SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSFORMATION IN THE RAPIDLY EVOLVING HIGH-END FASHION SECTOR: A LITERATURE REVIEW

In recent years, the luxury fashion industry has been characterized by the difficulties of operating in a post-pandemic recovery environment and, beyond that, of facing the additional pressures of economic instability, geopolitical risks, global competition, demand volatility, environmental and social concerns, and technological transition. These dynamics have led to the necessity of reorganizing supply chain structures in order to respond effectively to the emerging issues of this unpredictable and complex environment. Among the most critical there are Environmental, Social, Governmental (ESG) law compliance, the need to provide consumers guarantee of transparency and traceability practices along the entire supply chain, combating illegitimate trade practices, increasing responsiveness to the fast-changing market demand, and aligning technological transformation consistently across all supply chain tiers. Given these premises, the thesis aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the contemporary context and key issues faced by the luxury fashion sector, to investigate the main practices and strategies implemented in response, and review the latest theoretical proposals emerged from academic literature contributions. Furthermore, it identifies some of the main enabling and limiting factors responsible of the success of such transformation efforts. The research methodology is based on an in-depth study of the scientific literature on the topic, although it does not qualify as a systematic literature review because article selection and thematic focus were guided by subjective judgements regarding relevance and interest. For future research, it would be useful to explore under-investigated topics lacking empirical data and, also, beneficial to empirically test recent theoretical frameworks through comparative studies across different organizational contexts or sizes to assess the real-world value those can bring to the industry. The paper is therefore structured as follows: Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of the economic, environmental, social, and technological context and clarifies the specific features characterizing the luxury fashion industry. Then, Chapter 2 details the process followed for the literature review and the criteria adopted for the selection of the academic resources. Chapter 3 presents the main findings, i.e., challenges and solutions identified and delivers insights on the enabling and limiting factors. Finally, Chapter 4 summarizes the conclusions drawn from the research work, clarifies the limitations of the study and offers suggestions for future research.