According to Giorgio Armani, the leather and fashion sector has the opportunity to find the right way.

We all agree that the world after the end of the era of the virus (as already said in the first post of this blog) will never be the same again and this will be even more true for the fashion and luxury sector, which unfortunately is estimated as the third most damaged after tourism and catering. I like to think that for every problem or crisis there is always an opportunità; for that I want to give a positive reading also to this disastrous and tragic event, with the hope of giving all a constructive point of view. I read the statement by giorgio armani, the best in my opinion, which I can summarize and comment on as follows.

Luxury must take care of the quality of its products

Unfortunately, most of the best-known luxury brands pay more attention to the care of the image, distribution and communication rather than the product. This is because it has been much more profitable and effective to invest in the other marketing levers rather than in the product, which in recent years has been reduced to a simple vehicle of image rather than an expression of savoir faire, taste and quality. Now, however, it is necessary to take care of the raw material, trying to select items that allow you to have a beautiful product, instead of a standardized product that responds to the specifications that protect against liability and lawsuits. In this, even the frenzy of the increasingly numerous collections does not help. Chains such as Zara and others are recognized for supplying their stores with new products every 15/21 days and making this speed their strong point, in addition to the price accessible to a very wide audience. According to Giorgio Armani this is not possible in the world of luxury, which surely has not yet reached these rhythms but is accelerating the succession of collections that have gone from 2 (summer and winter) to 4 (adding spring / autumn) to 8 (adding the pre-collections) up to 20 if we consider the collections for Photography and for the fashion shows.

Enough with fashion shows in every corner of the world with weak ideas and few contents.

Unfortunately, the frenzy of moving from one collection to another one, conditions the style offices to obtain results by penalizing the contents and quality of the collections. Here, perhaps the online comunication will also help here by facilitating fashion shows and the dissemination of content without the need for social events that show lifestyles rather than excellent products.

Sustainability, in the right direction.

In addition to what Giorgio Armani said, I would like to add another topic, that of sustainability, which we will finally have to start considering in the right way. In fact, those who consider the leather sector as polluting or exploiting the resources of Earth, have not quite understood how the situation is. The reuse of leather, tanned in an ecological way, perhaps chrome free or in any case with all the precautions that are used in the Italian industrial districts, such as, arzignano, santa croce sull’arno, turbigo and solofra is essential to reduce waste resulting from food processing of the meats. Alternative uses such as fertilizers or other would be absolutely less ecological; moreover, the field would be left to synthetic materials for the creation of clothing and accessories such as footwear and bags. The same exotic leathers actually result as an extra from crocodile and python meat; it is clear that the value of the skin is much greater than the value of the meat, even if the latter is not to be underestimated since some species reach 2 tons !! We will return with a number of articles on the topic of sustainability.

We will see if our top entrepreneurial class will be able to direct our sector towards the right path by taking lessons from the human tragedy that we are experiencing in this spring of 2020.