Vivienne Westwood is one of the representatives of luxury fashion with a hint of punk. Quite ironically, the British designer Vivienne Westwood had no intention of becoming a world-famous fashion icon. She was inspired by history books, modernising the designs to fit her own personal taste, later becoming one of the key figures in influencing the 90’s fashion. Westwood had a reputation of having a “rebellious heart”, rebelling against the rules that fit society in the 90’s, and is still inspiring the fashion industry presently.

Vivienne Westwood managed to rise significantly after Sex Pistols’, the band, released “God save the Queen” which became a worldwide success. Vivienne designed her famous T-shirt with the face of the English Queen and this later enabled Westwood to organise her first fashion show in London, which she named “Pirates”.

Since the 2000s, Vivienne Westwood has strongly supported environmental protection. For instance, she worked with the non-governmental organisation Greenpeace on the “Save the Arctic” campaign. A way in which she advocated her care for the environment is her design of a graphic T-shirt which depicted the Earth in the shape of a heart, of which all the revenue was donated to Greenpeace.

“Climate change is my priority, not fashion” – Vivienne Westwood in The Guardian magazine (2014).

Westwood gets inspired by historical eras and uses heavy materials such as wool fabrics, tweed and tartan. Her dresses are often recognised by their lavish use of fabric. Westwood’s designs are distinctive through lush draping, wild mixes of patterns and colours and unusual adaptations of style. The Vivienne Westwood orb, created in the late 1980s, is a blend of the orb and the rings of Saturn and it represents the importance of the past, while being a nod to the future.

Vivienne Westwood certainly managed to impose her vision of fashion regardless of time and trends. She had stuck through with her own personal political beliefs and particular style, earning her the title of British Designer of the Year for three consecutive years! 

by Libby Brachaniec

It is undeniable that this fast fashion brand has made big headlines within the past few years. From diversifying their models to greenwashing their advertisements, we will dig through to find their all-time biggest highs and lows of the business and what predicts their future within the fashion industry. 

Starting out on a high the business has come forward and diversified their models for their online website and television advertisements. They state that they are an inclusive business and to them that means diversity in action (M&M group 2022) R1. This is a massive step forward within the fashion industry to show body representation and colour diversity. Compared to other brands such as Victoria’s secret which has undergone a high volume of backlash due to their insignificant diversity within the brand. Many magazines company’s and influencers have recently talked about the downhill ride of the company following their iconic runway show to be cancelled due to them having less diversity and for the runway show to therefore be less popular. 

(DSCENE, 2022) R6.

H&M however have gone the different direction with many companies’ praising the brand for being so upcoming with diversity and inclusion. However, this is not how the bran has always been. Back in 2018 the brand had a downfall due to a “Black child wearing a sweatshirt that read “coolest monkey in the jungle.” (Forbes, 2020) R2. This led to many people stopping interest in the brand and halting purchases. Since then, they have had a rebrand had have chosen inclusivity overall. This has not only given people of minorities more of a voice but allows them to be seen and admired causing the diversity issue within the fashion industry to close slightly. It also gives the brand a new purpose to show this new diversification and to also represent so many different people. This could be the new purpose of the brand which we will find out for the coming years if the change has stayed. 

Although the brand has diversified itself there have been new issues of greenwashing in recent years. The brand has recently brought out a collection called the conscious collection. However, there has recently been a lawsuit in place due to the mark up of this collection and statements of the conscious collection being false. Stating that this collection uses less water to produce the clothing items when it uses more. This greenwashing used by the company has given them a bad reputation and although it is being investigated the false advertisements will stay within the consumers’ minds next time, they show which may lead them to stop further purchases. This can highly impact the profitability of the company. 

The profits made by the company is high, with them earning 1.7 billion dollars in 2021 (Statista, 2022) R3. This shows that this brand is one of the top worldwide fashion retailers with one of the highest profits. 2021 was a much higher earning year compared to 2020 due to the worldwide lockdowns causing many businesses to close or to go completely online. The business luckily already had online shopping set up and so was a much easier transition compared to other fast fashion retailers such as Primark. This company relied on in person shopping and was able to undercut other clothing brands prices due to them not having online shops to pay out for this made it very difficult for that brand and saw massive losses within 2020. 

H&M made 334 million dollars which is early only a 5^th of what they made the previous year and the year after. However, the profits in recent years have been on a steady decline since their peak in 2010 earning the business 3.5 billion dollars (Statista, 2022) R3, just two years after opening stores worldwide. 

The question of how they bring the business back up to the peak is a difficult to answer and we can see the business has been trying with their new conscious collection and by being more diverse we are yet to see the difference. It may be due to the let downs of the company I have already discussed. However, it shall be exciting to see what they come up next to stay with the ever-changing fashion world and how they may rebrand themselves to become a more sustainable and conscious company. This is why its my favourite brand as they always keep things interesting and will keep up to date on my favourite fashion trends and diversity.

Reference page:

R1 – https://hmgroup.com/about-us/inclusion-and-diversity/inclusive-people/

R2 – https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/03/18/how-hm-has-completely-revamped-their-diversity-and-inclusion-training/?sh=184893145df0

R3 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/252191/profit-of-the-h-und-m-group-worldwide/

R4 – https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/hm-greenwashing-is-disguising-the-reality-of-fast-fashion/

R5 – https://qz.com/1971689/fashion-brands-arent-keeping-their-instagram-diversity-promises/

R6 – https://www.designscene.net/2021/06/hm-pride-2021.html

Ann Demeulemeester is the Belgium brand found by Ann Verhelst. The founder Ann is also known as Antwerp 6, which represent 6 alumni who graduated the Royal academy of the fine arts Antwerp, and has put this small city on the global fashion map.

 She worked as the assistant for Martin Margiela for few years after graduating this academy and launched her own brand. She opened the first shop in Antwerp with the menswear line.

 She was separated from her brand and recently joined again (2021), and now the brand itself has changed the style as focusing on minimalism.

 This year march I went to the Antwerp, Belgium, and visited the shop of this brand. The shop was about 3 floors and has garden inside. The atmosphere was fresh, neat but stylish. I was overwhelmed.

Me and my friend was the only costumer at the moment when we visited, so the manager there showed us the backroom inside the shop and let us see the F/W collection which was not yet released to the public. In addition, she also gave us the information about some vintage stores in Antwerp that has nice quality of Ann Demeulemeester’s products.

There is no doubt that the silhouette of the piece of their product is absolutely beautiful, but what I realized after having a tour in the shop was that the communication with the costumer is the most important thing to build the brand’s image. Now the fact that I am a big fan of this brand tells that it was not only product itself that made me feel like it is my favorite brand, but it was the whole atmosphere of the brand (from interior that they used and also the scent.) and the experience inside the shop.