The pandemic of 2020 has already caused much-needed changes within the textile industry to be implemented. One such subtle shift has come in the form of a pre-order e-commerce site that offers with it a sustainable way to shop. Though seemingly different, the concept is actually a familiar one, having existed long before Fast Fashion takes over. All year we have spent reimaging; contemplating alternate possibilities and adapting to unpredictable circumstances. The global pandemic which has plagued the entirety of 2020 has all but forced a collective change upon us. One group in particular which has embraced such much-needed modification has been the textile industry. With each passing month, more designers and brands have shown to adopt sustainable practices into their core brand values. Some have even gone as far as testing out regenerative practices, which illustrate the ultimately closed-loop system efforts. Yet other changes by industry players may be more simple. But to say so is not to discredit the magnitude of change that such subtly simplistic efforts may inspire. Lucianne Tonti’s endeavours began early last year, in a showroom in Paris. The space was set up with the idea of it being a “little zen oasis” — a place of peace amongst the otherwise chaotic streets seen during Paris Fashion Week. But that space was ahead of its time. Featuring up and coming sustainable designers only, Tonti hoped to inspire shoppers with the intricate details of how the pieces were made, by whom and where — questions we are rarely able to answer about our clothes, but that have great significance nonetheless. Her focus on such features of slow and ethical fashion sadly did not mesh well with the decades-old system that demanded collections every few months. The Showroom did not last. But the pandemic brought upon a rare opportunity. During quarantine, Tonti moved back to her hometown of Melbourne. While there, she took the chance to contemplate that which she had previously attempted, but in an alternate way. “For the first time in a really long time, I was able to think about how I could take this message of what we’re doing—which is really gentle, thoughtful clothes—and connect with the person who is actually wearing them, and strengthen that connection between the designer and customer,” she explains to Emily Farra in her recent interview with Vogue. The conventional wholesale model hadn’t previously been working for her, so instead, she adopted one that did: pre-orders. In early October, Tonti launched an updated, e-commerce version of her original conceptual Showroom in Paris. Named Prelude, the site features sustainable designers, including some who had been shown at the previous Showroom. Customers can peruse original pieces by the designers via the site, and purchase on a “made to order” structure. The concept is a brilliantly simple one, and aides not only the environment but Tonti and the designers as well. Foremost, it allows for the reduction of waste, as that which is only requested by interested customers is produced at any given time. This eliminates the guessing that many buyers had to do — having to predict months ahead of time what shoppers may want. The process was certainly not sure-fire and allowed for a large margin of error which ultimately resulted in the production of waste (and the loss of natural resources). “There’s an amount of guessing that goes into wholesale production, whether a store is ordering based on last year’s sales or a gut feeling that this item will work,” Tonti explains. “That’s the nature of wholesale: Designers make clothes to sell to retailers, and no one has any idea what people will actually buy. I’ve worked with some wonderful buyers over the years, and I don’t want to say that’s where everything goes wrong — but they do take it out of a designer’s hands, to an extent.” Prelude, then, opens up an exclusive opportunity that did not exist prior to the pandemic — a direct relationship and line of communication between designer and consumer. With a disproportionate number of luxury department stores continuing to go bankrupt and close, Tonti’s Prelude could not have come at a more opportune time. The designers, too, benefit from the made to order system in substantial ways. Most importantly, it provides them with the necessary capital to produce the garments. The system gives them the opportunity to use the customers' capital (as opposed to investing their own) to pay for the exact amount of necessary supplies and labor. In having the ability to communicate with their buyer through the process, the designer also gets the chance to feel more of an intimate connection with them.
The hope (and subsequent challenge) for Prelude moving forward is that the customer will place as much value on these intimate details as the designers do. In a time of mass-ordering and same-day delivery, where most pieces are worn no more than two to three times before being discarded, convincing customers to order weeks or months in advance can prove to be a challenge. The majority of the issue, according to Tonti, lies in a lack of awareness by the customer in knowing how much work and time actually goes into making a garment. “I think this is an opportunity to become educated about the timeline fashion works on,” Tonti says. “We’ve been taught by the high-street brands that you can see something on the runway and get it for $60 next week. It’s really time to unpick those habits, because someone is suffering in that equation. More than one person is suffering. This clothing [on Prelude] is so beautiful, and I would hope that when you pick up a jumper from Ound, and you read about how she’s working directly with the sheep farmer and the person spinning the wool, and you know what went into it… I think that kind of beauty is persuasive.” These details matter, and re-educating consumers about the importance of textiles, where they come from, and how they were made, is more important now than ever before. If a consumer can understand the connection, then they can change their habits, and maybe influence their friends or their kids to change their habits as well. The result could be a domino effect that leads to an all-out generational shift in how we shop. Another subtle beauty of Prelude is its featuring of up and coming sustainable designers. Such a possibility has been lacking within luxury retail, where new designers were rarely spotted amongst the elites. What Prelude has created and offers is not something original. Rather, the concept is an old one, simply reimagined for a modern world. Personally tailored pieces ordered a season in advance is how luxury retail used to be. Only in the last two decades, when fast fashion came onto the scene, did we begin to buy more than what we needed, with greater frequency, allowing middlemen to distance us from the people that make our clothes. But the results of those actions have proven to be detrimental and unsustainable, both environmentally and socially. The possibilities Prelude then presents are endless, and seem to have already fulfilled Tonti’s dream of a “little zen oasis”, albeit one that is online.