I’d like to post about Fashion Trends and Forecasting, since it’s an area that I work in, and find quite Fascinating.
One of the questions I often get asked is “Why do Designers have the Same Ideas at the same time?” and by answering this, I am sort of answering the question “Where do Trends Come From?”
Designers don’t all have the same ideas at the same time, as we saw on the Fall Winter 2010 catwalks, not everyone was doing the same thing. But there were certainly a few things that repeated: there were a lot more Curvy, Feminine Silhouettes, lots of Designers were reviving 90’s Minimalism, and there was a lot of Sheepskin. So how does this happen?
They have the same ideas at the same time because they are exposed to similar Influences and they are looking for Inspiration at the same time.
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| Inspiration > Braid |
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| Inspiration > Braid |
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| Inspiration > Braid |
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| Inspiration > Braid |
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| My Product > Braid Handle |
The Fashion industry is small, and whether you are living, you are going to be exposed to similar Inspirational Influences as other designers. Firstly, everyone starts their Research Process after the shows, so in March while most of us were digesting the Fall Winter shows and wondering what we were going to buy come September when the collections were arriving in store, Designers are off researching their Spring Summer 2011 collections. They will be looking at similar things, like Art Exhibitions, New Creative Work (Design, Architecture, Fine art), New Bands or other Performance Artists, Interesting Films, New Books that have come out (Retrospective Books or Photography Books), etc… Some Designers will go off to foreign countries to Get Inspired, but they may have also been inspired by their last holiday, which was probably to some Trendy Holiday hotspot that many other Designers went to as well. Everyone is exposed to similar ideas, and because designers have often been trained in the same ways, they just tend to move in the same directions. They “Feel” things at the same time.
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| Inspiration > Traditional Japanese Kimonos |
It is really interesting to track Trends through Fashion, because you can usually tie Trends to something visually exciting that impacted the designers at the time of their research: The Memoirs of a Geisha film came out before Dior did their spectacular Spring Summer 2007 couture show, which was heavily inspired by traditional Japanese kimonos. Chloe’s 2001 horses collection came out shortly after the publication of a book called Rodeo Girl, which featured Photographs of Cowgirls.
So that’s why I tell people who are interested in getting into Trend Forecasting to be on the ball about…everything. Especially things that are visually interesting. You never know who or what is going to inspire the next Major Fashion Trend.
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| Inspiration > Wheat in Rainbow Field, Photo by P H Yang |
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| My Product > Colours Triple Stitching |
One important issue I didn’t explain is the Role of the Trend Forecasters, who generally tend to be Inspired in the same ways as Designers do. It is rare that a Luxury Brand Designer will get their trends from a forecaster, high end brands have their own ideas, and those ideas will in turn affect the fast fashion trends. Trend forecasters usually sell fashion trend concepts to Fast Fashion Brands (H & M or Zara...etc), or Companies who don’t have strong enough Design Teams, although some Luxury Brands will use Trend Forecasters for ideas on Colour and Fabric.
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Trends come from Inspiration + Creative Mind, xx
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Text > Cool Jenny
