H&M Pull School Uniform Advert

H&M, the Swedish clothing company, have drawn ire for their advertisement for school clothing. Social media users branded it as "sickening" and questioned the reasoning behind the ad.

 

The advertising campaign launched in Australia featured two young girls in pinafore dresses with the caption, “Make those heads turn in H&M’s Back to School fashion”.

 

On Monday, an H&M spokesperson said, “We have removed this ad. We are deeply sorry for the offence this has caused and we are looking into how we present campaigns going forward”.

 

The move comes after social media users accused the company of sexualising young girls. 

 

“The little girls’ parents generally prefer heads don’t ‘turn’ when others see their daughters walking to school, on a bus or in class”, Melinda Tankard Reist, an Australian writer known for campaigning against pornography, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. 

 

“Why would you want to fuel the idea that little girls should draw attention to their looks, bodies and ‘style’? Perhaps have a word to your marketing team and come up with something that doesn’t draw attention to pre-pubescent girls already struggling to thrive in a culture that values ‘lookism’ as an aspirational goal?”

 

Boeing will hold a quality stand down tomorrow at the Seattle-area US location where they make 737 aircraft, pausing production and delivery operations for a day, the company announced yesterday.

 

During the stand down, employees will attend quality workshops and “pause, evaluate what we're doing, how we're doing it and make recommendations for improvement”, said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Stan Deal. 

 

The first stand down will occur at the Renton, Washington-area factory where the 737 is built. All other Boeing commercial production facilities and fabrication sites will have stand downs over the next few weeks, Boeing said.

 

It is long overdue! Stop gambling lives and start putting quality over profit!

#IsupportXinjiangcotton

On Monday, I had blogged about this malicious anti-China campaign about Xinjiang cotton that is a total lie. 

Rightly, anger is brewing in China over the international brands boycotting Xinjiang cotton, linking it to claims of slave labor. 

And fashion giant H&M was the first to come under fire. In October, the Swedish retailer had said on their official website that they did not source products from Xinjiang due to “reports on forced labor and discrimination of ethno-religious minorities” in the country's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. 

This statement came to light again last week, fueling Chinese netizens’ fury and who called on a boycott against the brand. 

The flame quickly spread to Burberry, Adidas, Nike and some others – as old statements they made in relation to the ban on Xinjiang cotton resurfaced. 

An online campaign on Sina Weibo came out in support of Xinjiang cotton – and as of two Fridays ago, #IsupportXinjiangcotton has already gained 4.2 billion views! 

Consumers everywhere should stand in solidarity with the Chinese and cold-shoulder H&M as well as other foolish brands that stupidly support the trumped-up story about Xinjiang cotton!

Attack on China: The Issue of Xinjiang Cotton

The spiteful West is at it again. It is targeting China and fabricates fiction about the country. 

This time, the issue is supposedly forced labor in the cotton fields in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. [FYI, Xinjiang is a major global hub for the cotton industry. It produces 85 percent of China's and 20 percent of the world's cotton]. 

Based on the manufactured lie, some international brands (e.g. H&M, Adidas and Nike) had taken upon themselves to believe in the falsehood and announced the ban on Xinjiang cotton in their production. 

In response, more than forty Chinese celebrities have rescinded endorsement contracts with these brands. 

Chinese consumers, too, are unhappy over the stand the brands took and expressed their dissatisfaction by boycotting their products. 

All of this is, of course, going to hurt these big brands. 

"And the ultimate brand value of these Western companies, measured in terms of their growth potential, could be cut in half over the next five years if they refuse to rectify their discriminations against China", Zhang Yi, CEO of Shenzhen-based iiMedia Research told China’s Global Times on Saturday. 

On Thursday, the day after Swedish clothing company H&M triggered a tsunami of condemnation by Chinese netizens over their ill-intended ban on Xinjiang cotton, the company, as well as others too which have adopted similar stances to H&M, saw share prices drop significantly. 

Germany-based Adidas, one of the most popular foreign clothing brands among Chinese consumers, saw their share price drop by more than 6 percent on Thursday. According to media reports, Adidas, together with US-based Nike, saw their market value drop by more than 70 billion yuan ($10.7 billion) on that day. And the market value of H&M also slumped by about 4.8 billion yuan. 

It serves these brands right for taking up an issue that has been politicized by hostile foreign governments and their media.

Detox Fashion

Credit: Trendstop

It’s time to detox! 

Let's commit to Greenpeace's "Detox My Fashon" campaign.

Around the world, an expanding movement of people are using their creativity, design skills and purchasing power to demand fashion without pollution. 

United by a shared belief that the clothes we wear should carry a story we can be proud of – activists, bloggers, fashionistas, designers, scientists and models have been pushing, persuading and proselytizing many big brands to commit to toxic-free fashion.

Since 2011, the environmental organization have been relentlessly shining a spotlight on the use of hazardous chemicals within the clothing industry. 

In fact, Greenpeace Germany have now published an update of the results in the form of a paper dubbed “Destination Zero: Seven years of Detoxing the clothing industry”. 

According to this report, a total of 80 major fashion brands have made progress in their pledge to remove hazardous chemicals from their production lines by the year 2020. 

They singled out fast-fashion companies such as Inditex (which owns the high street chain Zara), H&M, Benetton and Fast Retailing (which owns Uniqlo) as leading the way in the mission to reduce the use of chemicals that pollute the planet. 

But while these 80 companies that include major brands such as Adidas, Nike, Mango and Puma – they only make up 15 percent of the fashion industry as a whole, and Burberry and Valentino are the only two fashion labels from the luxury sector to have signed up to the pledge. 

Kirsten Brodde, Greenpeace Germany project lead of the Detox-my-Fashion campaign admits: “While we are extremely happy to see the progress of Detox companies towards cleaning up their supply chains, 85 percent of the textile industry is still not doing enough to eliminate hazardous chemicals and improve factory working conditions”. 

Still, we do need to recognize that there are already multiple initiatives put in place to clean up the fashion industry’s image and environmental impact have come to fruition over the past few years. 

Commendable efforts by PVH Group (which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger) to reduce the waste generated by their brands, as well as a water economy programme launched by Gap Inc and recycled fashion collections launched by labels ranging from H&M to The North Face all make a difference. 

Sure, we still have a long way to go – but the successes achieved so far prove that when we work together, big businesses and big brands are compelled to stand up and deliver. For a better world. 

I support Detox Fashion! What about you?

Sneakers that Marry Fashion with Sports

A model presents a creation from the Dolce & Gabbana Autumn/Winter 2018 women collection during Milan Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 25, 2018

Luxury fashion and sports are coming together. And it looks as if they have become inseparable. 

Strange bedfellows alright but it is the in-thing now. And yielding big profits for those involved in the business. Already, both luxury groups and sports companies are looking to cash in on a booming market. 

Premium sneakers can start at around $400 but can easily go up as high as $3,000 for a pair of Christian Louboutin’s leather, crystal-embellished sneakers. 

And limited editions can even sell for well over $10,000, including the Chanel X Pharrell Hu Race Trail or Nike’s Air Jordan 3 Retro DJ Khaled Grateful. 

High-end brands such as Gucci, Prada and Balenciaga are increasingly looking to sneakers for growth, putting them in direct competition with sportswear giants like Nike, Puma and Adidas – and creating ever-more striking and swank designs. 

A Reuters report put global sales of sneakers – or trainers – to have expanded by 10 percent to 3.5 billion euros in 2017. 

For sure, sneakers are a big driver of the luxury shoe business – in fact, luxury sneakers represent the fashion industry’s fastest-growing segment. 

Bruce Pas, Men’s Fashion Director at US department store Neiman Marcus – a leading purveyor of the world's most unique luxury goods – trumpets: “It’s not really even a trend anymore – it’s become a category”. 

The rise of luxury sneakers is part of the growing influence of casual and streetwear in high-end fashion, where it is now acceptable to team sneakers with a tailored suit. 

Upmarket brands are tapping into street style to refresh their looks and young buyers are driving the shift. “Millennials” – born between the early 1980s and mid-90s – already represent a third of the luxury market, according to consultancy Bain & Co. 

It has been noted that even with intensifying competition, profits will remain very healthy. 

“There is (a) large space for prices moving up”, said Erwan Rambourg from HSBC. It seems that the ‘luxurization’ of sneakers can only impact margins positively. 

Designer footwear or luxury sneakers or couture sneakers or whatever we may wish to call them – they are a fast-growing market segment. 

Even for sportswear companies, like Adidas, fashion collaborations are not unusual. 

In fact, Adidas recognize that it is a way of expanding their company’s creative ecosystem and keeping consumers engaged and excited by the Adidas brand in a fast-moving market. “These days the pace has become so fast. People go to verticals, like H&M and Zara, and expect new products every month. Even with high fashion labels, it’s the cruise collection and pre-collections; every three months you get something new”, said Dirk Schönberger, creative director of Adidas’ sport style division. 

“We are a very commercial brand, so, of course, we have to deliver – at a minimum every week – something that excites the consumer. The verticals and the [speed of the] Internet have changed the way we do things”, he added. 

When a market opportunity presents itself, you can be sure marketing-driven companies will be in the thick of the action. It’s business, after all!