Première Vision Paris Opts for Earlier Trade Show Dates
● Beginning next year, both editions of the Paris trade show will take place earlier in the year to fit with market changes.
PARIS — Première Vision Paris is getting ahead.
Starting in 2021, both editions of the Parisbased textile show will take place earlier in the year: The spring edition will run from Feb. 2 to 4, 2021 — 10 days earlier than previous iterations — and the fall fair, usually scheduled in the second half of September, will run from July 6 to 8, over two months earlier.
The organizers of Première Vision
Paris made the decision following a study conducted in partnership with the Institut Français de la Mode, or IFM, in November and December. It revealed that brands have to tackle material sourcing — one of the first steps in the creation of a collection — a lot earlier to fit with a faster rhythm of production.
Out of the 1,765 brands, designers and retailers who were interviewed — based in France, Germany, the U.K. and Italy, the five countries that account for 75 percent of apparel sales in Europe — only 49 percent of them stick to the seasonal tradition of commercializing two ready-to-wear collections a year.
“As a matter of comparison, there were 63 percent of them during our previous study in 2015,” said Gilles Lasbordes, general manager of Première Vision
Paris, citing the previous Première
Vision study that led to the creation of Blossom Première Vision, the additional textile fair created specifically for pre- collections, which was launched in 2016.
Not only has the number of brands designing more than two collections a year increased, but the regularity of product delivery in stores has grown: 71 percent of the brands, designers and retailers that were part of the study said their collections hit stores in four drops a year or more.
In the luxury sector, within which nearly three- quarters of the brands do pre- collections, 20 percent of brands report choosing to drop products more than 12 times a year.
“Luxury brands have almost started to function like the fast fashion industry,” Lasbordes said. “But it’s a completely different way of organizing collections: Whereas fast-fashion brands progressively drop products from the same season in stores to keep the customer interested, for luxury brands each product delivery has its own creative identity. They call them ‘collaborations’ or ‘drops.’”
In addition to the IFM study, Première Vision Paris reached out to its own exhibitors, who confirmed the need for earlier trade shows to tackle their customers’ growing sourcing needs.
The change in dates, which is limited to the Paris editions of the Première Vision trade shows, puts in question the role of Blossom Première Vision, which currently takes place at the beginning of July.
In 2021, the fall edition of the precollections trade show will be pushed back to Sept. 7 and 8 with a whole new concept, to be revealed over the summer.