Is Fashion Marketing Missing Its Most Valuable Customer?

The mannequin in the store window wears a designer coat priced at $2,500. A customer walks by, smartphone in hand, and within seconds finds three similar styles for under $200 through a quick social media search. Meanwhile, another shopper - slightly more mature in age - browses the brand's website, frustrated by the lack of models that represent her demographic, despite having the disposable income to purchase the original coat outright.

This is fashion marketing's paradox in 2025: an industry caught between shifting consumer behaviors, technological revolution, and demographic blind spots that challenge long-held assumptions about luxury, value, and brand loyalty.

The latest State of Fashion 2025 report reveals an industry at a critical inflection point. While fashion houses have spent decades perfecting their approach to aspirational marketing, the next twelve months promise to upend conventional wisdom about who buys fashion, how they discover it, and what drives their purchasing decisions.

The numbers tell a compellingsc story: 70% of consumers plan to maintain value-seeking behaviors even as their disposable income grows. Artificial intelligence is reshaping product discovery, with 50% of fashion executives viewing it as their primary technological focus for the year ahead. Perhaps most notably, the industry appears to have overlooked its most valuable audience – those over 50, who control 72% of US wealth yet rarely see themselves represented in fashion marketing.

As brands navigate this complex landscape, marketing teams face unprecedented challenges in connecting with consumers whose behaviors increasingly defy traditional segmentation. The era of simple demographic targeting and aspirational messaging is giving way to something far more nuanced – a world where value proposition, technological innovation, and authentic representation must seamlessly converge.

Rewriting the rules of product discovery

When Zalando reported an 18% increase in profitability during the second quarter of 2024, the European fashion giant credited something that would have seemed improbable just years earlier: an AI-powered shopping assistant. This wasn't just another chatbot experiment – it represented a fundamental shift in how consumers discover and interact with fashion brands.

The numbers are stark. With 80% of shoppers expressing dissatisfaction with current online search experiences, the traditional product discovery model is broken. Customers, overwhelmed by choice and increasingly impatient with irrelevant results, are abandoning their shopping journeys in unprecedented numbers. For marketing teams, this represents both a crisis and an opportunity.

This shift is reshaping marketing strategies across the industry. While just two years ago, AI was primarily viewed as a tool for backend operations, 50% of fashion executives now identify it as the key to transforming customer experience. The focus has shifted from simple recommendation engines to sophisticated, multi-modal systems that can understand and respond to natural language queries, visual inputs, and contextual clues.

Leading brands are already showing what this future looks like. Constructor, a B2B platform partnering with brands like Under Armour and Birkenstock, has seen its revenue triple since 2022 by enabling AI-powered search experiences that have processed over 100 billion customer interactions. Meanwhile, platforms like Daydream are leveraging generative AI and computer vision to create highly personalized search results, attracting partnerships with brands from Alo Yoga to Jimmy Choo.

But the real transformation isn't just technological – it's behavioral. As consumers become accustomed to increasingly sophisticated digital experiences, their expectations for brand interactions are fundamentally changing. Marketing teams must now think beyond traditional SEO and paid search strategies to consider how their content and products can be discovered through conversational queries, image searches, and AI-curated recommendations.

Fashion’s most overlooked market

While fashion marketing teams have spent years fine-tuning their approach to Gen-Z and Millennial consumers, the data reveals a striking oversight. Those aged 55 and over account for 72% of total wealth in the US, yet fashion brands are twice as likely to target younger generations in their marketing efforts. Only 14% of fashion executives say they plan to target Baby Boomers in 2025, according to the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion Executive Survey.

This misalignment between marketing focus and market opportunity becomes even more significant when examining purchasing behaviors. The report shows that consumers aged 59 and over represent 37% of retail apparel spend in the US, compared to 23% for Millennials. Perhaps more tellingly, their per capita spend on clothing was 21% higher for those aged 59 and over compared to Millennials and Gen-Z.

What makes this demographic particularly valuable is their shopping behavior. The data shows they are more brand loyal and shop from a smaller repertoire of brands compared to younger consumers. They prioritize functionality (23 percentage points above average in the US) and comfort (21 percentage points above average), and are more likely to seek value over trend-driven purchases.

Their discovery and purchase journeys also differ significantly from younger consumers. The Silver Generation is 17 percentage points less likely to spend time shopping for clothes than the average shopper in the US, and 36 percentage points less in the EU. However, they are 12 percentage points more likely to seek inspiration in physical stores in the US, and 25 percentage points more likely in the EU.

For marketing teams, these insights suggest the need for a strategic reset. The challenge lies not just in creating campaigns that appeal to this demographic, but in developing omnichannel strategies that align with their shopping preferences and values. The data shows this generation is equally likely to shop online as in-store, but they are less likely to embrace omnichannel shopping – being 15 percentage points less likely in the US and 14 percentage points less in the EU to check product reviews online before visiting a store.

Marketing in an era of price sensitivity

The post-pandemic surge in luxury spending has given way to a more complex reality. According to the report's consumer research, over 70% of customers plan to continue purchasing from outlets or off-price retailers in the next 12 months, even if their discretionary budgets increase. This isn't a temporary shift – it represents a fundamental change in how consumers perceive and pursue value in fashion.

This behavioral change cuts across income levels. The report reveals that over 60% of consumers in the US and UK say they are attempting to save money on fashion "often" or "as much as possible." In the US, this figure reaches 75%. Even premium shoppers are embracing new value-seeking behaviors, with a higher proportion reporting they've purchased "dupes" (lower-priced replicas) compared to value and mid-market shoppers.

The implications for marketing teams are significant. Off-price retailers like Burlington, Ross, and TJX are seeing revenue growth of 4.6% in 2024, outpacing the broader fashion market's 2.6% growth. Meanwhile, nearly one-third of US adults report intentionally purchasing dupes of premium or luxury products, with the #dupe hashtag accumulating nearly 6 billion views on TikTok.

The challenge for marketing teams lies not in competing on price alone, but in articulating value in ways that resonate with this new consumer mindset. The report shows that "value" can take different forms for different consumers – for some, it means shopping pre-owned or buying on sale; for others, it translates to buying fewer, higher-quality items.

This shift is already reshaping retail strategies. Traditional retailers are responding with enhanced outlet presences – Zalando's business-to-consumer channel saw profitability rise 1.4 percentage points year-on-year in the first half of 2024. Meanwhile, e-commerce off-price brands like BestSecret are experiencing growth rates of 25% in early 2024.

Perhaps most telling is the resale market's trajectory. Growing 15 times faster than the broader clothing retail sector in 2023, secondhand sales are projected to account for 10% of the global apparel market by 2025. The driving force? Sixty percent of consumers say shopping secondhand apparel gives them the most value for money.

Where digital meets human?

While digital transformation dominates industry discussions, the report reveals a crucial insight for marketing teams: human interaction remains the key differentiator in retail success. As store foot traffic approaches pre-pandemic levels, 75% of shoppers report being likely to spend more after receiving high-quality service from store personnel.

The stakes are significant. A 2024 study found that more than 20% of missed sales at a prominent US retailer were related to issues with store associates, such as suboptimal engagement or staff unavailability. Yet the challenge of delivering consistent, high-quality service has never been greater. The labor market remains tight, with 2.5 million more retail job vacancies than job seekers in the US as of May 2024.

This human resource challenge intersects directly with marketing objectives. According to the report's consumer survey, shoppers are least satisfied with human interactions in their store experiences, scoring as much as 25 percentage points below other aspects like fitting rooms and store atmosphere. The disparity is particularly pronounced in the US, UK, and Germany compared to China, where shopper satisfaction with staff is approximately twice as high.

Marketing teams are increasingly recognizing that store associates represent more than just sales staff – they are brand ambassadors and content creators. Brands like Nordstrom have embraced this evolution, enabling associates to curate personalized "Style Board" emails for customers and earn commission on subsequent digital purchases. This approach acknowledges that approximately 70% of retail sales today are digitally influenced, even when the final transaction occurs in-store.

The transformation extends to how technology supports, rather than replaces, human interaction. Kering's clienteling app, Luce, provides store associates with tailored product recommendations and personalized promotions, resulting in a 15-20% boost in average order value. This represents a crucial shift in how marketing teams must think about technology deployment – not as a replacement for human interaction, but as an enabler of better personal service.

The integration imperative

As fashion marketing enters 2025, the convergence of these trends – AI-powered discovery, demographic shifts, value-seeking behavior, and the evolution of store experiences – demands a fundamental rethinking of marketing strategies. The report's findings suggest that success will depend not on mastering any single channel or technology, but on creating seamless integration across all customer touchpoints.

This integration is becoming more critical as the traditional barriers between channels continue to blur. Social commerce in the US and UK is projected to almost double by 2027. The challenge for marketing teams lies in creating consistent brand experiences that serve both the digital native Gen-Z consumer and the high-spending Silver Generation customer who values in-store service.

The data shows this isn't simply about channel choice. It's about understanding how different consumer segments interact with brands across their entire journey. For instance, while older consumers are equally likely to shop online or in-store, they are 15 percentage points less likely in the US to check online reviews before visiting a physical location. These nuanced behavioral differences require marketing strategies that can flex and adapt while maintaining brand consistency.

The technology framework for this integration is already emerging. The report indicates that 75% of fashion executives see data-driven planning and forecasting as the key use case for generative AI in 2025. The most successful brands are those that use technology to enhance rather than replace human connections, recognizing that personal interaction remains a key driver of both satisfaction and sales.