Menswear, led by a booming sportswear segment, represents roughly a $60 billion market. Unlike women’s apparel, large firms at the manufacturing level have dominated the business.
In recent years however, specialized efforts on the part of passionate creators have aimed at promoting sales with a radical change in fashion and have been quite successful.
In its narrow sense, fashion is the prevailing way a group of consumers at the particular time and place dress themselves. Therefore the more specialized brands maintain a strong focus on manufacture of materials and finished products of clothing. By doing so these designers attempt to determine what styles and characteristic appearances of garments will appeal to their target group of consumers. These designs that are offered to a select group of individuals are versions of style that are distinguished by their silhouettes, details, textures and colors.
It is important to know that public acceptance of a fashion follows a course called a fashion cycle, which is made up of the following first three stages:
introduction
rise
culmination
Any fashion evolves according to the demands in the market. It is not pricing nor is it promotion by the producers that can force consumers to embrace new fashion. On the contrary, changes evolve gradually, building up to an extreme moment of truly founded success. In short, the success of a luxury fashion brand depends on its abilities to predict the ever-changing tastes of their public with a laser-focus and scientific accuracy to use their artistic creativity to appeal to those tastes.
A cardinal rule in any business is “To Know Your Customer”. This rule is especially relevant in the luxury fashion business with a Rock & Roll twist.
A few weeks back, I reviewed an Italian luxury brand that aims to satisfy the greatest number of customers with a specific appetite for luxury menswear with a mad cool rock & roll flair. Collini is a luxury Italian fashion house founded in Milan, in 1937. The brand was established by a family of couture makers who specialized in producing fashion for the gallant and glamorous at heart. In 2016 Collini was acquired by Carmine Rotondaro who mandated the evolution of the house’s multidecade heritage to the creation of prêt-à-porter collections and accessories that gesture to the bold and boast genderless intrigue.