Almost five years since the pandemic broke out, many people still haven’t finished renovating their Covid-era wardrobes.
Many did so during the holidays, taking advantage of this season’s competitive discounts to buy a few things for themselves and gifts for others.
“This was a very strong holiday season for retailers,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy GlobalData. “Consumers dug deep and increased spending. Retailers also worked hard to secure trade by offering slightly more generous discounts than last year.”
Clothing, footwear and jewelry posted some of the biggest spending growth, according to recent data from Visa and Mastercard.
Now that they return to the office, they feel like they have lost their entire style identity.
Stylist Avri Lauren
Clothing and accessories increased 5% this season on the Visa card network. At Mastercard, spending on apparel increased 3.6% (on par with electronics at 3.7%) and even more online, with a 6.7% rebound. Adobe said e-commerce discounts, which peaked at more than 23% off list prices this holiday season, helped drive online clothing sales nearly 10% above last year’s levels. , peaking at $45.6 billion.
One reason, industry experts said, is that employers like Amazon and JPMorgan are still ordering staff back to their desks after the pandemic, when many people became accustomed to attending meetings in sweatpants at least some days a week. week.
“I’ve definitely seen a significant increase in my clients looking for back-to-office outfits,” said Avri Lauren, an Illinois-based stylist. He estimated that more than a quarter of them ask him for help making clothes for work and said the trend has accelerated in the last four months or so.
“Now that they’re back in the office, they feel like they’ve lost their entire style identity,” Lauren said. She added that her customers are willing to splurge on staples they can use several times a week, and she’s seen a lot of interest in brands that market the quality and sustainability of their products, like Everlane and Reformation.
Retail analyst Jane Hali said brands have been adapting to meet “an increase in replacement need” for certain clothing items as customers continue to “build their wardrobes, whether going out or going to work.” Some have been promoting items that can be worn in multiple settings, he added: “It’s not like a typical sweater.”
Amazon and JPMorgan were the latest big companies to beat the drum for a return to the office in 2025, with the tech giant’s five-day mandate taking effect this month and the bank reportedly moving in the same direction, according to Bloomberg . Citigroup, Walmart and UPS have also tightened their internal requirements over the past year.
But the corporate crackdown has met with some resistance, with some workplace trends analysts finding that employees were visiting their offices for only a few hours, taking advantage of a card, but spending much of their workdays at home.
Even RTO shoppers who are updating their wardrobes can do so cautiously, one or two purchases at a time. “Below the headline figure, the results were somewhat mixed,” Saunders cautioned. “Not all retailers were successful during the holidays, and we will see some polarized earnings when retailers report next month.”
Some major retailers approached the holidays appearing cautiously optimistic. Gap raised its outlook for the year after touting a good start to the season. Nordstrom said it saw shoppers buy more clothing and shoes in the third quarter after adding more items under $100.
Many retailers have been careful not to raise prices so much that they lose customers to ultra-cheap online rivals like Shein and others, choosing to absorb much of the impact of supply chain problems and other costs, or reducing quality to protect its margins.
Clothing prices have remained remarkably stable amid the inflationary rollercoaster of recent years, rising just 1.1% (and footwear just 0.7%) between November 2023 and November 2024, behind of the 2.7% rate of consumer prices in general.
Not all retailers were successful during the holidays and we will see some polarized earnings.
Neil Saunders, CEO of GlobalData
Meanwhile, shoppers are adopting new ways to shop for clothes, shoes and accessories.
Such purchases remain especially popular in “buy now, pay later” installment loans. Clothing was the biggest spending category on Afterpay from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 last year, the service told NBC News. At rival BNPL provider Affirm, fashion and beauty ranked second in sales volume for the first quarter of fiscal 2025, behind the broad general merchandise segment, with a 15% increase that outpaced both electronics such as travel and ticket sales.
Some of these gains simply reflect how prevalent BNPL services have become at clothing retailers’ checkouts, especially online. But they’re also a sign that consumers are more comfortable ordering clothes they haven’t tried on yet.
“There are so many items now that you can’t find in the store,” Hali said. “A lot of the footwear that was probably on sale [online] At Nordstrom, it doesn’t come with a Nordstrom box, it comes from the manufacturer directly through Nordstrom,” he said.
This range of digital shopping options, both in terms of products and ways to pay for them, is increasingly leading customers to start there first.
“You figure out what you want to buy and then you think: Will it be in the store?” Hali said.
