In the past week or so, a growing number of designers have taken the bold move to disrupt the status quo by shifting the existing fashion calendar and altering it in accordance with their own mindset and output. With that, and the current changes and departures in creative directors – Elbaz at Lanvin, Simons at Dior, Wang at Balenciaga, Alessandro Sartori at Berluti and Brendan Mullane at Brioni –, the fashion system is situated in an exciting moment of adaption, and how the industry does business is drastically changing.

Last week, Burberry was the first to make a move as Christopher Bailey claimed that he wanted to ‘align the runway with retail’ by combining their respective men’s and womenswear shows and making the clothes available to buy immediately. Tom Ford, Vetements and now Paul Smith are the latest designers to follow suit and  join this strategic change. 

Before his departure from Dior in October last year, Raf Simons spoke out about the ever-increasing high demands of fashion, highlighting the pressures of creating six shows a year; “The problem is when you have only one design team and six collections, there is no more thinking time. And I don’t want to do collections where I’m not thinking,” he explained, admitting he stays in the office until midnight most nights. With no time to do anything but create, Simons created an avenue of dialogue for other designers. 

The first to announce a radical change, Burberry’s creative director Christopher Bailey wants to amend the ‘broken’ system, by showing just two collections a year. In conversation with The Business of Fashion Bailey says, “It often felt slightly superficial to be talking about an Autumn/Winter collection, when it’s 90 degrees in a third of the shops we’re selling it in.”

Labelling peacoats and over jackets Spring/Summer didn’t sit right with Bailey, as he plans to slim the brand down to producing just two collections called February and September, dropping the traditional seasonal structure. “The changes we are making will allow us to build a closer connection between the experience that we create with our runaway shows and the moment when people can physically explore the collections for themselves,” he says, as the plans also offer customers the chance to immediately buy the collections right away.

The next luxury player to join the consumer shift, Tom Ford is increasing the speed at which customers can consume his collections- by enabling them to be bought as they are shown at fashion week. Speaking to WWD, he says, “We have been living with a fashion calendar and system that is from another era,” as he too will run men’s and women’s wear parallel to one another. The second driving force to restructure his fashion calendar, Ford will show his collections this September- instead of on the 18^th of February- along with Burberry.

Since the inauguration of his womenswear collection in 2010, Ford has tried various different approaches in terms of his show set-up: from tapping Lady Gaga for a music video, to intimate presentations and moving imagery, he has celebrated the diverse manner we can consume fashion in today’s progressive culture.

Staging two shows annually, the Paris-based brand Vetements will also merge its womenswear and menswear collections. Demna Gvsalia, Vetements’ creative director, has said that the decision will support gender fluidity in fashion, and will coexist with today’s reality. “Showing men’s and women’s at the same time connects us to real life. Today, gender is not a given conclusion anymore; a person has the right to choose from across the board. Splitting genders in two is against the natural flow of today’s reality,” he said.

Shortly following Burberry, Tom Ford and Vetements, both Paul Smith and its offset line PS by Paul Smith will fold together, combining the strengths of both lines and creating more accessible products. “I think at one point I counted twenty seven or twenty eight lines,” says Smith. “The world has gone mad.” He notes that fast fashion retailers such as H&M and Zara have made it almost impossible for him to keep up with the pace of consumerism. Almost immediately after designers have shown their collections, the affordable high-street chains mimic what they like, and sell them to consumers in mass bulk before the designer’s collection is available to the public. They can get it pretty much instantly, and for a fraction of the designer price. “It’s because of the dominance of the big brands; because of the expansion of department stores; because of online businesses; because of the high-street,” adds Smith.

As we see collections unify, and become ready to wear immediately, that ‘see now, buy now, wear now’ approach to consuming will carry over into the designer market. “Showing the collection as it arrives in stores will allow the excitement that is created by a show or event to drive sales and satisfy our customers’ increasing desire to have their clothes as they are ready to wear them,” Tom Ford told Vogue. Although slowing down will provide designers with the time to properly think, become inspired and create in time with their thought process, backing what Raf Simons’ highlighted last year, many will say that catering to fast fashion will produce negative, knock on effects and damage the value of collections. One thing is for sure, next season will be an interesting one to watch.