For three years now, 6000 young designers and people working in fashion are meeting on the French Fashion Union Facebook group, to exchange tips and tricks to get by in this sometimes closed world. As they are working on the new FFU internet platform, which will be launched in December, the founders of this sharing space, Esther and Morgan Bancel, tell more about their desire “to help all young fashion professionals succeed at their first times”. Also, have a look at the fashion editorial Le Boudoir Numérique made with Esther Bancel, the neo-tailoring brand of the Bancel couple, here.

By Ludmilla Intravaia 

Le Boudoir Numérique : You created French Fashion Union in 2016, as a Facebook group. What is FFU ?

Morgan Bancel, co-founder of French Fashion Union : FFU is a movement that aims to help all young fashion professionals succeed at their first times. The first time that we look for a supplier or a fabrication workshop, that we participate in a trade show or launch a collection, we are always a little lost. However, there are many people who have already lived these experiences and who could help others, by explaining to them how they did and by giving them advices. On the French Fashion Union Facebook page, 6,000 people meet to share with each other and make the best of all these first times. In FFU, we find mostly young fashion designers but also the entire galaxy of professionals who gravitate in this area, stylists, fabrication workshops, communication consultants, photographers, journalists, etc.

What are the problems faced by young professionals who are starting out ? How are digital tools like FFU useful for them ?  

How to sell and distribute, to set up your communication plan, finance the beginnings of your brand, create a coherent and stable business plan, go international, choose between B2B, wholesale or direct selling..., many questions arise. In this context, digital tools are very useful to young professionals for one main reason : the lack of money. They can help them access information and experts, for three times nothing, through a little learning and experience. This is exactly why we created the FFU, in the form of a Facebook group, which is also evolving towards a platform, for now under construction, to be set up for December. If we had wanted to create an association, we would have needed a place to stay and money to equip it, we could not have done it. And the place should have been huge to accommodate so many people. Today, digital tools allows our 6000 members to share information instantly and to act quickly, the concept of speed being very important for a young designer who must be responsive. If we all have had to meet in a real location, we could only have done it once a month, for example, which would have caused a huge latency. Digital technology allows us to face the two main demands young designers face : working quickly, without financial means.

Is the world of fashion closed or ready to help young designers who are knocking on its door ?

Fashion has long been a closed world and still is, but things are changing little by little. When we created the FFU, nobody believed in it. But strong from our willingness to collaborate with others, we remained convinced that we should not be afraid to share our information, our contacts, our techniques, our tips and tactics, if our interlocutors were willing to do the same with us. I understand that people do not want to give contacts with whom they have been working for thirty years. I respect that attitude but it's not our state of mind. We think that if I give one advice, I will receive ten in return. So, I might as well give one advice. We wanted to create a community that resembled us and shared our point of view. So we went to look for people like us, aggregating 10, 20, 150, 1000 people and then one day, we were 3000. That's when our approach attracted the attention of people like Frédéric Maus (CEO of WSN, company organizing among others Who's Next and Première Classe trade shows in Paris, AN - read his interview, here) or Pierre-François Le Louët (President of the Fédération française du prêt-à-porter féminin, AN), who, interested in this new way of apprehending mutual aid in fashion, have offered to support us.

Esther Bancel, co-founder of FFU : Our philosophy is shared by the new generation that is currently entering the market. Our partners have understood that these young creators do not want to work alone and so, if that's how things will happen in the future, they want to accompany us in this new participative way to make fashion. The mentalities evolve and fashion becomes less and less compartmentalized. We have reached the end of a phase and a change is on the horizon.

Last September, you participated in Impact, the Who's Next event, dedicated to eco-responsible fashion. Do you see an interest in sustainable fashion among FFU members ? For instance, were published, on your Facebook group, some posts to find fabrics meeting specific eco-friendly standards...  

Morgan Bancel : For us, sustainability is a prerequisite for the exercise of our profession. Today, young creators who enter the market have fully integrated, in their value chain, processes that respect the environment and the people they work with. The premise of the FFU being the collaboration, we of course pay attention to each other. By definition, we are like that and we will not change.

Does a digital tool like FFU have a role to play in sustainable fashion, for example to help young designers find fabrics scraps?  

Esther Bancel : Yes, absolutely. Not too long ago, a big fashion house posted an announcement on the FFU, inviting our members to come and empty their stocks of fabrics, buttons and other haberdashery items. Very regularly, we establish partnerships with companies so that young creators can enjoy, most of the time for free, their unused fabrics. This approach allows to keep, in the production system, fabrics that would not have been used and would have been destroyed, whereas they will be used by creators who, moreover, will not have to make their own fabrics. In this way, we limit the process of over-manufacturing fashion items and of destroying unsold items, to avoid textile waste.

Young designers also use digital tools to co-create their fashion collections, upstream, in collaboration with their community of customers. Is this trend towards personalization beneficial to sustainable fashion ?  

Morgan Bancel : Obviously, especially since people who opt for co-creation, also often use pre-order, asking the end customer to commit to buying the product, even before it is made. This approach makes sense, in terms of eco-responsibility and eco-design, since we only produce what we are going to sell, the exact amount that the market needs, without additional stock that would be burned, thrown or given away.

That's what you do with the brand Esther Bancel that you launched together ?  

Esther Bancel, co-creator of the eponymous brand : We practice, indeed, the pre-order, producing exclusively, at the request of our customers, collections made in France, in local workshops, where the know-how of the craftsmen is preserved and valued. Thus, we know that every time an item leaves our workshop, it will make a customer happy and that it will not remain, abandonned, in our stock, or even worse, be destroyed. The consumer will have really wanted it and therefore, will keep it with affection, several years, in his wardrobe, rather than throw it after a few months. These new ways of conceiving fashion completely change our relation with the consumption of garments, in a more sustainable and respectful approach of the environment and sentient beings. This is one of the goals we are pursuing with our brand and the FFU.

* The internet platform of French Fashion Union will be launched in December 2019. More info here. The Facebook group of FFU is there.  

* The website of the brand Esther Bancel is here. The Boudoir Numérique fashion editorial with Esther Bancel is here.