Year in review: Did the fashion sector learn anything in 2023?

This year has been a rollercoaster ride for the fashion industry with the hype of the metaverse and China reopening its doors post-Covid feeling like a lifetime ago, but has the sector learned anything in 2023 or will the same merry-go-round keep spinning in 2024?

If we rewind back to January 2023, global fashion brands were still raving about the potential of the metaverse and there were high hopes for fashion supply chains to return ‘back to normal’ when China finally reopened its borders and bid farewell to Covid lockdowns for good.

These are both great examples of how much can change within 12 months in the fast-paced world of the fashion supply chain, but also why it’s crucial for fashion executives to admit when a new direction is needed.

The jury is still out on whether the metaverse will go mainstream anytime soon but it certainly faded away from the spotlight as the year progressed.

Instead, the fashion sector conceded that AI was the ‘hot’ technology of 2023. This is not surprising given it can be used to streamline the entire fashion value chain – as opposed to just giving end consumers a new ‘virtual’ toy to play with.

As for how far we’ve come since China reopened its doors – well it certainly helped to iron out the remaining supply chain kinks from Covid, but on a political level the US-China relationship in particular is as fraught as ever.

Although Covid is now officially behind us, ongoing tensions with China have demonstrated why fashion supply chain executives are right to keep going with a diversified supply chain that is not entirely reliant on any one sourcing country.

Only last week, the US House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party announced almost 150 bipartisan recommendations for the US to “reset its economic relationship” with China.

The members went as far as to say they’d spent a year investigating what they described as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s “decades-long campaign of economic and technological warfare”.

When Just Style quizzed the US apparel sector about these “recommendations” the consensus was one of major concern about how it could impact the wider sector moving forward.

Not to mention the fact a US election is on the cards for November 2024, with both Biden and Trump making their disgruntlement with China very clear while in office.

So, fashion sourcing executives are also right to be concerned about what increased tensions between the US and China could mean for the global fashion supply chain as we enter 2024.

Despite transparency remaining a key buzzword throughout 2023 and legislation picking up the pace with the EU’s rules for new corporate sustainability due diligence finally being agreed, although not yet enforced, the issue of forced labour remains.

A Better Cotton member was added to the US forced labour blacklist recently and in Canada investigations into forced labour accusations against fashion brand Guess are ongoing.

One positive end to 2023 is a new agreement being made at COP28, which could see real progress in the war against climate change in 2024.

Notably, this decision was made by global policymakers as opposed to those working within the industries that can make a real difference, such as fashion.

What did the fashion sector learn in 2023?

So what has the last 12 months taught us, if anything? For a start, Covid’s impact on the fashion supply chain is finally over.

But, the world outside of our fashion supply chain bubble is back to moving at full-speed and, overall, it’s not in the right direction.

We still have an ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, a new conflict in Palestine thrown into the mix, natural disasters aplenty as well as the cost of living crisis raising inflation, energy bills and material costs across the board.

The world might be back to normal and intent on destroying itself in all senses of the word, but there is no going back for the fashion sector after 2023.

Now is the time to take a second to slow down and apply intelligent technology such as AI to ensure anything that is designed and manufactured will definitely be sold and worn many times over before being recycled – the time for waste is well and truly over.

By Just Style