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Let’s hand it to Jason Wu for his honesty. In an interview about his plan to skip a Resort presentation and consolidate that pre-collection with the Spring one he’ll show in September, he admitted, “it’s really exhausting to present four times a year, it’s time to savor a little bit more.”
Brands across the spectrum are rethinking a collection system that has sped up in response to the almost non-stop deliveries of fast fashion companies. Wu isn’t the first designer to reorganize his approach to the runway, but he might be the most candid. Earlier this year, Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez announced they’ll present their pre-Spring and Spring collections together in Paris during couture week in July, in order, they said, to capitalize on retailers’ buying budgets and deliver to stores earlier. Last year, brands like Burberry, Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, and Thakoon adopted an in-season show model to foster customer excitement and, secondarily, to foil copy artists, though Ford has already reverted to the traditional system and the Thakoon label is on indefinite hold.
Few of these designers have gone on record about the creative process. Wu is making it the central part of his story. “I was spinning my wheels with four different concepts four times a year. I wanted to offer a more cohesive story to my clients.” With the new time and headspace, he’s been amping up consumer events: Palo Alto last week, a pop-up with Matthew McConaughey’s charity in Austin, Texas, the week before that, and Boston a month ago. “People don’t really understand four seasons a year. To us in our bubble it seems clear, to other people it’s not.” If he’s learned anything, he said it’s that the human touch is a better sales driver than newness anyway. "We've found we've been able to cultivate a new clientele in a moment when people aren't so brand loyal anymore."
Sounds like a win-win.
