Modest Fashion Business by numbers in 2020
While modest styles and individual pieces have been visible on runways in Europe for the past couple of years, designers are now creating entire labels dedicated to fashion-conscious modest dressers.
Modest fashion is no longer an obscure term. From high fashion to the high street, more brands and stores are embracing the concept and advertising fashionable styles in campaigns and on catwalks.
Internet searches for “modest fashion” increased 90 percent last year, according to the Year in Fashion 2019 report released by Lyst, the largest global fashion search platform.
Modest fashion: How the industry is waking up to the billion-dollar sector
Tastes in fashion vary between countries; Filipinos have a high affinity with western brands, are seeing a significant shift away from the “tiangge” culture of flea markets and bazaars towards international fast fashion brands, and are also partaking in the explosion of athleisure, while Thai consumers demonstrate curiosity for brands from both Europe and other Asian nations like Japan and Korea. Both Indonesia and Malaysia meanwhile, are predominantly Muslim countries and have their own distinct narratives in terms of modest fashion trends.
Indonesia is due to be the largest modest fashion market in the world.
Notwithstanding the market’s challenges, international players from H&M to Adidas are engaging with India enthusiastically. Internet retailing accounted for nearly 11 percent of the apparel market in 2018, double the proportion just three years prior, driven in part by increasing internet and smartphone penetration. In fact, India saw the strongest absolute growth globally in the number of internet users in the past year.
Social media use is expanding at around 25 percent annually, with nearly 70 percent of users active on Instagram. This is providing a platform to introduce consumers to fashion brands away from the dominant informal market.
Southeast Asia also provides significant opportunities; at nearly 270 million people, Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world by population.
Vietnam and the Philippines are seeing rapid GDP growth. Across Southeast Asia, the median age is just 29, against 37 in China, highlighting the potential for growth as large numbers of young people enter the workforce each year.
As in China, demand is being driven by digitally native consumers, excited by the possibility of creativity and self-expression. It is worth highlighting that these countries are highly diverse; some consumers in the Philippines have a high affinity for western fashion trends, while Indonesia is due to be the largest modest fashion market in the world. Given the wide spectrum of taste within each country and the differences in regulation between countries, each of these markets alone can lend themselves as part of a considered expansion strategy for success at scale.
Equally, brands can explore a regional approach to establish a toehold and gain from the regional economy of scale. Russia is an interesting proposition; distracted by headlines about geopolitics in recent years, the country’s fashion sector has remained largely ignored by international fashion media. Yet Russia’s clothing market is worth close to $30 billion annually and is the ninth largest in the world, according to data from McKinsey FashionScope.
Despite recent economic slowdown in the country, the luxury market is showing new signs of stabilisation. In 2018, LVMH, Dior and Tiffany all reported the highest sales in the region since 2014. An increasingly budget-conscious middle class is creating new opportunities for price competitive players. Russians have embraced e-commerce too, which grew at an impressive 26 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2019.
