The September Issue Is Fashion's Weathervane. Here's Which Way the Wind Is Blowing This Year

Gloom hangs over the whole industry, yet the big luxury groups have proved remarkably stable and resilient, and they haven't cut their advertising one bit.

September is almost here, and the fashion industry's weathervane, the September issue, is reaching newsstands around the world. The cover stars were revealed first, but the pages inside send more signals.

QDaily reporters went through the September issues of the most important fashion magazines in the United States, Britain, France and China for 2013, 2014 and 2015, nearly 20 titles in all, including Vogue, Elle, GQ and Harper's Bazaar China.

Here is what we found. In September 2015, the vast majority of fashion magazines carried fewer ad pages, down about 5%, a sign that the industry is in poor shape. The long-established, top-tier "big brands" owned by luxury groups were extremely steady in their ad buying, with barely any visible change. Independent small brands and designer labels, by contrast, often behaved like completely different advertisers from one year to the next. And these print magazines show a touch of "internet anxiety": they print QR codes, web addresses and Twitter handles on brand ads, while plugging their own online platforms...

Apple Watch, determined to break into fashion, came on strong: it ran an identical ad worldwide, with the same design, the same number of pages and even the same position in the magazine.

At the end of August, a stock market rout spread across the globe and worries deepened. A slowing economy and the pressure of the internet are the biggest challenges facing the whole fashion industry, and its September issues.

Big brands hold up unusually well in the downturn

The September issue is the one magazines and advertisers care about most. It usually sets the tone for every player's market performance for the year.

We looked closely at the first 10 ads in each September issue, including the cover gatefold and the back cover. At a glance, fashion magazines from different years and different countries look almost identical, and a handful of old-line big brands appear in nearly every influential title.

The most "stubborn" is Dior. Whatever the year, magazine or language edition, it is always the first or second brand to appear in the September issue, and it takes plenty of space. Chanel behaves much the same: if it isn't in a spread at the front, it is probably on the back cover. Either way, it insists on the most expensive, most status-conscious position.

Other brands that like to grab the front pages include Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana and Giorgio Armani. They appear in almost every magazine and in every year's September issue. The order may change, but they never miss an issue.

The cover gatefold is a magazine's most expensive ad slot. In Chinese Vogue, a cover gatefold ad costs as much as 1.2 million yuan; in British Vogue, it costs more than four times a regular page and more than three times the back cover. In 2015 Louis Vuitton took the cover gatefold of the September issue of Harper's Bazaar. In both 2014 and 2015, the cover gatefolds of the other British September issues we checked all went to Ralph Lauren.

Among the big brands, Hermès goes its own way. It never appears in the first few pages. Instead it turns up in the first third of every September issue, takes four pages, and likewise never misses an issue.

Gucci behaves a little "abnormally": it pushed harder in the September 2015 issues than before. From last year until earlier this year, Gucci was plagued by turmoil at the top, falling sales and constant doubts about the brand. Then, at mid-year, after a clearance sale to "reboot" the brand, Kering poured enormous effort into it, backing new creative director Alessandro Michele and trying to reverse the decline with a New York show and aggressive marketing.

Leaf through the world's September issues and Gucci's new ads, designed under Alessandro Michele and strewn with bright flowers, are everywhere. In some issues, Gucci's ads not only sit near the front but run as long as six pages. In the US edition of Esquire, Gucci grabbed the back cover.

Every brand hits a crisis sooner or later, but few have a deep-pocketed group behind them as Gucci does, willing to spend heavily on marketing even when results are poor to drag the brand out of the mud. What about a small brand on its own? With no big tree to lean on and sales sliding, would it still be willing to spend money on a September issue?

In the first half of 2015, LVMH grew 9%, Kering grew 8% and Richemont grew a modest 2%. Gloom hangs over the whole industry, yet the big groups have proved remarkably stable and resilient, and they haven't cut their advertising one bit.

Small brands get shuffled out

In a good year, when their business has momentum, some small brands are also willing to spend on ads in the big fashion titles. After all, appearing in the same issue as Chanel and Louis Vuitton lifts a brand's image and leaves customers with a good impression.

Take the September 2013 issue of Chinese Vogue. Brands that bought one or two pages included 1436, the high-end label of Erdos; Derain, a little-known jewelry brand endorsed by Michelle Reis; a pair of "super over-the-knee boots" called DVP; the Italian footwear brand Braccialini; and the handbag brand Powerland.

Ads like these were often one-offs. By September 2015, Vogue had again left some room for such brands, but the cast had almost entirely changed: the Swedish womenswear label AKRIS, the Italian womenswear label Blumarine and the Chinese shoe brand Peacebird, among others.

As the "bible of fashion," Vogue sets a high bar, but it isn't completely closed. Even "small brands" with little name recognition and limited means still have a chance to show their faces. But they rarely become "regulars." Once the economy wobbles or the company's strategy goes wrong, they are swept away. In recent years, fewer of these "small brands" have made it into the Vogue September issue.

If appearing in Vogue is about face and brand image, advertising in Chinese fashion magazines seems more practical, because ad prices there are markedly lower. That is why we saw ads from Chinese brands such as Lancy, Cindy Chao and Septwolves in Harper's Bazaar China and Esquire China.

Small brands are unstable everywhere. In 2014, Donna Karan ran three pages of ads across British Vogue and Elle, including one back cover. This July, Donna Karan stepped down as the label's chief designer, and the brand vanished from fashion magazines' ad pages. Its diffusion line, DKNY, also cut back, from 8 pages last year to 5.

The British high-end jacket brand Belstaff advertised in all four September issues in 2014 but has nothing this year. In June, Belstaff told the British press that its marketing would shift from offline to online, with a focus on advertising on mobile devices.

Compared with cash-rich "big brands," "small brands" budget their advertising more carefully. They care more about how directly ads lift sales, and won't spend lavishly just to spread a brand's spirit. When money gets tight, they simply stop advertising.

"Very rich" fast fashion is "extremely stingy" with ads

In 2015 the global economy is lurching from one storm to the next. Luxury brands are under such pressure that Richemont chairman Johann Rupert admits he lies awake at night, worried that the middle class has no money to spend and that the super-rich are too embarrassed to flaunt their wealth.

Fast fashion, meanwhile, is thriving. Its cheap-but-stylish formula has won fans around the world. Because it pulls in huge crowds, fast fashion has secured the best retail spaces and the best terms in China's large and mid-sized cities, outshining luxury brands. Not long ago, Zara's market value passed US$100 billion, overtaking even Nike and making its owner, Amancio Ortega, the world's second-richest man.

With that much money, fast fashion must spend big on ads too, right? So how many pages did Zara buy in the world's September issues?

The answer: not one!

We combed through September fashion issues from around the world and found not a trace of Zara. Anyone who knows the brand knows that Zara made not advertising a policy long ago. To promote itself, it prefers to get close to customers by opening stores, using the shops for marketing and letting them serve as physical billboards. Zara has made up its mind to keep the money it would otherwise spend on ads.

Like Zara, H&M and Uniqlo are doing very well this year; both have reported double-digit quarterly growth. They are not as extreme as Zara, but they too are very restrained in the September issues. In the US editions of Elle and Vogue, Uniqlo and H&M each ran two plain pages, placed fairly far back, about the same as GAP, which has had a steady stream of bad news this year. In several Chinese-language fashion magazines, fast-fashion brands either bought a mere two pages or did not advertise at all.

Britain is much the same. The September issues carry a few home-grown British brands such as Topshop, River Island and Russell & Bromley, while Topman dropped its advertising this year.

Why doesn't fast fashion like to advertise in the September issue?

Fast fashion has thin gross margins and astonishing sales volumes; at the group level, it doesn't lack money. It simply isn't a good fit for the big fashion titles. Those titles have always been opulent, even decadent. Ads in the front pages in particular are built for impact: they aim to stick in the reader's mind, convey the brand's spirit and play down any intent to sell. Fast fashion is about function: clothes must be wearable and cheap. H&M sometimes even prints prices plainly on its billboards, eager to tempt shoppers into swiping their cards.

So for fast fashion, the big fashion titles only need to make it familiar enough that readers feel fast fashion is stylish too. Fast fashion has little brand spirit to convey and no wish to take such a roundabout route to a sale. Its spending on billboards, the internet and social media follows a different logic altogether.

The hardest-pushing Asian fashion brand comes from Amorepacific

In the September issue of US Elle, cosmetics ads, covering fragrance, skincare, makeup, hair dye, nail polish and personal-care products, make up about 22% of all advertising. The share varies in other September issues, but in women's magazines it is about one-fifth across the board.

Cosmetics brands such as Chanel, Clarins and La Prairie are September regulars, though on a modest scale. The rest of the cosmetics ads are split almost entirely between two groups, L'Oréal and Estée Lauder. L'Oréal's Lancôme, L'Oréal Paris and Giorgio Armani appear most often. L'Oréal Paris shows up more than three times, front to back, in a single September issue, with standalone product ads as well as plenty of features blended into editorial content. Estée Lauder's Clinique and Estée Lauder are the biggest advertisers; La Mer also appears, in somewhat smaller volume.

Procter & Gamble, which offloaded a large number of beauty brands this year, a move L'Oréal CEO Jean-Paul Agon called "a good thing," has all but left fashion to become a cleaning-products company serving housewives. In several US September issues, P&G ran ads for Olay and Vidal Sassoon, saving a little face.

Among the world's top cosmetics groups, Shiseido shouldn't be forgotten either. In European and American September issues, Shiseido buys only two pages, utterly crushed by L'Oréal and its peers. In Chinese-language September issues, Shiseido has in recent years run some ads for its Aupres brand, one of the few successes in China for this slow-moving and much-doubted cosmetics giant.

The surprise is Korean cosmetics. Amorepacific, a fast-rising group, ran ads for its top-end brand Sulwhasoo in the US September issue, and in Chinese Vogue the brand appeared three times in different formats, two pages each. In US magazines, the ad for Amorepacific's Laneige cushion BB cream used a white American model, with creative styling closer to American taste, perhaps because the Korean star Song Hye-kyo is not yet enough to win over American fans.

In fashion, cosmetics is an "entry-level" category with low prices per item. Compared with clothing, leather goods, jewelry, watches, cars and the like, it is relatively easy to break into. In the September issues of the world's fashion capitals, the only Asian brands are cosmetics brands; apart from Uniqlo, Asian fashion labels are wiped out. Chinese brands don't appear even in cosmetics. China's only presence comes from a few Chinese models who have finally made a name for themselves.

The internet and smart devices become major players in fashion

Britain, the United States, China... every edition of this year's Vogue September issue shares one big client: Apple Watch.

The move was perfectly coordinated. Every edition carries a 12-page cardstock Apple Watch insert, slightly smaller than a regular page and hard for readers to miss. Apple set out to become part of fashion when it invited Vogue's editors-in-chief from around the world to its launch event. It has succeeded.

The internet's influence is everywhere, and the 2015 September issues take a bigger step than ever before.

In French fashion magazines, brand ads all feature website addresses, mostly online shopping sites. French GQ promotes its own website in two places, the centerfold and the back cover, and Vogue promotes its iPad edition.

The US September issues carry ads for eBay; for Amazon, the e-commerce giant bent on squeezing into fashion; and for a few shopping apps. In the British September issues, long-established brands such as Lanvin, Salvatore Ferragamo and Versace all list in their ads the e-commerce platforms where their genuine products can be bought.

Fendi, once fairly hostile to e-commerce, launched online stores in several European countries in March and added a US shopping site this summer. Last year all of Fendi's ads carried only a web address; this year every ad puts the word "Shop" in front of it.

Comparing the 2014 and 2015 September issues, more and more brands have added social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest to their ad pages, to interact more with readers online. And of course, you will find QR codes printed on many ad pages.

Has the world changed? Luxury brands are trying every trick so that you can buy their genuine products without setting foot in a store. And these print fashion magazines are falling over each other to tell you so!

The magazines, of course, are not sitting still waiting for the end. The latest September issues all push hard for their own online platforms, whether apps, websites or official social media accounts. The timing is almost the same worldwide.

Another September, and fashion's old aristocrats are holding on to their "class," guarding their brand image however the environment changes. They remain the September issue's old friends; they still set the trends, and they still make the most money.

But fashion is not frozen. The turning of the economic cycle and the rise of internet upstarts are bringing change, bit by bit. And the September issue has always been a mirror.