Fashion starts to recover after a weak start of the year

Fashion closes a weak start of the year. In the main five European markets and in United States, sales in clothing, shoes and accessories retail have fallen followed by light rises. Despite an improvement after previous years, the closures and the spending moving to other categories, have stopped the market to start rising.

In United States, the biggest market in the world of fashion, sales specialized in clothing and accessories stores started the year with a rise of 1.7%, to go even deeper another 1.7% the following month and then recovered with 2.6% in March and 0.5% in April. The market has closed in negative numbers again with a descent of 2.9% up to 2.2 billion dollars, according to US Census Bureau.

The evolution of sales in fashion retail in United States contrast with the one registered by the retailing business in the country, that closed each month in rise with growths that overcome the ones scored by garment stores. In both cases, data was taken as a reference in calendar and seasonally adjusted.

In Europe, the mood has been similar. The invoices of fabrics, clothing, shoes and leather accessories stores, according to the categorization that Eurostat uses, started the year in downfall, with a drop of 0.7% and despite rising with 3.3% in February and March, it dropped again a 2.7% in April and another 1.9% in May.

Considering only the eurozone, the rises where more moderate, and the downfalls deeper, going backwards 4.8% in April and 2.4% in May, not taking into consideration the inflation and the calendar effect.The country that had the worst results was Norway, that closed in downfall every month of 2019 and where the fashion commerce sank 10.9% in May.

In the biggest market of the continent, Germany, the twist has been predominantly negative, with a downfall of 3.5% in January, light rises in February and March and downfalls of 10% in April and 8% in May.

United Kingdom has escaped the general mood, with rises almost every month

The mood repeats itself in France, Italy and Spain. In France, data of May remains unpublished, ands sales have fallen up to 4.6% with rises of maximum 2.3% in 2019. In Italy, downfalls marked 6.1% and in Spain they reached 2.6%.

Data referents in Spain are taken from the Retail Trade Index (RTI), generated by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The ones collected by the Spanish fashion retail association (Acotex) aim to a similar mood, with downfalls of 8.4% in April, due to the calendar effect and with rises in the last months with available data, 2.9% in May and 2.3% in June.

United Kingdom, despite being in an uncertainty context and in the edge of a change in Downing Street, has escaped the general mood with rises to 9.1% in the first four months of the year, with a slight downfall in May of 0.7%.