The world’s fashion industry is growing at a staggering pace day by day. A new study showed that this year, more than 1.1 billion people will buy new clothes inside and outside their country. This number will increase to 1.8 billion by 2020.
The report also revealed the factors that make buying behavior change quickly or slowly in different regions.
For example, fashion in Latin American countries is growing at a rate of 5.9%, followed by North America with 4.4% and the African region with a 3.9%. Growth in Southeast Asia comes in third place with a number of 2.5 % when compared to last year’s growth rate of 1.4%. However, the figures showed that the Middle East, Russia and Eastern Europe were at the bottom of the list with 1.4%.
Africa is a continent where fashion is growing faster than anywhere else, especially countries like Nigeria which are becoming leading markets for fashion week line shows in Africa.
The report also indicated that men’s clothing industry has grown by 2.8% compared to women’s clothing industry, which is expected to grow by 3.7%. On the other hand, there are reports that show some European countries had postponed events for this year’s fashion week, because of the financial crisis which had hit them harder than they thought.
On average, people around the world spent more on menswear than womenswear as value sales increased by 2.8% compared to 1.7%.
The report also shows that China and India come in first place with a 23 percent market share of the global fashion industry, followed by North America with 10 percent and Western Europe with 8.2 percent. However, this year’s number show an increase of 7 percent in China and 4.7% in the United States, while European countries showed a slowdown with only 0.1%.
In addition, the number of fashion weeks around the world this year was 260 compared to 236 last year. The most important fashion weeks were held in New York City, London and Milan.
