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Fashion Forecasting
Paperback edition, unused and unmarked. 417 pages text explains the complex science of fashion forecasting.
- GenresFashionNonfiction
439 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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August 29, 2019
Preface
p.xv – Trend forecasters increase the competitive advantage of their clients by anticipating trends, aligning product development with consumer preferences, and facilitating the timely arrival of products to the marketplace.
1 – The Fashion Forecasting Process
p.4 – Trend analysis firms publish books to illustrate their forecasts about 18 months ahead of the fashion season. The books include color chips, textile samples, fashion sketches, and photographs to illustrate trends. Increasingly the trend books are being supplemented or replaced with web sites offering video, photographs, downloadable sketches, color swatches, print and fabric designs, and software tools. These subscription-only, business-to-business sites provide real-time trend forecasting. For example, Stylesight (www.stylesight.com) has a library of three million images – not just clothes but also stores, and streetwear from around the world. Images are tagged and indexed for easy retrieval. A yearly subscription to the site costs $15,000 and allows access to twenty users in an apparel firm.
p.7 – Forecasting provides a way for executives to expand their thinking about change, anticipate the future, and project the likely outcomes. Executives use forecasting as input for planning.
p.9 – Forecasting is more than just attending runway shows and picking out potential trends that can be knocked off at lower prices (although that is part of it). It is a process that spans shifts in color and styles, changes in lifestyles and buying patterns, and different ways of doing business. What appears to be near-random activity is in fact a process of negotiation between the fashion industry and the consumer, and among the various segments in the supply-side chain.
Long-term forecasting (five years or more) is a way to explore possible futures and to build a shared vision of an organization’s direction and development. A compelling vision draws people toward a preferred future.
Short-term forecasting (one year ahead) involves periodic monitoring of the long-term vision and revisions as circumstances dictate and acts to coordinate the operations of a company within the context of the industry and the marketplace.
Forecasting keeps the momentum going because it forces a perspective of the future on the day-to-day business decisions.
p.12 – Trend analysis looks at the interaction of shifts in fashion, consumer lifestyle, and culture.
p.13 – Megatrends cross industry lines, involve shifts in lifestyle, or mirror economic cycles. The effects of these trends will be felt for a decade or more.
Only fast fashion firms – those set up to deliver new styles in weeks instead of months – are able to capitalize on the fast-changing trends as they are revealed in the data. Other companies act only after fashion converges on the styles symbolic or the times.
p.14 – Media not only report on the culture, they are shaped by it.
p.16 – Planned obsolescence powers the economic engine of fashion.
p.17 – Fashion is not merely a reflection of the spirit of the times but part of its creation (Vinken 2005).
p.21 – The Zeitgeist is an expression of modernity, of the current state of culture, of the incipient and unarticulated tastes of the consuming public. Forecasters monitoring the Zeitgeist pay special attention to:
• Style interactions among apparel, cuisine, sports, architecture, interior design, automobile design and innovation, toys, pastimes, and play because all these fields respond to the same cultural currents.
• The content of media, the celebrities covered in the media, and the members of the press who decide what stories to cover.
• The events, ideals, social groups, attitudes and technology that characterize the spirit of the times.
These cultural patterns define the present. Even slight shifts in these patterns act as directional signposts to the future.
To look forward, a forecaster must have an image of the past – the way styles responded to and were shaped by the spirit of the times.
The marketplace is shaped by constant negotiations between the apparel industry and consumers over which styles represent the spirit of the times. It is not only the styles that change but also the marketplace dynamics.
p.28-29 – What drives fashion today? in the past drivers included newness associated with seasonal change, the desire to wear the latest “in” looks, the wish to be appropriately dressed for any occasion, and the desire to impress others with our chic clothes – in a word, to be “cool.” Li Edelkoort, head of Trend Union, a Paris-based forecasting agency expects seasonal and gender boundaries to blur – a prelude to people dressing in more unconventional ways.
2 – Innovation
p.41 – In fashion terms, the innovation may be the invention of a new fiber, a new finish for denim, introduction of an unusual color range, a modification in a silhouette or detail, a different way to wear an accessory, or a mood expressed in a distinctive style. When introduced, it diffuses through the population as more and more consumers have a chance either to accept or reject it. This pattern of acceptance or rejection determined the innovation’s life cycle. The diffusion process maps the response to the innovation over time.
3 – The Direction of Fashion Change
p.90 – By 1960, the knockoff had become the normal way to do business in the fashion industry.
p.xv – Trend forecasters increase the competitive advantage of their clients by anticipating trends, aligning product development with consumer preferences, and facilitating the timely arrival of products to the marketplace.
1 – The Fashion Forecasting Process
p.4 – Trend analysis firms publish books to illustrate their forecasts about 18 months ahead of the fashion season. The books include color chips, textile samples, fashion sketches, and photographs to illustrate trends. Increasingly the trend books are being supplemented or replaced with web sites offering video, photographs, downloadable sketches, color swatches, print and fabric designs, and software tools. These subscription-only, business-to-business sites provide real-time trend forecasting. For example, Stylesight (www.stylesight.com) has a library of three million images – not just clothes but also stores, and streetwear from around the world. Images are tagged and indexed for easy retrieval. A yearly subscription to the site costs $15,000 and allows access to twenty users in an apparel firm.
p.7 – Forecasting provides a way for executives to expand their thinking about change, anticipate the future, and project the likely outcomes. Executives use forecasting as input for planning.
p.9 – Forecasting is more than just attending runway shows and picking out potential trends that can be knocked off at lower prices (although that is part of it). It is a process that spans shifts in color and styles, changes in lifestyles and buying patterns, and different ways of doing business. What appears to be near-random activity is in fact a process of negotiation between the fashion industry and the consumer, and among the various segments in the supply-side chain.
Long-term forecasting (five years or more) is a way to explore possible futures and to build a shared vision of an organization’s direction and development. A compelling vision draws people toward a preferred future.
Short-term forecasting (one year ahead) involves periodic monitoring of the long-term vision and revisions as circumstances dictate and acts to coordinate the operations of a company within the context of the industry and the marketplace.
Forecasting keeps the momentum going because it forces a perspective of the future on the day-to-day business decisions.
p.12 – Trend analysis looks at the interaction of shifts in fashion, consumer lifestyle, and culture.
p.13 – Megatrends cross industry lines, involve shifts in lifestyle, or mirror economic cycles. The effects of these trends will be felt for a decade or more.
Only fast fashion firms – those set up to deliver new styles in weeks instead of months – are able to capitalize on the fast-changing trends as they are revealed in the data. Other companies act only after fashion converges on the styles symbolic or the times.
p.14 – Media not only report on the culture, they are shaped by it.
p.16 – Planned obsolescence powers the economic engine of fashion.
p.17 – Fashion is not merely a reflection of the spirit of the times but part of its creation (Vinken 2005).
p.21 – The Zeitgeist is an expression of modernity, of the current state of culture, of the incipient and unarticulated tastes of the consuming public. Forecasters monitoring the Zeitgeist pay special attention to:
• Style interactions among apparel, cuisine, sports, architecture, interior design, automobile design and innovation, toys, pastimes, and play because all these fields respond to the same cultural currents.
• The content of media, the celebrities covered in the media, and the members of the press who decide what stories to cover.
• The events, ideals, social groups, attitudes and technology that characterize the spirit of the times.
These cultural patterns define the present. Even slight shifts in these patterns act as directional signposts to the future.
To look forward, a forecaster must have an image of the past – the way styles responded to and were shaped by the spirit of the times.
The marketplace is shaped by constant negotiations between the apparel industry and consumers over which styles represent the spirit of the times. It is not only the styles that change but also the marketplace dynamics.
p.28-29 – What drives fashion today? in the past drivers included newness associated with seasonal change, the desire to wear the latest “in” looks, the wish to be appropriately dressed for any occasion, and the desire to impress others with our chic clothes – in a word, to be “cool.” Li Edelkoort, head of Trend Union, a Paris-based forecasting agency expects seasonal and gender boundaries to blur – a prelude to people dressing in more unconventional ways.
2 – Innovation
p.41 – In fashion terms, the innovation may be the invention of a new fiber, a new finish for denim, introduction of an unusual color range, a modification in a silhouette or detail, a different way to wear an accessory, or a mood expressed in a distinctive style. When introduced, it diffuses through the population as more and more consumers have a chance either to accept or reject it. This pattern of acceptance or rejection determined the innovation’s life cycle. The diffusion process maps the response to the innovation over time.
3 – The Direction of Fashion Change
p.90 – By 1960, the knockoff had become the normal way to do business in the fashion industry.
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