Make Do and Mend

When you cover fashion for many years, you get used to its rhythm, and to responding to editorial demands for specific content at specific times. Just as December will inevitably call for a roundup of the best partywear, October will inevitably involve a higher degree of price-sensitivity than normal, largely because the previous month’s focus has been on the international shows, whose four figure price tags are largely inaccessible to readers, despite their news merits. “Give me high street,” I remember one newspaper editor exhorting my team as soon as Paris Fashion Week was over. 

This October for obvious reasons, price sensitivity is paramount. As well as focusing on the usual bargain buys, there’s a strong interest in “make do and mend” content, and in service pieces that help readers add a new spin to their existing wardrobes without buying anything new at all. With the cost of living spiralling ever skyward, I don’t see this trend receding soon. Rather than – or certainly as well as – flagging new products, an agile PR might want to consider other, price-sensitive spins that play into the current mood of parsimony. They’d also do well to include prices in their press releases, a detail that is still too often overlooked. Never has it been more essential to know.