In 2025, the fashion industry is undergoing significant transformations driven by macro-economic headwinds, technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviours. Indeed, the most common sentiment among fashion executives surveyed for The Business of Fashion (BoF) and McKinsey & Company’s State of Fashion 2025 report, was “uncertainty”, for the second year in a row.
However, bright spots can be found for businesses that move nimbly and embrace change, while quickly adapting to market upheavals and rapidly evolving consumer demands. What’s more, opportunities increase for those that embrace increasingly sophisticated next-generation technologies — from generative AI to 3D design programmes and machine learning. These technologies provide new systems and services that innovate and streamline creative and commercial processes across the value chain.
“For companies to be successful, they [need to] know the way their products are manufactured and sold, because if you don’t master your supply chain, you are [operating] blind and you are losing a competitive advantage,” shared Maximilien Abadie, chief strategy and product officer at Lectra during the recent BoF Live, Navigating Market Uncertainty and Digital Transformation in Fashion.
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“Those who can bring [a product] to life quicker on the market, [while] mastering all the creative aspects of their product, [as well as] the manufacturing aspect and the market aspect [will stay ahead]. If you don’t master those three dimensions in parallel, collectively, you will fail because you will be too late.”
Technology company Lectra — which offers industrial intelligence solutions that facilitate digital transformation in the fashion, automotive and furniture industries — seeks to provide its partners with a holistic oversight of its entire value chain.
For fashion businesses, Lectra offers software, equipment, data and services across three core domains it calls “Create”, “Manufacture”, and “Market”. This provides an interconnected approach for growth, profitability and sustainability that is leveraged by more than 21,000 suppliers and manufacturers. Indeed, the company reports that about 33 percent of clothing worldwide is designed with Lectra software.
Abadie was joined in conversation by Andrea Pavon, head of advisory at Beyond Luxury Group and founder of Rune Futures — both strategic foresight consultancy firms. Through her work at Beyond Luxury, Rune and previously at professional services company Accenture, Pavon has worked with the likes of Chanel, PVH and Henkel.
“Right now we live in a world where people use the acronym VUCA — volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. It is nothing like the world that we used to see in the past, [which was] quite linear, didn’t move a lot, slow,” said Pavon “In the past, people would strategise or look at how they could innovate by looking at the past […]. We’ve seen enough times that that approach is not valid in a world that is non-linear and that is constantly moving.”
In a conversation moderated by BoF’s commercial features director Sophie Soar, Abadie and Pavon discussed how technological innovation is driving change in the fashion industry, and the structural changes and mindset shifts required to make it happen. Now, BoF shares insights from the conversation.
Identify the problems to solve within your business
MA: In the past, technology has been adopted just to serve one specific need. Now, technology can help companies to transform the way they operate from the beginning of the journey until the end of the journey. So that’s a big shift, because the only way to be successful is to have this holistic view of your entire operation.
If you don’t master [your value chain] in parallel, collectively, you will fail because you will be too late — you will use more material than you were supposed to, you will pollute more, you’ll be viewed as not green on the market, and you will miss opportunities. So really this cycle is no longer only driven by creation. It’s the combination of creation, manufacturing and marketing at the same time.
AP: Start with business problems, not technologies, because sometimes, it’s really easy to just fall in love with [a specific] technology. You invest and then, at the end, you realise that maybe it hasn’t helped your strategic goals. Maybe, it’s gone against them, which is the worst case scenario.
There’s an example of a luxury brand that implemented this new communication channel platform for their sales advisors systems to communicate with ultra-high-net-worths or their clients. When they implemented the solution, they found out that the clients didn’t want to use that. They wanted to use WhatsApp and the sales advisor had to use both the platform and then WhatsApp because that’s where they were getting their responses. You end up with a customer that doesn’t have any added value and a sales advisor that is frustrated. So it’s actually going against your goals.
Then, secondly, understand […] what are the different use cases that you can have and assess when those will serve you in different timeframes. In the short term, you want to start with things that are high impact but low risk, and that they serve you to cover core business processes. Then maybe, in the longer term, you want to look at things that are aimed at improving your positioning or getting out new business models [or] revenue streams.
Remove siloes and embrace new ways of working
MA: Today, many companies are still working in siloes, in a step-by-step mode — ‘I have the design, I move to the development, then the sourcing, then the production, then the market’… Everything has to be connected if you want to be successful.
The only way to be successful is to have a holistic view of your entire operation.
— Maximilien Abadie, chief strategy and product officer at Lectra.
It’s not only about adopting new technology — it is really about asking yourself how you can transform the way you operate: the way that you sell products; the ways you create products; where you manufacture products. So, in the end, your entire business model.
AP: With AI and generative AI, we find ourselves at an inflection point. […] So that’s going to fundamentally change how brands produce, design and sell the products. […] The way that companies operate will completely shift, because the roles that you’ll find and the skills that you will need in those companies will completely change.
The World Economic Forum released a report this year saying that about 170 million new roles will be created by 2030 — so only in five years — and about 90 million will be displaced. So that change […] is a huge challenge for companies to address.
Unlock traceability and consumer trust across the value chain
MA: Behind each product in the fashion industry, you have dozens of companies — the brand, the manufacturers, the suppliers, the supplier of the supplier, the logistics people, the retail store, the distribution networks… So [there are] a lot of people, but they need to be interconnected because they are sharing the same vision and view around the products at the end of the day. They need to serve the consumer at the right time, at the right price, through the right channel.
So making sure that data is leveraged all along this chain — from creation to manufacturing to marketing — is key. Making sure that people become interconnected and collaborate together is the only way to ensure that we move from a siloed view of the world to a fully connected view of the entire supply chain until the consumer.
When you don’t know your suppliers and the suppliers of your suppliers, if there is an issue, consumers will also blame the brand. […] So from a regulation standpoint, maybe you are not forced to know the suppliers of your suppliers, but as a brand — are you willing to take such a risk on the brand image over the long-run?
Facilitate a shift in mindset and workplace culture
AP: Speed and agility are so [important]. [Companies] will tell you, “We’re too big to move,” but even if you’re big, there’s still a case to be agile in the way your culture is. […] There’s no room today for companies that don’t adapt quickly in that sense. In that context where you need to be agile, you need a culture of owners, like of people who feel responsible to take the right decisions at the right time.
You need a culture of owners, like of people who feel responsible to take the right decisions at the right time.
— Andrea Pavon, head of advisory at Beyond Luxury Group.
When you’re moving quickly, you’re going to make mistakes. But that’s good, because you need people, you need a culture that is [about] experimentation, imagination, creativity. [This is valuable for] strategic foresight — you know so much, but there are a lot of things that you don’t know and you need imagination for that. You need to test. Otherwise you’ll continue to do the same thing.
What’s important in these transformations is a culture of communication and feedback, because if people have fear […] that is going to slow you down and stop you from transforming. If you communicate, you bring your team along, you gather feedback, you’ll trigger other feelings like optimism, collaboration and empathy.
Leverage technology to better communicate human-led creativity
MA: Technology is an enabler of creativity. If you think that technology is a constraint, you have to look at it from a different perspective. It facilitates your life, it enables you to focus on other things, it allows you to be more creative. AI, generative AI — they will not replace humans for everything. […] People buy something from a brand because they have a feeling. […] This is something AI cannot translate into a real product.
If you look at only your perspective as a designer, working on designing the garment only, you are missing the rest of the [value] chain. […] Digitising what you are doing as a designer is key. Garment production will be used by someone else within the supply chain and so, if you want to ensure [the product] you have been thinking of becomes true and accurate, […] you need to share this information in a digital way.
Technology supports the […] connectivity between creative processes, manufacturing processes and marketing processes — this is key to ensure that tomorrow, all those bright ideas coming from creative mindset come to life the right way.
AP: Technology is a bridge to creativity, heritage and savoir-faire. There are a lot of examples, but there’s a quote that I really love, from Dr. Helen Papagiannis, who said: “Protect the soul, embrace the future.” Your soul, especially in fashion luxury, is always going to be there. Embracing the future is embracing whatever means to that creativity you’ll have. So I don’t think they’re antagonists — they go hand-in-hand.
This is a sponsored feature paid for by Lectra as part of a BoF partnership.