Many people still haven’t finished updating their closets from the COVID-19 outbreak, nearly five years after it began.
Many did so throughout the holidays, buying a few items for themselves as well as presents for others by taking advantage of the steep discounts available this season.
According to Neil Saunders, managing director of the retail consulting firm GlobalData, retailers had a very successful holiday season. Customers increased their spending. Additionally, retailers put a lot of effort into securing business by providing significantly larger discounts than the previous year.
According to recent Visa and Mastercard data, spending on apparel, shoes, and jewelry increased at some of the highest rates.
They feel as though they have completely lost their sense of style now that they are returning to the office.
Avri Lauren, stylist
This season, Visa’s card network saw a 5% increase in clothing and accessories. Spending on clothing increased 3.6% on Mastercard, 3.7% on gadgets, and 6.7% online, which was considerably steeper. Adobe said that online clothes sales reached $45.6 billion, over 10% higher than the previous year, thanks to e-commerce discounts that peaked at over 23% off list prices during the holiday season.
The fact that companies like Amazon and JPMorgan are still directing employees to return to their desks during the pandemic, when many workers became accustomed to attending meetings in sweatpants at least a few days a week, is one explanation, according to industry analysts.
The number of clients seeking clothes for the workplace has increased significantly, according to stylist Avri Lauren of Illinois. She claimed the tendency has intensified over the last four months or so and estimates that well than a quarter of them approach her for assistance putting together work attire.
According to Lauren, they feel as though they have lost their entire sense of style now that they are returning to the job. She went on to say that her customers are prepared to spend more on wardrobe essentials that they can wear frequently and that she has noticed a lot of interest in companies like Everlane and Reformation that promote the sustainability and quality of their goods.
According to retail expert Jane Hali, as consumers continue to expand their wardrobes for social or professional reasons, brands have been adapting to the spike in demand for replacements of certain items. According to her, some have been promoting clothes that are appropriate for a variety of situations. It’s not your average sweater.
According to Bloomberg, Amazon and JPMorgan were the most recent major corporations to hammer home the return-to-office drum in 2025. The internet giant’s five-day rule went into effect this month, and the bank is apparently following suit. Over the past year, Citigroup, Walmart, and UPS have also increased their in-office requirements.
However, there has been considerable opposition to the corporate crackdown, as some workplace trends experts have discovered that workers spend a large portion of their workdays at home and only sometimes visit their workplaces to swipe their badges.
One or two purchases at a time, even RTO-mandated shoppers may be making cautious wardrobe refreshes. Saunders warned that the results were not entirely consistent with the headline figure. When retailers report their earnings next month, we’ll see some polarizing results because not all stores had success over the holidays.
Some big-box merchants sounded cautiously bullish as the holidays approached. After a great start to the season, Gap increased their outlook for the year. After adding more goods under $100, Nordstrom said that customers were able to purchase more clothing and shoes in the third quarter.
Many retailers have taken care to avoid raising prices to the point where they lose business to low-cost online competitors like Shein and others. Instead, they have chosen to absorb a large portion of the costs associated with supply chain disruptions and other expenses or to compromise quality in order to preserve their profit margins.
Despite the recent inflationary roller coaster, clothing and footwear costs have remained relatively stable, increasing by just 1.1% and 0.7%, respectively, between November 2023 and November 2024, trailing the 2.7% rate for consumer prices overall.
There will be some polarizing profits because not all retailers had success over the holidays.
Neil Saunders, GlobalData’s managing director
Meanwhile, consumers are adopting new methods for purchasing clothing, accessories, and shoes.
With buy now, pay later installment loans, those purchases are still very common. According to NBC News, from November 1 to December 31 of last year, the most expensive category on Afterpay was clothing. Fashion and beauty ranked second in terms of sales volume during the first quarter of fiscal 2025 on competitor BNPL provider Affirm, trailing only the general retail area, which had a 15% increase in sales, surpassing both electronics and travel and tickets.
Some of these improvements only show how common BNPL services have grown at apparel stores’ checkouts, particularly online. However, they also indicate that customers are becoming more at ease placing orders for clothing they haven’t yet tried on.
Hali noted that there are now a lot of things that are not available in the store. Many of the shoes that were likely on sale [online] at Nordstrom don’t come in a Nordstrom box; instead, they are shipped straight from the manufacturer to you via Nordstrom, she said.
Customers are increasingly starting there first due to the variety of digital purchasing alternatives available, both in terms of products and payment methods.
After deciding what you want to buy, you consider if it will be available at the store. “Hali said.”