Under pressure from fast fashion and the second-hand market, the French ready-to-wear sector is faltering, with bankruptcies, receiverships, and liquidations punctuating 2025. Even so, experts believe a rebound is possible, driven by a refocus on brand DNA, innovation, and an upmarket shift.

As the year draws to a close, the IKKS brand has just changed hands but will lose half its staff; JOTT (Just Over The Top) has been placed in receivership; and Anne Fontaine has had its safeguard plan approved. With Camaïeu, Kookaï, Jennyfer, André, San Marina, Minelli, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Princesse Tam Tam, and Kaporal, there are countless French companies in difficulty in this sector, or that have simply disappeared.

Brutal “impoverishment” and “downfall”

Nearly 1,500 clothing boutiques closed in France in 2024, according to a parliamentary report. The Union des Industries Textiles reports that the workforce has shrunk from 400,000 in the 1970s to 60,000 today. This figure does not, however, include in-store employees- 70,000 at the end of 2023, according to the Fédération nationale de l’habillement.

Having weathered the difficult shift to online sales, as well as Covid-19 and inflation, traditional players are now facing competition from second-hand and ultra-fast fashion- a “profound upheaval”, according to Gildas Minvielle, Director of the Economic Observatory at the French Fashion Institute (IFM). According to the IFM, these two channels now account for 13% of sales by value and nearly 30% of volumes purchased.

Historic players shaken up

Gildas Minvielle tells AFP: “The market share taken by these new entrants is very significant, and very damaging for the more established players. If the market had been buoyant, we could have hoped there would be room for everyone, but that’s not the case.” With an average price per item on Shein or Temu of €9- around one third of traditional mid-range prices- these Asian groups are causing a brutal “impoverishment,” “in a context where purchasing power is weak,” he says.

To get to the root of the “downfall,” we need to travel back to the 1990s with the “arrival of first-generation fast-fashion brands” such as Zara and H&M, offering “collections that change every week to force people to buy,” says Benoît Heilbrunn, a philosopher and marketing professor at ESCP Business School.

Clear positioning and an industrial model for survival

“French chains haven’t been able to keep up, because they didn’t have and still don’t have an industrial model,” points out the brand specialist, while 97% of textiles consumed in France are imported. The other problem is that “French textile brands have had nothing to say for years,” he laments. “No one talks about innovation, no one talks about product.”

Françoise Clément, a fashion and retail expert, agrees and points to brands that have remained in their “comfort zone,” seeking to “buy the consumer with promotions” but that ultimately “have not created value.” According to this consultant, a former textile director at Carrefour, brands must reconnect with their “core DNA” and offer “clear positioning” to survive.

A “death spiral” of prices at the low end

The ready-to-wear sector is like “an hourglass,” she says, using a metaphor: the top of the hourglass (luxury and “heritage” brands) remains solid thanks to prestige. At the lower end, it’s a race to the bottom on price, with a “death spiral” that nonetheless finds its audience. In between, the mid-range is the segment “most in difficulty.”

Mid-range brands must “diversify and premiumise” and above all avoid imitating fast fashion, says Françoise Clément. The future requires a balance between “quality, attractiveness, innovation, and desirability,” as seen at “Lacoste or Aigle,” or Le Slip Français, for made-in-France production, or at Decathlon, which combines “accessibility and innovation.” The clothing crisis is “not inevitable,” she insists. Far from the prevailing “gloom,” “opportunities” exist for “brands that get moving.”

The annual State of Fashion BoF-McKinsey report lists several strategic areas for development: the “necessary” use of artificial intelligence, diversification of production sites in the face of the “turbulence” of international tariffs, moving upmarket, and the integration of a second-hand offer. A vast programme.