By Lorelei Aquilina (‘27)

With the rise of online shopping, and with it overtaking in-person shopping last holiday season, the term “Black Friday” has faded out to a much larger sale season. That being said, the Black Friday season has a major impact on the fashion industry. People buy more in this season than they do all year, and because of that, the world of fashion must be prepared for the fallout. 

Every year both luxury and fast fashion stores alike brace themselves for the trend-tracking, regretting, and returning fiasco that is black Friday. Black Friday gives people both the chance and the illusion of getting much more, for much less. Fashion companies see this and they want to capitalize on it. Investigating current trends and often dropping an entire line for black Friday, so that when all of the sale-hungry customers come in, they see all of the most popular trends laid out in a sale. Trends don’t last forever though, and up to 80% of the clothing bought during black Friday doesn’t stay in Americans’ closets for over a year. This leads to an incredible amount of waste on consumers’ parts with people often returning, donating, or even just throwing out their “hard-won deals”. The fashion industry has made it a point to respond to this, instead of focusing on the greatest trend of the time, many companies’ holiday lines have begun to focus on a much larger scale of trends. This is seen as cutting back to the basics. As prior to social media the black Friday drops were much more focused on spins of established trends rather than riding the freshest wave. For example, take  Hollister sales now vs 20 years ago. 20 years ago trends for each season were established and clear. Now, thanks to faster production and allied sponsorships from influencers, trends vary much more often. The very nature of the consumerist trends of the 2000s black Fridays has turned upon itself and become overly consuming too. However, the shift mentioned prior has generated growing support from corporations. They, despite already seeing their black Friday sales through the roof, may see this new method as a threat to both integrity and long-term stability. What if one year your marketing team is a week behind trends and black Friday sales tank? The season of holiday sales can be a lot of things, exhilarating, violent, relaxing, etc; but remember to think about the bigger picture of Black Friday, and how you fit into it.