Spanish fashion does the math again and it doesn’t work out. No, last year has not been a good year for our textile business (which includes footwear, accessories, jewelry and perfumery), despite having invoiced 3.4% more than in fiscal year 2022, with profits estimated by Acotex , the first employer association in the sector, in just over 11,000 million euros. The fact of the matter is that although it has grown in value, it has not grown in volume. In reality, the numbers do not add up because, according to the same association, they are still lower than the data, when it totaled 18,021 million euros. In comparison, the latest figures represent a drop of 32.9% compared to 2019. In case you are wondering: yes, the giant – which at the end of 2022 launched its own association, the Spanish Retail Textile Association, together with Mango , Bimba y Lola and the sportswear conglomerate JD Spain, in addition to the foreigners H&M, Uniqlo and Primark—nor does it escape the situation even if it has pocketed those A record 5,381 million, clean, in his pocket. For that matter, if he scratches little at home, he doesn’t have it any better outside.
At the beginning of 2024, it was the public business agency Icex España Exportaciones e Inversiones that brought bad news: international sales of national textile products plummeted by 3%, with revenues worth 31,534.5 million. A fall that specialized portals such as Modaes did not hesitate to describe as “historic”, as it represents the fourth decline in 24 years, “thus cutting short almost two decades of Spanish fashion offensive abroad.” The obvious causes are the same ones that have put the global clothing industry in trouble, including the large luxury groups, which have not made a profit for a year: the slowdown in consumption, especially in the US and US markets. Asian; runaway inflation, fluctuating currency exchange rates, tariff wars and escalating geopolitical tensions.
“Fashion goes from shock to shock, involved in the ups and downs of an increasingly volatile and uncertain world. The war in Ukraine and the consequent closure of the Russian market, for example, have hit hard some firms that are part of the Spanish Fashion Creators Association (ACME), which had a very relevant client in Russia and for which “Sales to that country represented a high percentage of the company’s global numbers,” concedes , executive director of ACME and vice president of the Spanish Fashion Academy Foundation. “The instability caused by the situation in the Middle East or the contraction of the Chinese market are also two elements to take into account. It is heartbreaking to talk about such humanitarian disasters in purely economic terms, but the repercussion is there and it is something that must be analyzed and put on the table,” he reflects. The data from its business, signature fashion—designer fashion, focused on creative, artisanal value and eminently local controlled/on-demand production—also insist on the situation: the turnover abroad of the 92 associated brands reached in 2023, 366 million euros, 3% less than the previous year (the same percentage as the rest of exports), shows the latest study Spanish design in figures, prepared by Modaes and presented at the beginning of November by ACME.
Bueno says that a country’s fashion becomes strong when it creates desire outside its borders. The Spanish will not be because she has not tried. Some veterans still remember institutional campaigns such as Moda de España (1986), which, in praise of industrial reconversion and in the heat of the then nascent Pasarela Cibeles, endeavored to place national design on the world map. “It made me sell the biggest things in the United States, Italy and France. We went out in Interview by Warhol and in the Stern German, and everyone came here to buy. And they bought the most expensive pieces in the collections from us,” Antonio Alvarado told this journalist when he was awarded the 2022 National Fashion Design Award. Selma Weiser was one of those who stopped in Madrid before heading to Milan. and Paris in search of the avant-garde creations that nourished Charivari, which for decades was the leading multi-brand chain among the New York intelligentsia. He and Sybilla sold alongside Yohji Yamamoto, Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela. Then would come the Asian conquest, which between the late nineties and early 2000s there was no designer who was not proud to ship in Japan. Winning the Japanese medal gave rise to quite a few mockery, but the fact that Ailanto had a place in the Ginza department stores and Davidelfin in the underground stores of the Shibuya-Omotesando axis was a reality. Of course, for internationalization, that of the Mallorcan, who planted himself directly in New York, until his dream collided head-on with the American one. Today, Palomo Spain shows in the Big Apple and creates specific capsules for Sensse, the coolest of the electronic boutiques, while Juana Martín has found her place in the official Paris haute couture calendar.
“The brands with the longest history, such as Adolfo Domínguez, Tous, Camper or Pedro del Hierro, have always had a marked international strategy that they maintain to this day, but even the youngest brands are already born with one foot outside. Some, even, with both,” admits the executive director of ACME. The Internet and social networks have helped this desire for internationality to prosper, but there are also those who do not stop at the physical level. See the phenomenal success of , the centennial cult label founded by Bruno Casanovas and Álex Benlloch in Poblenou (Barcelona), in 2019, when they had not even turned 20 years old: made by artists for artists – according to their motto – last year invoiced more than 26 million euros with its imprint streetwear and opened his first two stores abroad, one in Lisbon and the other in Milan, after the success of his experiment pop-up in different European cities. And they are already considering settling in Bologna and Turin.
