Is the fashion industry ready to shift to a caring economy?

The need for wellness is becoming dominant in the lives of consumers, who are embracing new constructs around care. During the pandemic changing beliefs about what matters - family, friends and communities - took precedence over acquisitions, shopping and being always ‘on.’

Even last week the world rallied around a young Moroccan boy who had fallen down a well. The collective global hope for a miracle was evident across Europe, Asia and the Americas, with a sense of community emerging on social media with tens of thousands expressing their sympathy.

Taking care of ourselves and each other brings into focus a new set of products and services the fashion industry is shifting to embrace. One that recognises the flexible lifestyle of people, who are more than the sum of being workers and employees, and who are embracing hybrid models to create better balances between life and work. And crucially, dressing accordingly.

Portable design, comfortable clothes and flexible lifestyles are motivating a shift in purchasing behaviour, where people look to be best version of themselves in wellness, happiness and in their home environments.

Joan Tronto, a renowned professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, says the idea that production and economic life are the most important political and human concerns ignores the reality that caring, for ourselves and others, is limiting, which should be the highest value that shapes how we view the economy, politics, and institutions such as schools and the family.

Caring economics

Business can create long-term value by recognising by creating products and services that meet these needs. Caring economics refers to an economy that cares for people and cares for the planet. It builds on the concept of care as defined by Tronto, who sees it as an activity that includes “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life sustaining web.”

The global wellness industry is expected to hit 7.6 billion dollars by 2030, of which beauty and personal care has a 24 percent market share. Overall growth is estimated to surge at a rate of 5.5 percent per year from from 2021 to 2030, according to figures from Precedence Research.

Let the numbers speak for themselves.