Legacy fashion brands stitch new labels for Gen Z

Bengaluru: India’s legacy apparel brands are taking different routes to win over Gen Z. Some are extending familiar labels with youth-focussed sub-brands, while others are starting afresh with standalone ones. At stake is a younger shopper who seeks affordability and whose tastes shift quickly with social media, as also retaining the existing customers who built these brands.

In recent months, Peter England, BIBA and Libas have opted for the sub-brand route, launching VYBE, BIBA NXT and Gerua, respectively. The strategy allows them to create a distinct proposition for younger shoppers, while relying on the parent brand’s existing sourcing, manufacturing and distribution capabilities.

Other players have a different strategy. Trent built a portfolio of distinct retail formats, with Westside and Zudio serving different consumer segments, and has more recently added Burnt Toast to its stable of brands. Reliance Retail launched youth-focused Yousta as a separate fashion format, while Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd. (ABFRL) has created OWND! as a standalone business.

Why the shift

The difference goes beyond branding. A standalone format gives companies the freedom to build a new identity, product architecture and organization around a specific consumer. A sub-brand offers the speed and lower execution risk of using an established company’s infrastructure.

For Peter England, the decision to launch VYBE was driven by the need to attract younger consumers while keeping the decades-old brand relevant. “If we can recruit the customer at a much younger age bracket, he will continue with the brand and grow with us,” said Anand Iyer, chief business officer at Peter England.

Rather than launch a completely independent brand, the company looks to broaden Peter England’s appeal by creating a proposition designed for younger consumers. That has required a different approach to both product and marketing.

Gen Z shoppers are looking for looser fits, oversized silhouettes and versatile clothing, Iyer said, while their fashion discovery is increasingly driven by digital platforms. “For them, the mall is Instagram,” he said, explaining VYBE’s focus on social media, creators, influencers and music-led campaigns.

Libas has taken a similar route with Gerua, aimed at younger shoppers and first-time office-goers. The company concluded that simply extending its core offering would not adequately address a consumer with a different spending behaviour and expectations.

“We wanted to build something specifically for first-time office-goers, rather than stretch our core catalogue to try and serve them,” said Sidhant Keshwani, founder and chief executive of Libas. “That’s a very different consumer, with a very different price sensitivity and a very different relationship with brands.”

At the same time, building Gerua within the Libas ecosystem means the company does not have to create an entirely new backend. “We’re leveraging our existing teams, our manufacturing relationships with 100+ factories across India, and our design and R&D capability in-house, without needing to build any of that from scratch,” Keshwani said.

The strategy is beginning to bring in new consumers. Sales from Gerua have risen 85% since its launch in April 2025, repeat purchases are at 45%, and the collection has contributed 22% of new customers to Libas.

BIBA is pursuing a similar balancing act with BIBA NXT. Siddharth Bindra, managing director of BIBA, said the new line allows the company to build a more contemporary proposition for younger consumers while retaining the advantages of the company’s established consumer trust and omnichannel network.

Around 60% of BIBA NXT shoppers are new to the brand, with the company using the line to test which styles and price points resonate before expanding further.

The standalone approach provides greater room to build not only a new brand but also a separate organization. That is the route ABFRL has taken with OWND!, its youth-focused value-fashion format, which was initially housed within its Pantaloons business.

The company has since separated OWND! from Pantaloons as it refines the business model. “We have dedicated the business separately from Pantaloons management and created a whole new team,” Ashish Dikshit, managing director of ABFRL, said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

At the same time, ABFRL has built a broader play for Gen Z through TMRW, its platform for digital-first fashion brands, with labels such as Bewakoof, The Indian Garage Co., Nobero and Veirdo.

The company is still finetuning the format and has yet to reach format-level profitability, underlining the trade-off involved in building a business from scratch.

For Trent, the strategy has been to build a portfolio of distinct brands rather than stretch one label across vastly different consumers. Zudio’s success has demonstrated the potential of a standalone, sharply positioned value-fashion format, while the company has continued to add new concepts such as Burnt Toast to address other consumer segments.

Burnt Toast targets younger, trend-conscious consumers, including the emerging Gen Alpha cohort, which generally refers to those born after 2010. Gen Alpha is the generation after Gen Z.

Call for agility

Yet, the choice between a standalone brand and a sub-brand may not ultimately determine success.

According to Rishav Jain, managing director and co-lead of the consumer, consumer tech and retail practice at Alvarez & Marsal India, the bigger challenge is whether companies can move away from traditional ways of operating and adapt to the changing times.

“Brand architecture may not be the biggest criteria of success,” Jain said. “While new lines can be created, success is driven by the ability to diverge from traditional operating models.” Faster product refreshes, limited inventories, sharper pricing and an agile backend are critical for winning younger consumers, he said.

Standalone formats typically have the advantage of carrying less legacy baggage, while established companies can become constrained by their own scale and processes. “Existing scale may not be the biggest competitive advantage when catering to the new-age consumers. Often scale brings in rigidity and inability to change to an agile design-to-deliver model,” Jain said.

That, however, does not rule out the sub-brand model. “Sub-brands can succeed too if they can follow an agile operating model,” he said.