Women’s Wear Update: The Dress Dilemma

The pattern disruption that came from the pandemic has had a long tail. Both menswear and women’s wear are in new, prolonged cycles that are defying historical patterns.

Let’s take a closer look at what is currently happening in women’s wear since this represents a large and important share of the overall apparel market.

Here are some recent trends to put this category into perspective. Among our client stores, women’s wear was down 2% overall in 2023 with a 9% drop in December alone. Menswear actually outpaced women’s posting a 6% increase last year and a 3% uptick in December.

This trend continued until February, when women’s finally made a comeback.

So, what has been hindering growth in women’s wear? According to Blacks’ Senior Analyst Matt Pruitt it’s all about the dress category.

“A couple of years ago we saw huge growth in sales of dresses and this category just hasn’t come back,” Pruitt says.

According to our database, dress sales were down 16% last year and 25% in December.

And since dresses normally represent such a large percent of sales volume, top line sales growth is taking a hit, Pruitt added.

What is selling right now are lightweight sweaters and outerwear, skirts, and some expensive sneakers.

As we get closer to summer Pruitt hopes that the dress category will start to rebound, given that we have seen about 14 months of tepid sales.

“Women really overbought dresses from 2021 to 2022 and it looks like they have been dipping into their closets rather than looking for new pieces,” he says.

The good news is some of our women’s wear clients saw a big pickup toward the end of February and going into this month. This could be the start of another upswing for women’s wear.

“What we do know is that women’s wear has historically outperformed menswear, and there’s no reason to think that that trend will not continue in the long run,” Pruitt says.