisitations or certain trends of the moment with that typical horror tinged with nostalgia that seizes those who have passed fifty and begin to talk about their times , see the combination of shirts and boots that is popular this summer and that we teenagers of four decades ago wore feeling hot and a little smelly but very cool.

In the face of a 2024 turnover of Italian fashion that Banca Ifis calculates at 103 billion euros overall , a figure significantly higher than the one released just a few hours ago by Confindustria Moda, equal to around 90 billion and down ten compared to 2023, but in which the institute founded by the Furstenberg family includes a significant number of companies that do not file their balance sheets, the demographic decline represents a non-secondary agent, which also shows why Italian fashion cannot do without foreign markets, indeed it needs them more and more . If exports, as Carmelo Carbotti, Head of Strategic Marketing and Research Office of Banca Ifis, points out, are worth fifty percent of the turnover of Italian companies in the sector, a good 54 percent of this business is in fact aimed at markets outside the European Union which, with the drop in purchases by China, once again means the United States and the Middle East. Two nights ago, talking to Ricci, I had him tell me how those who have no budget problems spend now, fascinated by the “thirty percent rotation of the wardrobe per season” by one of his very important clients in Dubai, which has returned to representing one of the great centers of luxury marketing after, in the last decade, the world had become convinced of the absolute supremacy of China. Knowing that there are still those, like Consuelo Vanderbilt a century and a half ago, who make fashion purchases that are so to speak strategic, that is, evolving their wardrobe by segments, one time clothes and accessories for the city, another “pour le sport”, as they used to say in the days of the Astors and the Vanderbilts, is such a dive into the past that it is even comforting. You know how it is, as we grow older we take refuge in certainties, and nothing should appear older and more classic than us Europeans to this new crop of tourists, Middle Eastern but especially Americans, who observe with admiring circumspection our streets of medieval origin, often inadequate for their size of compulsive eaters living in sprawling cities, with wide streets where no one walks on foot.

So, exports, which however only partially offset the decline in sales on the domestic market. In 2024, according to the analysis by Banca Ifis, this value decreased by 4.2 percent overall, with an accentuation in footwear and leather goods (-8 percent) and in non-EU markets. However, looking at the trend over the last fifteen years, that is, from 2010 to 2014, the perception that emerges is partially different: in the clothing and fur segment, the average growth rate was 4.5 percent, with the Union markets increasing by 3.9 percent and the non-EU markets by 5.1 percent, while in the footwear and leather goods sector, the general growth in the period was 4.4 percent, with a clear prevalence of non-European countries on the domestic market (+5 percent against +3.8 percent). The great reversal of the trend is all concentrated in the last year . It is here, in the relationship between 2024 and 2023, that we perceive the sharp decline, the brake, in short the true and final reason that makes the president of Pitti Immagine Antonio De Matteis say at the opening of Pitti that to get back on track we have to "work hard". For footwear, the decrease was equal to 8 percent in general, and 12.8 percent for countries outside the European Union. Russia is missing from the roll call, for decades the destination of a significant part of the production of shoes on the Adriatic coast, and China is missing. Clothing, on the other hand, is holding up, substantially stable in Europe, but I would tend to see it as a matter of production and logistics exchange, while it is falling by 1.5 percent in non-European countries.

The decline in sales of clothing and leather goods on the Italian market, Carbotti observes, is a constant over the last fifteen years, especially "if the price effect is sterilized", and is "much higher than the overall retail sales" . From the research conducted on the international panel, the attitudinal change of the consumer emerges forcefully: the difference between those who spend less and those who declare higher amounts is 20 percentage points for Italy and 26 points on international markets.

Among the structural factors of this change, in addition to aging, lower relative and absolute spending capacity and the new ethical and ecological sensitivity, we must take into consideration the change in habits following the pandemic, that is, what the common definition is “smart working” and which in reality represents a very vast semantic field: 61 percent of Italians declare that they spend less due to a change in habits.

No longer forced to move around city centers every day, he does not consider it necessary to have a wardrobe made up of jackets and dozens of ties. On foreign markets, the research points out, the drop in spending is justified mainly "by fewer economic resources, but the change in choices and habits remains significant." And it is unlikely that we will go back. If I have been writing for years, and many of us have, that fashion will have to review its economic perimeter, or invent real innovations, we do so with some foundation.

Giannini observes that the serious mistake of fashion brands in recent years has been to "apply strategies that are too far-reaching, and therefore not very safe" and that the best results, at the moment, come from the more classic names , which have made the values ​​of quality and Italianness their unfailing positioning" and that the simplification of lifestyles, combined with an "incredibly vast" offer, is convincing everyone to opt for "mix and match" solutions between luxury and fast fashion. It should not be forgotten, and the research by Banca Ifis makes it clear, the ever-increasing impact of vintage, which in countries outside Italy is a constant practice for 46 percent of those interviewed in general, against 38 percent of Italians, but reaches peaks of 60 percent among young people. Buying beautiful and used is chic, just like spending on theaters, art, culture, and well-being. Williams adds that another big mistake of today's fashion strategists is to "chase after the trends of the moment, broadening their proposals, increasing costs and distancing the brand with its own DNA and focus. Our brand,” he says, “was born on the street, in parishes to play on the fields. We have never forgotten who we are: an Italian brand that was born in sport and then approached free time and fashion in a transversal way .”

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