Première Vision’s first Vision Barometer, created to study the economy of creative materials for fashion, showed an uptick in textile production in 2016 and a slight downturn in leather manufacturing. The new index offers a quantified measure of business activity in the market of materials for creative fashion, the target of Première Vision shows.

The forecast for the rest of 2017 and beyond is one of some clearing amid climatic disturbances, as the industry deals with complicated issues along the supply chain.

The index provides a means to measure the global activity of creative materials, upstream from the activity of fashion brands. The results of the barometer allow exhibitors to compare their own performance on two levels–compared to that of their colleagues and competitors in the creative fashion market and compared to the more general activity of the global leather and textile markets.

For the full year 2016, the Première Vision Textile Index grew 1.7 per cent in volume compared to 2015. Manufacturing among Première Vision Fabrics exhibitors from developed economies grew 1.9 per cent, a much faster pace than the Textile World Production index, which fell 0.1 per cent. Within these economies, the activity of European players, up 3.7 per cent, was stronger than that of companies in developed Asian countries, a 0.6 per cent increase, represented mainly by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.