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With Martin Stabe
As the season of fashion shows in the U.S. and Europe draws to a close in Paris this week, one of the hottest trendsetters is also one of the newest. TopShop, the 41-year-old British retailer known for "fast fashion," or quick knockoffs of designer labels, moved from follower to leader last month with its first ever catwalk show in London. Sure, big names like Gucci, Prada and Burberry still got the most ink, but TopShop and its in-house designers offered an eminently more affordable take on the season's trends, including big prints, sleek shorts and slinky wrap dresses. The hidden message: fast, cheap fashion is no longer a disposable, niche idea. It's the defining trend in Europe's textile and apparel industry today.
Fast fashion--epitomized by mass-market retailers like TopShop, Spain's Zara and Sweden's H&M--has come of age. No longer just the purview of trendy teens, fast fashion now represents 20 percent of the entire Spanish apparel market, 12 percent of the U.K. market, and is growing rapidly in France (8 percent) and Germany (5 percent), according to the consultancy Bain & Co. In a dismal European retail climate, such companies are expanding as fast as 20 to 30 percent per year. Zara, started as a single shop in 1975, is now the world's third largest clothing retailer with 2.8 billion euro in yearly revenue.
Zara's business model, which involves changing stock every two to four weeks, rather than every season, and focusing on supply-chain flexibility rather than simply finding...