Our Investment in Seasons

“Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.” — Francis Bacon

There are many changes afoot in the world of how, and why, we wear clothes. This has a few layers to it, if I may. Let’s start, first, with what we buy.

What we buy.
“We’re not against rap. We’re not against rappers…”

The first inflection point, for me, in how fashion changed forever, was Run-DMC’s Adidas tracksuits. Hip-hop was just emerging as the art form which would come to dominate the next 35 years of global culture. It was, I rate, more dynamic and subversive than its predecessors: more collaborative, openly competitive — it was epigrammic and visual, accompanied by graffiti and break dancing, rule-bending and brimming with confidence from those populations who had been left out. Vogue ballrooms in Harlem are probably the true spiritual predecessor to hip-hop, in a funny way. Q.E.D.

Why we buy.
Values are valuable.

They told us a story about value and values in culture. These values start with essentialism in a culture of excess. How do you create focus, simplicity, and efficiency in artistic expression? For the last 20 years, the fashion industry chose to never ask that question. It simply added more runway shows, funded more lines and labels, churned out more items whose shelf life got shorter and shorter.

Nearly 20% of global waste water is produced by the fashion industry (2nd largest wastewater producing industry). The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions.

How We Buy.
Fashion as-a-Service

The retail apocalypse began long before COVID. Mid-size and big box retailers were finding that the fundamental premises of how consumers shopped were changing in ways that made their models impossible: Barney’s, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus, J.C. Penney, Sears–– ghosts of culture past. The internet’s distribution model pushes for variance. The big get bigger, the small get more varied, niche, and defensible. The fashion show seasonal model was designed for the traditional wholesale buyer. Today, those buyers are gone. Brands must go direct, go boutique, or pay the tax to stand-out among the great aggregators. Seasons has created a new data-driven method for brands to sell product, measure consumer sentiment, build relationship. Algorithms are personalizing experiences across commerce, and brands are succeeding through both superior storytelling, and sophisticated relationship with their consumer data. The product learns who likes what, where they are, why the like it, and they leave it to the brand to figure out what to do about that. It’s working.

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