At the 48th edition of Portugal Fashion, journalist Renato Duarte conducted six talks of the webinar "Thinking Fashion". In each talk, personalities from the fashion industry debated the most current and important issues for the industry, such as digital transition, environmental sustainability, branding, social responsibility, new talents, entrepreneurship, and creative industries, among others.
New Talents in Fashion
The first talk brought together Natalia Bengoechea, Fashion Director SModa/El Pais and Artistic Director in Madrid es Moda, and Serge Carreira, Head of Emerging Brands Iniciative in Féderation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, to talk about “New Talents in Fashion”.
According to Natalia Bangoechea, the pandemic has led to many renowned designers going bankrupt and closing their studios. But the new talents will be able to start in a different way, with multitasking, more digital and knowing that websites and retail are also changing and that they have to sell online. "With the pandemic situation, we noticed that in Spain, most designers had no website and were not prepared for digital. This can't happen anymore. Now you start a business and you already know you have to have the digital and the physical. These new talents are going to live in a completely different world."
For Serge Carreira, the current situation is complicated, but it offers many opportunities and new brands have greater agility than other established ones to embrace change, from the way they create to the way they present their work. "The current situation has been an accelerator for digital, but also for new ways of producing, developing and imagining the way fashion is made. After the pandemic, people will be expecting to see new things and new ways of looking at fashion. New talent will be able to take advantage of that."
For the two talk guests, the new talents also have, and increasingly, a greater understanding of the world. For Serge, they are a digital generation and "live in a world that embraces many influences, not only American ones. Their environment is very diverse. There is a very open view of the world." Natalia, meanwhile, points out that young designers bring an awareness of being local but thinking global. "With the pandemic, it was realized that you can't depend on just one country. Produce locally, but act globally: they all have that in mind." That's why he argues that they have to be able to use the resources that are around them.
Creative Industries and Business scaleup
The talk started with the growing importance of Communication in companies. According to Pedro Caride, when brands saw themselves more removed from direct contact with customers, the very evident need for communication increased. "This communication is increasingly done through image and video, for which creativity is needed. This past year has encouraged an increase in content." For the marketeer, "if a few years ago a fashion brand did an image campaign per season, that image campaign, nowadays, is spent in a week on Instagram. You have to have a very large panoply of content and that involves a lot of teams, a lot of creativity. That's the big challenge facing brands today: the speed with which this content is exhausted on social networks."
With the same opinion, Nuno Centeno highlighted that the pandemic forced to "find new ways of working, new mechanisms, new rules, new ways of communicating through social networks. But one thing that changed a lot was the production of images and videos, the lives, etc. This became very strong. People who didn't use it, started to use it." In the gallerist's opinion, brands started to use video people a lot more, to hire qualified people to make good filming of the exhibitions and good photographers to put the content online. Being that, "for business development it was positive, because brands had to reinvent themselves and find new ways to reach the public, even if they were at home."
Something that has also developed, according to Nuno, is collaboration and synergies between different arts. "Artists now try to cross relationships with creators from the fashion industry, from music, from product design, from architecture, because it also involves trying to reach more audiences, to discover new languages." At the gallery, for example, he has invited architects to challenge them to think about architecture not as houses for their clients, but within contemporary art. "It's a fusion of audiences, the experimentation of new projects. I'm very interested in doing it now with people in fashion design, product design, etc."
And how are Portuguese companies positioned in terms of creativity? For Pedro Caride, "there are examples abroad that have been investing in creativity for longer than us. In the case of the textile industry, I have many years of fairs and visits to showrooms. The panorama has changed, but I remember that 20 years ago, I used to enter a showroom or a fair, be it footwear or fashion, and when I said I was from Portugal, they didn't exactly talk about Portuguese brands, Portuguese designers, but Portuguese factories. So, we were known for our workmanship and production quality, and not so much for our creativity. Things have been changing and that's a good thing."
The marketeer warns, however, that at the current higher level, we compete with countries that have also advanced a lot. And we have to compete not only in creativity, but also in strategy. "Of course, creativity can be more useful when we talk about differentiation strategies. I think we may have some chances there, especially when we talk about start-ups or brands that are just starting up, with low budgets and that don't have the possibility to opt for a strategy of doing better. Doing better often implies big budgets. A differentiation strategy does not. That's where creativity brings a bonus."
Brands: (still) the challenge of brand creationOn the second day of the event, Ana Corte-Real, Director MBA Executivo Católica Porto Business School, and Joana Campos Silva, Founder and Creative Director of Fashion Makers, were the special guests at the talk "Brands: (still) the challenge of brand creation”.
For Ana Corte-Real, the issue of creating competitive brands in Portugal remains the theme. "Creating brands in a market as competitive as today's implies a reading that designers and creative owners are often not fully capable of making. And there is a substantial difference that in Portugal is still not clear, which is the difference between business and brand. We can have very good businesses, which doesn't mean that we have a brand. In other words, it is not only the product or the quality of the product that makes the brand. On the other hand, even those entrepreneurs who realize that branding is something critical, often don't have the resources internally to do brand development. It's not because I'm a successful entrepreneur that I necessarily know what it's like to manage a brand."
In the same motto, Joana Campos Silva, adds that most of her clients want to develop a brand and belong to an industry. "They are very good at doing B2B business, but when it's to do a B2C brand, they find it very difficult. Because, effectively, working on brand development is not just mastering the technical ability of executing a product. It's obvious that we have to be the best at doing that one, but we have to think about branding." And what is branding? "It's the feeling that people have for the brand. And that feeling must be developed by a set of strategies. It must be worked on from a content point of view. It has to do with the relationship we establish with the customer, the way we provide the service to the customer, the feelings we manage to provoke." For the Creative Director of Fashion Makers, there is often no such know-how within companies, hence the difficulty in building the brand. "It takes years before we can create a brand with notoriety. It takes a lot of sensitivity for that construction."
For Ana Corte-Real, digital is fundamental. The pandemic has shown the importance, for example, of e-commerce. "Now we have to understand how the consumer will behave after this phase. There is data that shows a 45% growth in the number of people who never shopped online and now do so. But the experience of this phase, as a result of the context, of the volume, was often not the best for the brands. There were brands that had to learn, exaggerating, in one month what they didn't want to learn in 5 years. When you learn fast, it's natural that there are failures. Ana also emphasizes that "what the context demands from us today is a predisposition to understand that we need to be always learning".
In Joana's opinion, some brands wanted to strengthen their positioning. "They were already making the journey, afraid, whether through digital, or through the theme of sustainability, and quickly realized that they had to act and strengthen their brand positioning, especially in digital. Many brands already do many things well, but they can't show that they are doing it. As they can't show it, the final consumer doesn't understand what they're buying, or they don't understand the added value of that brand, and a gap ends up being created between the brand's value proposition and what is being perceived by the customer. More than rebranding, what has been happening is strengthening the positioning."
And how is the Portugal brand positioned today? For the Director of the CPBS Executive MBA, talking about brand Portugal today is different from 10 years ago, but there is still a long way to go. "The differences in a decade is that before the brand Portugal was Amália, fado, soccer. It was talking about celebrities that highlighted the country. Today the Portugal brand already lives with Portuguese brands. We have evolved because we already have Portuguese brands. Do we have brands like Italy or France? We don't, but we already have them and that's important. On the other hand, it is also important to understand what the value of the Portugal brand is for entrepreneurs. "Sometimes entrepreneurs are blamed a lot for not promoting brand Portugal, but the truth is that brand Portugal has to create value for Portuguese brands, so that they also feel they can create value for brand Portugal and that if they associate themselves with brand Portugal they will gain value." Ana reinforces the difficulty in building a brand, and "the country brand takes even longer because it is built by many. What do we want from a brand? Consistency. The consistency of a country brand in itself is a huge challenge. A few years ago we talked about the clusters of the Portugal brand and it was footwear, textiles and tourism, and that's why there are these levers. That's not to say that it's not all of these, but you need consistency. While I talk about the Italy brand and it's design, there's any issue here that we still have to evolve in the Portugal brand."
Brands Responsability - communicating responsible lifestyle
According to Marcelo Nico, "in the year 2016, we started a path publicly with the mission of creating a world without smoke, which is a paradox for the largest cigarette production company. But since 2016 we want to stop producing cigarettes. This is thanks to new technologies, the alternatives that eliminate combustion. It is extremely important to inform consumers, in this case smokers, of the alternatives that exist today and with factual, valid and science-based information."
"I started to notice a few years ago that the briefings we receive from brands to work with celebrities increasingly have a long-term strategy, on this premise of sustainability," adds Inês Mendes da Silva. However, she affirms that this is not a path imposed on her agencies, because it has to be an organic will. "Just as brands have to have authenticity, personalities also have to be transparent and authentic in the way they pass on these values. We don't force people to be what they are not, but we enhance that predisposition. It has to be in the person's DNA."
The General Manager of Tabaqueira complements on the particular situation of his business, "now we have to be much closer to the consumer, spend more time explaining the differences of the alternatives. It's not just selling the brand or the product, it's educating about the scientifically evaluated alternatives.
And what is it like to communicate in a pandemic situation? "Not only did brands start to cancel their actions and adapt their narratives, we also had to realize that we had a certain responsibility about what we were going to communicate through our personalities. The first thing we did was to make our resources available to the DGS. We understood how we could help them to send the right messages, without alarming them, but rather alerting people's consciences, clarifying with a more pedagogical function," explains Inês. On the other hand, one of the strategies was also to avoid campaigns that appealed to the consumption of superfluous products or services that were not basic, day-to-day necessities. Or pay attention to photos on the street without a mask, for example.
Fashion + Digital | What´s Next?
The last day of Portugal Fashion brought the talk "Fashion + Digital | What´s Next?” with Inês Becken, Founder and Communication Consultant at IF Comunicação and Rosário Mello e Castro, Director of Máxima magazine.
Will fashion shows become a thing of the past? "The story of the end of the fashion show we've been discussing for some time, but we've also been discussing for a long time whether haute couture should continue, and it does," says Rosário Mello e Castro. "We've seen a lot of changes in the way designers present their collections both in Portugal and abroad. I think that brought a breath of fresh air. We saw what Louis Vuitton did, Jonathan Anderson, etc. It's still very inspiring. What maybe we have to think about is that the fashion show is not going to continue to be on a runway with an audience, enclosed. It's going to reinvent itself, and we've seen that happen in recent times."
Delving into current trends, Inês Becken explores the importance of digital. "We tell our clients that what is not in digital does not exist. We accompany brands that did this process very well, in a very natural way, because they were already surrounded by people that allowed them to have this visibility. There are people who were not born only in digital, they already existed, they had their path, their visibility, and managed to migrate it to digital. And there are others, a younger generation that appeared in digital and then even moved in other directions, in areas like television, radio, journalism."
However, the founder of IF Communication warns of the need to master integrated communication, with adaptation of what brands want to show online and offline. "IF argues that it only works if it is a concerted communication in 360 degrees. There are brands that were born only in digital and I feel that they are smaller brands and sometimes they have a hard time migrating out of digital. It's easier for brands to go digital. It is easier to digitalize than to do it the other way around. We make the digitalization proposal, because we think that brands have assets and raw material to go digital and achieve something faster, on demand, on time. But the opposite way is sometimes more difficult. It is more difficult to get into the press, into a good article, into a good negotiation. It's harder to get that editorial content than the other way around."
In the same logic, the Máxima director adds, "There is this part of digitalization, but brands still value that the content is deep, that it offers information, that the reader can trust that content. This is a very big challenge now in digital, where you confuse an influencer page or a blog with a journalistic site." Still, there is room to marry the credibility of a magazine with the role of a digital influencer, as "there have always been actresses on magazine covers." Ines adds, "I'm still from the time when there was no digital, but there have always been female ambassadors. Even in the paper and in the physical, ambassadors were used."
And what has changed from paper to digital? Rosario explains. "what you used to do on paper is the same as what you do now on digital, but everything is much faster. The challenge to maintain that quality and demand, which the readers expect from us, is even greater. We have the demand to get a lot of news out each day, because everything is so much faster. There are news stories that it no longer makes sense to embroider. It makes sense to approach it in a deeper way, because the news, in fact, everyone has already done that.
In the context of digital, we also witnessed an evolution. According to Inês Becken, "about 10 years ago, initially, everything was very aesthetic. Curiously, and fortunately, we've been witnessing the opposite. It's not so aesthetic, we value more the organic, what is natural, what is true, the testimony. In the beginning we had a lot of scenarios, as if you only communicated beautiful things. That was a little bit misleading. Digital has a bit more of an aspirational goal. What we put on digital is generally what's beautiful. Now we stop living so much in perfect album photography. Today it's a very powerful tool for sharing realities and acceptance, which serves thousands of other purposes. I think humanity is making an even very beautiful path for the better. We stop hiding so much and expose more, and this is what we try to do with
our brands as well."
To conclude the talk highlights the positive path of fashion today. "Fashion for a long time was just fashion, put in a box. There was just a niche that understood it. Fashion has had this ability, during this last year, to take on another meaning. It's not just beautiful things, it's also sustainable. It exists for other purposes.
Transparency: the new paradigm of sustainable fashion in a country of hidden champions
How are Portuguese companies doing on the issue of sustainability? For Cristina Castro, "our companies and our sector have been concerned about sustainability for a long time. A few years ago they positioned themselves in what would be, is to be, and will be in the future, a constant: talk about sustainability, circular economy. So, we are very well positioned, Portugal and our sector. But there is also a lot of work still to be done to meet the demands of our market."
Ricardo Silva talks about the case of his company Tintex Textiles. "Already at its creation in 1998, the focus was on differentiation through innovation and by having the most transparent and lowest impact processes, because that made sense from an economic point of view and even for the community where we lived, close to the river." Today, the mission continues. "As we approached the companies we work with we realized that there is a higher cost for the customers. Each of us wants something different, wants to know more, where the pieces come from, how they are created."
How important is it for us to have transparent companies? According to Cristina, "we all have to think that transparency is fundamental. For companies, it is not enough to say that they have a sustainable product, they have to show, through certifications, evidence that that product is effectively sustainable."
Ricardo complements: "In the textile industry it is starting to be the great motto. It's harder to get information in textiles, because it's more segregated, but with digitalization where information passes quickly from country to country, it's easily solved." For the CEO, "we all want this. Even those who are in the industry want this transparency, because it helps a lot more to get their message across, to show the true values of each company or each country."
In this same sense of moving towards a more sustainable sector, CITEVE's Public Relations Officer explains that there are now several projects to promote innovative Portuguese companies. "We have some projects to help boost and make known what our companies have been doing, whether in the area of product innovation or applied to the most diverse areas, such as sustainability. We are now entering the 4th edition of the ITechStyle Green Circle initiative to show the capacity that our companies have to make sustainable products, whether through materials and finishes or through redesign or the reuse of pieces, of leftovers from the collection."
But is sustainability too expensive for companies? According to Ricardo, "from the industrial point of view, producing more sustainable is not more expensive. If we have to analyze our situation today compared to 10 years ago, it's not necessarily more expensive, because it's an update of the processes that even become more economical for the company, because we're saving resources. From the global point of view it even becomes cheaper. From the consumer's point of view, I believe that there are going to be fluctuations and at some moments there are going to be more expensive parts. Because if the value chains today, from a global point of view, are very much based in China, this shift either to Europe or to a more local production will lead to these higher costs in the beginning. Now, those who already produce in Europe, in Portugal, being Portugal a producer in quantity and quality in textiles, do not suffer with this change. It's simply an update of mindset."
The talk concludes on the outlook for the future with Cristina Castro mentioning an innovative CITEVE project to create identity cards for products, which is currently under development. "We believe that in 2023 we'll have a tool developed by different entities in the Portuguese scientific system and companies in the textile sector, both for clothing and home textiles, and we'll be able to create a tool that allows us to have all the information in a block chain. The consumer, when he goes to pick up the garment, will have all the information about it.
