How Shall Vegan Fashion Tackle the Festive Season?

A slow but significant change has been bugging the traditional attitude towards Christmas spending since 2022. The particular pressure to be merry on Christmas, and to translate that merriness into presents and gifts, has been called out as basic, consumerist, and anti-Christian altogether. This shift manifests in the most ambiguous ways, from changing buying patterns to giving up celebrating Christmas altogether. And since many brands do count on the Christmas season to make up for the slow months, and then some, in this article, we will dive into what changing Christmas spending habits means for vegan fashion in particular.

Luxury redefined

Christmas used to be the splurge time. People would either save up or just max out their cards to buy luxury items. According to Earnest Analytics, the holiday season of 2023, which is defined as November 1, 2023 to January 2, 2024, saw a two-digit decline in luxury spending, 10% for original retail and 15 – 18% for resale (Farfetch, The Realreal) respectively. According to Adevinta, this Christmas, 64% of European consumers are considering shopping second-hand. In UK alone, IPA has reported that this Christmas, 56% of respondents in the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups hope to receive practical gifts rather than luxury items. What’s interesting, luxury’s drop in sales is an all-year trend, Christmas or no Christmas alike.

By July 2024, major luxury players such as Burberry (-23%), Richemont (-27%), Swatchgroup (-11%), and Kering (-11%) all experienced a two-digit plunge in the sale numbers alike. In October 2024, Kering reported a 16% fall in Q3 sales, with Gucci and Saint Laurent numbers falling 25% and 12% on comparable basis respectively. LMVH reported a 5% drop in fashion and leather goods division, with shares down by 7%, hitting a two-year low. Prada’s and Hermès’ Q3 sales growth of 18% and 11.3% respectively only illustrates how difficult it has become to predict any definitive trend in the global market. And while the global plunge is believed to be mainly driven by dropping sales in Asia, the key takeaway is that luxury brands keep missing sales estimates as they overshoot people’s appetite for owning and flashing around shiny new statement pieces.

The dropping appetite for luxury, while clearly affected by the global belt-tightening trend, also reveals a a certain shift as individuals try out new ways to impress with their sartorial choices. IPA reports that young workers are more open to buying gifts from new or emerging brands. In recent years, changing criteria on what’s cool and what’s not has left luxury pretty troubled and perturbed, yet it is in this perturbation that luxury is slowly reinventing itself as a more complex and multidimensional creature than it ever was before. For an item to become a statement piece, having an expensive logo won’t cut it anymore. The rise of ‘keeping it real’ and ‘owning one’s truth’ as key lifestyle statements of millennials and Gen-Z alike is costing luxury brands millions of US dollars to take each new product above and beyond mere merchandising items.

The aim is to have both the product and the campaign resonating with the highest number of individuals who claim fashion to be both an expression as much as an extension of their unique souls. A growing number of accomplished creatives such as Joaquin Phoenix, Ricky Gervais, Christy Turlington, Pink, Billie Eilish, and sports figures like Lewis Hamilton, Morgan Mitchell and Novak Djokovic, all known for ‘keeping it real’ by going vegan and still scoring their lifetime records is the biggest incentive for brands like Gucci and Tory Burch to dive straight in to vegan waters with their expensive product collaborations. This, along with a humble but significant number of new vegan brands such as Hiraeth Collective, Alfredo Piferi, Orchard Moon, and Sarah Regensburger crafting their luxury status from day one, is significantly contributing to the mainstream conversation about what luxury is AD 2024.

Value for money

Blame it on rising living costs – people either have less money, or prefer to save what they can. On top of that, ongoing global military conflicts and the ever-growing number and intensity of natural disasters have left people focused on the practical value they get every time a dime is spent. In 2023 Statista reported that in the UK alone, 28% of respondents declared spending less on clothing and footwear over the Christmas period than in 2022 as opposed to 8% intending to spend more. In the US, around a 25% of respondents intended to spend less for Christmas, while less than 20% expected to spend more.

Reduced Christmas expenses year-on-year has been a pattern for major European countries as well. Even though the 2024 holiday outlook reports by both Vericast and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) do show a more optimistic approach, ‘playing it safe’, also known as strategic and cautious spending, is going to be the pattern of the season. As Vericast reports, in the U.S., s ‘conflicting mentality’ is going to find itself juggling the urge to spend more to make the holiday special and saving as much money as possible.

Two-digit sales have always been a key feature of the season. However, it is now, more than ever, that if falls on the off-price market places to keep the overall holiday spending rate above the ground, which is currently at 1.7% year-over-year. With over 70% of Christmas shopping traffic projected to happen via mobile devices, and the majority of it distributed between Amazon, Temu and Shein, it is only right to ask where does sustainability land between deals, coupons and same-day delivery services.

And yet if we ask artificial intelligence to predict customer behaviour for the Christmas season of 2024, it points to sustainability as a key driver for purchasing decisions. In his article about the holiday shopping season of 2024, Armando Roggio is quoting three generative AI tools on their trend projections. Therefore, according to Chat GPT 4.0 (Open AI), we should expect a 25% increase in sales for retailers offering carbon-neutral shipping, recyclable packaging, and sustainably sourced products. Grok-2-Beta (X) predicts that with increasing awareness about environmental issues, sustainability will become a significant factor in purchasing decisions, while projecting AI’s fundamental input in predicting what consumers might want before they explicitly search for it. Gemini (Google) goes one step further and projects that consumer awareness of environmental and social issues will reach new heights, with shoppers increasingly choosing brands and products that align with their values.

A little vegan Christmas

For vegan fashion brands, capitalising on this information means broadcasting, early and loudly, their signature offer and services, and creating insightful communications about planet and animal-welfare. Yes, capitalising on anything sounds bad and unfit for a vegan, brand or individual alike. Yet fashion has been capitalising on Christmas extensively, to the extent that even cultures and communities that do not celebrate Christmas find themselves caught up in the festive traffic as early as four months ahead.

Customers who refer to themselves as ‘resourceful’ look out for the holiday gifts and deals as soon as the first window displays are decorated with Christmas lights. According to Vericast, October shoppers make 44% of the respondents, followed by November (41%) and December shoppers (31%) respectively. Generally, older consumers tend to shop earlier than millennials or Gen Z, which does suggest brick-and-mortar shops should start decorating no later than October. Dropping the offers earlier would also give potential vegans, or people shopping for vegans, more time to read into the specifics of a vegan fashion brand. For many, getting or buying a cactus leather bag, or a pair of mycelium leather sneakers, might be the first time they get to experience the perks of a vegan lifestyle. Social media-oriented brands should launch their campaigns extensively in November right up to December 24th.

Vericast also reports that the most welcome way for customers to receive information about holiday deals is via newsletters (35%) with tangible loyalty rewards (20%). Although the data gathered was in the U.S., for vegan brands operating on a small marketing budget, focusing on the newsletter recipients who already know the brand and the values it stands for might prove to be a cost-efficient way to boost Christmas sales. It is also easier for a smaller brand to keep the a direct line of communication up and running, learn about their customers’ seasonal objectives and concerns, and respond to them promptly with bespoke solutions and services.

If a brand supports a charity, Christmas season is a good time to show the tangible results of this support, and connect people to help those who lack a voice. Helping people do more good at the most hectic time of year might go much further in keeping customers loyal and returning in the coming months than offering competitive discounts. For brands with more marketing budget, launching extensive online promotional campaigns with clear animal welfare and sustainability messages might prove more efficient at this time of the year. With Veganuary starting just a few days after the holiday break, offering products and services that will make the vegan experience more insightful and exciting for both existing and potential vegans is a sure way of establishing a firm following beyond the vegan month.

With more and more people in the Western Hemisphere, Christian and non-Christian, choosing not to celebrate Christmas, and spend it like any other vacation, brands are finding themselves competing not only with each other but now with exotic destinations and flight ticket upgrades. Statistics are contradictory on that point though. In the U.S. alone, Vericast reports 74% of respondents choosing physical gifts over holiday experiences in 2024, while GetYourGuide reported an unprecedented 92% of respondents preferring gifted experiences around this time last year. Regardless of the dynamics, as people are opening up to alternative ways of spending Christmas that do not necessarily involve gathering around over a slaughtered animals (in the food and the presents), it might be a good time to spread the word about animal welfare and environmental stewardship, and let those few special days work their miracle.

Further reading:

2024 Retail Trendwatch by Vericast

Armando Rioggio, 5 Predictions for the 2024 Holiday Shopping Season

IPA

BCG

Statista; Statista and Statista