ELLE UK September Issue Review - By Black Neon Digital's Jodi Muter-Hamilton & Fashion Roundtable's Sustainability Expert Anna Fitzpatrick

How can AI influence the fashion industry? Rafaella de Freitas explores how AI is expected to streamline supply chains, improve sales forecasting and provide a more personalised shopping experience to customers. 

The fashion community has shown that it is willing to fight for social justice and progressive causes. So why hasn’t it done more to grapple with racism in its own ranks? Article by Elizabeth Segran for Fast Company.

The Design Council’s recent design economy research has supported the message that a more diverse workforce will lead to a more diverse output and wider audience appreciation. The Design Council has added depth to this understanding by uncovering further statistics and underpinning their message with both the positives and negatives of a diverse design workforce. The Design Council explains that a more diverse workforce will be able to understand the needs of an increasingly diverse population.
 
Using both the full Design Economy 2018 report and their article on the link between diversity and business performance, Fashion Roundtable looks to break down their findings and view them from the perspective of the fashion industry.

The design economy is 78% male, a higher figure than for the wider UK workforce (53% male).
”The design economy employs a slightly higher proportion of people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups than are employed in the wider UK economy (13% compared with 11%), however there is some indication that BAME designers are less likely to be in senior roles. More research is needed to understand the extent of barriers to BAME designers’ progression and the mechanisms by which these might operate."

“You’ve got Gucci, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Diesel; a large number of good, high-end brands that have good operations that have been hit by this,” Mr Saul said.

“Because House of Fraser has a stretch throughout the whole of the UK with its store group, effectively many brands have chosen that as their route to the market or consumer around the UK, outside of London where they have their own stores. 

“So it does mean that this is a fundamental change to how retailing will work and brands will have to think very hard, ‘do I stay with Mike [Ashley] in his new form, what will his new form be?”

Luxury brands still “without doubt” need to have an offline presence despite retail sales increasingly shift online, Mr Saul said. “You’ve got to have clicks, bricks and mortar.”

For the fashion sector, which like farming operates on low margins for most of its products and services, ongoing competition looks increasingly challenging, under these no-deal terms. Whilst the exact landscape for goods exported and imported remains largely unknown, it is the services arm of the sector which is likely to face the greatest punishment.  
 

Bev Malik: “In reality is that it’s actually the negative practice of fat shaming, not feeling included in a fashion conversation and feeling kind of left out, that’s a kind of emotional scar on our society..”

‘There are so many young black kids all over the country who have the level of academic excellence to study at a university such as Cambridge - however we are still under represented at leading universities. We, as a minority, have so many examples of black students who have excelled at every level of education throughout the years. I hope this scholarship serves as a small reminder that if young black students wish to study at one of the best universities in the world, then the opportunity is yours for the taking - and if funding is one of the barriers, then we can work towards breaking that barrier down.’

With A'Level results out yesterday, Fashion Roundtable would like to draw our friends'  to the work that our advocacy partners ISM and NSEAD have done to highlight the unintended consequence of the EBacc's STEM not STEAM curriculum, to our creative subject talent pool. 

“Fashion is a global conversation.”

The demise of this one time giant of the high street is sad but somewhat understandable as the brand has not been able to find relevance in the drift from brick and mortar to omniretail, it’s also struggled to tap into growing markets without isolating its base consumer. Retail and the uk will ultimately bounce back but we as other countries are having an identity crisis in our department store models, that rapidly needs to be updated.

Beyonce said of her commission: "If people in powerful positions continue to hire and cast only people who look like them, sound like them, come from the same neighbourhoods they grew up in, they will never have a greater understanding of experiences different from their own."

“We should live in a country where every person, regardless of their ethnicity or background, is able to fulfil their potential at work.”

Our EU Expert, Eszter Kantor, provides us with the latest Brexit update including the European Commission’s publishing of Brexit preparedness notes and a roundup of what was discussed at Fashion Roundtable’s previous Brexit meeting.

Retail roles were once ‘a golden ticket’ offering stability, flexible hours and proper holidays. Now huge job losses are hitting female employees hardest. Article by Poppy Noor, originally published on The Guardian.

Margot James MP, Minister of State for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: 
“The creative industries contributed £91.8 billion to the economy in 2016, and the government recognises the important role of SMEs in this success. Under the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK will continue to benefit from EU programmes such as Creative Europe until the end of the current period (until 2020). The White Paper published on 12 July states that the Government is open to looking at continued participation in programmes, such as Creative Europe. As part of the Sector Deal published in March, government is also looking at securing the sector’s future prosperity and growth and will invest more than £150 million across the lifecycle of creative businesses.”

This lack of gender diversity is not only deeply worrying, as the report has not even touched on ethnic diversity amongst these women it also highlights that a lack of any women at the top of these companies is literally bad for business. FTSE350 companies with no women on their executive committee only achieve a net profit margin5 of 8.9%, whereas the figure soars by 5%, to 13.9% in businesses with at least 25% women at this level.

With UK tech businesses are growing 2X faster than non digital businesses according to TechNation, to not take notice of the numerous and diverse needs to grow that business in a market where a unique USP is a key indicator of success seems not only counter-initiative, it is also clearly bad for businesses, including our UK fashion industry which leads in global FashTech innovations, with companies such as Farfetch, Matchesfashion and Net-A-Porter headquartered in London. Especially vital in a post-Brexit landscape where immigration has played a huge factor in political decision making. If we do not have the domicile talent, how can we hope to shape the global industry of the future?

The Japanese fashion market is worth $25.45bn, with a consumer who has historically bought into British fashion brands: both heritage and avant-garde. This deal is predicted to boost the EU economy by 0.8%: a trade boost which the UK has no part of for a consumer who would have bought into Brand Britain. This agreement gives European stakeholders access to one of the strongest markets in the world (third in GDP), allowing them to diversify their investments and expand production in an era of increasing instability.