August is when fashion pretends to stop

There is a particular point in August when fashion appears to disappear.

In Italy, the middle of the month is marked by Ferragosto, the great summer exodus. Cities empty, offices close and the coast becomes the centre of gravity. Across Europe, from the islands of Greece and Spain to the French Riviera and the cliffs of Cornwall, the same ritual plays out. In America, the Hamptons take over from Manhattan, and anyone who can possibly leave New York tends to do so.

The fashion industry participates in the ritual, at least superficially. Offices become quieter. Meetings move to terraces. Emails are answered with auto-responders of out-of-office messages. The streets around the major showrooms are noticeably less frenetic.

But fashion has never really stopped in August.

For many of the people responsible for turning a collection from an idea into something that can actually be sold, August is one of the most consequential months of the year.

September is almost upon us. London Fashion Week runs from September 17 to 21, with New York and Milan preceding it and Paris following. The runway may be the first time the wider industry sees a collection, but those designs have been in the making for months.

What we see on the runway is the end of a very long chain of decisions. And much of that chain is still moving in August.

The collection doesn’t make itself

At the largest houses, the creative director may indeed be taking some time off. The collection may have been designed, edited, approved and handed over months ago.

The rest of the business does not necessarily have that luxury: Someone has to chase the mill because the wool that was promised for July has not arrived. Someone has to approve the final dye colour of a cotton. Someone has to finish correcting the pattern for a jacket. Someone has to make the sample. Someone has to fit it.

And someone, somewhere, has to calculate whether the beautiful coat that looks entirely convincing on the runway still makes commercial sense once fabric, labour, freight, duties and wholesale margins are accounted for.

This is the part of fashion that is rarely visible in the finished image.

The industry likes to talk about creative vision, but creative vision has to survive fabrication, minimum order quantities, production capacity, delivery windows and margin preservation.

A double-breasted jacket may look deceptively simple on the runway, but the balance of the shoulder, sleeve pitch, chest construction and suppression can take several rounds of sampling to get right.

That work doesn't stop because half of Paris has gone to the south of France.

August, with a deadline

I learned this rather memorably when I was running a PR agency in London.

One of my clients was Vivia Ferragamo, granddaughter of the Ferragamo dynasty, who was running her own label of shoes and resortwear from London.

We had tried to be organised. Casting had taken place before the summer holidays and the campaign shoot was scheduled for the end of August, when the weather would still be convincingly summery.

The location was Vivia's splendid roof terrace in Kensington. The product was resortwear and shoes. The concept was straightforward: English rose meets Mediterranean summer. Pale skin, blonde hair, sun, sea and a certain languid European fantasy.

Then the model arrived. She had just returned from Mallorca. She had also acquired an impressively deep tan. It was not the tan we had planned for. There was, unfortunately, no time machine.

The photographer was booked. Hair and make-up were booked. Assistants were booked. Catering was booked. The location was booked. The model's fee had been agreed. The client was there - it was her home!

We could not simply say, "Let's do it next week.” So we shot it. The photographs went into retouching afterwards, and we salvaged what we could. But the episode has stayed with me because it captured something very specific about working in fashion in August.

You can plan everything weeks and months ahead and still find yourself at 9.30 on a summer morning trying to solve a problem caused by somebody's holiday in Mallorca.

And August has a habit of producing these problems. The fabric delivery that was supposed to arrive at the end of July is now arriving at the end of August. The pattern cutter is away. The sample machinist has gone to the seaside. The photographer is travelling. The casting agent is unreachable. The factory has reduced its production schedule.

Every delay compounds the next one. A missed fabric delivery becomes a missed sample. The missed sample becomes a missed fitting. The missed fitting affects production. Suddenly, a collection that looked comfortably on schedule in June is being pushed through the system at speed.

The people who make fashion happen know this. August is less a holiday than a test of patience, relationships and ingenuity.

Delivery is part of the product.

There is another reason August matters commercially: Delivery.

For retailers, getting Autumn/Winter product onto the shop floor early can be a meaningful advantage. It may be 30 degrees outside, but that does not mean customers are unwilling to buy the new season. The first customer to see the right coat, knit or leather jacket can be the first customer to buy it.

This is where merchandising mix becomes important.

Luxury retail has become increasingly dependent on getting the right product into the right store at the right moment. A house can produce a remarkable runway collection and still miss the season if the commercial product arrives too late. Gucci under Sabato de Sarno is an example for the fashion books. It took forever for product to arrive in stores,

The September fashion calendar is therefore not simply a media exercise. It is the beginning of another commercial cycle. A late delivery is not merely a logistical inconvenience. It is lost selling time.

New beginnings

September is the start of a new season and new creative chapters that have been taking shape during the summer.

At Diane von Furstenberg, Henry Zankov will make his New York Fashion Week debut on September 10 as artistic director. At Mulberry, Christopher Kane's first collection as creative director is another significant September appointment. The British house is attempting to build a broader ready-to-wear proposition around its identity and craft heritage, at a time when the luxury sector is paying considerably more attention to the relationship between product, brand recognition and profitability.

At Paul Costelloe, William Costelloe represents a different kind of succession. He is continuing the family business following the death of his father, Paul Costelloe, last year.

The ‘Business’ doesn’t take 'Ferragosto' off

Meanwhile, the wider fashion economy offered little evidence this August that the industry could afford a complete break.

Frasers Group's acquisition of Harvey Nichols out of administration was perhaps the month's clearest reminder that luxury retail is undergoing a hard reset.

Frasers bought the UK business, including stores, its online operation, inventory and more than 1,000 employees. The price was widely reported at around 40 million pounds. There is something almost symbolic about Mike Ashley acquiring Harvey Nichols. Remember Matches Fashion? Three months after the acquisition it was put into administration.

Prestige is not a business model. A famous address and an impressive façade cannot compensate indefinitely for high fixed costs, declining footfall or an unconvincing digital proposition.

Frasers clearly sees value in the customer base, brand relationships and retail footprint. The more interesting question is what happens next.

China is no longer the easy answer

The pressure is not confined to department stores. China delivered another warning this month.

Sales at the 25 largest luxury labels in China fell by more than 10 percent in July, according to data from three research firms tracking the market and reported by Bloomberg. Louis Vuitton, Dior, Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga were among the brands experiencing double-digit declines, while Hermès moved from growth into decline and growth at Chanel and Prada slowed.

The significance is larger than one bad month.

For decades, luxury companies treated China as one of the central engines of future growth. The assumption was that an expanding affluent and aspirational consumer base would continue to move through the luxury pyramid, buying more handbags, watches, jewellery, ready-to-wear and ultimately higher-ticket pieces.

At the other end of the market, Shein is facing a very different version of the same problem: what happens when growth expectations meet a more difficult capital market?

The fast-fashion giant is pursuing a Hong Kong listing, but its valuation expectations have reportedly fallen dramatically from the nearly 100 billion dollar figure associated with its 2022 funding round. Recent reports have put the targeted valuation at roughly 25–28 bn dollars, according to Oninvest. That is an extraordinary adjustment and raises questions that go beyond Shein itself.

The ultra-fast model depends on relentless newness, enormous volumes, extremely responsive supply chains and consumers willing to keep buying. Regulation, scrutiny and changing consumer attitudes complicate that equation.

Fashion has spent years arguing about whether the model is sustainable environmentally. The financial markets are now asking a different question: Is it sustainable financially?

The holidays are over

And then, suddenly, the silence will end. Editors will arrive. Buyers will move between appointments. Invitations fill your inbox. Fittings are behind schedule.

London Fashion Week will begin on September 17. Milan will follow. Paris will come afterwards. From the outside, it will look as though fashion has suddenly come back to life.

But it never really went anywhere. While the rest of us were on beaches, factories were cutting. Mills were weaving. Sample rooms were stitching. Sales teams were finalising pricing. Image-makers were preparing campaigns. Logistics teams were moving product across borders.

That is August in fashion.