Optimistic forecasts for fashion in 2022, according to the Sace report “Will Fashion be back?”, which studies the trend of the sector on the basis of 2020 and 2021 data. In its analysis, Sace highlights how in the course this year fashion and luxury sector could recover the positions lost in these two years of pandemic and return to the pre-crisis sales levels of the end of 2019.

Data

Let’s analyze the data: in 2020, made in Italy fashion exported goods for over 46.7 billion euros, less than 18.5 percent compared to 2019. Now, however, as we said at the beginning and as the Sace underlines, recovery is in progress. In the first 10 months of 2021, sales related to exports recorded a + 16.4% compared to the same period of the previous year, with a 6.6 percent value still to be recovered compared to pre-crisis levels.

Sectors

The sectors that are recovering the fastest, in terms of sales and exports, are knitwear and footwear, which can benefit from the impulse of international luxury brands, while fabrics, fur clothing and finally leather goods and luggage proceed more “slowly”. The export of the category “other textile products” has already recovered the pre-crisis levels of the end of 2019. The companies, emphasizes Sace, are therefore optimistic about the prospects for this year, in the wake of the expected recovery in important markets of international outlets and, also on a psychological level as a desire for recovery and not only for a restored potential economic availability, of a greater propensity to consume in a context of relatively lower uncertainty than in the previous two years.

Sustainability

Among the inevitable challenges that the fashion sector will have to face in 2022 is sustainability, also linked to the European action plan for the circular economy (Circular Economy Action Plan, Ceap), focused on the use of sustainable materials, on proper waste management and digitalization, in particular with the evolutions of the blockchain.