Denim discounts driven by "buy now/wear now" shopping habits?

It's barely mid-Aug and A&F is already screaming 40% off denim through their e-newsletter. This doesn't bode well for overall BTS sales though performance has been notably uneven across different retailers. Trying to get to the bottom of this, I found an interesting thought on the immediacy of shopping in this article:

The problem for most retailers is that the Great Recession has taught shoppers to buy closer to when they need the merchandise. So Ken Perkins, president of research firm RetailMetrics, predicts that stores are "going to have to be very promotional all the way through." He added that consumers, particularly in the low- to middle-income brackets, are in a "buy now, wear now" mode because they don't have a lot of discretionary income.