People often ask me how to spot new trends. It is an elusive subject, and I
honestly don't know if it is something that is innate, or a talent that can be
learned. I do know that anybody who goes into retail or design better have at
least a little bit of trend-spotting skills, or they will be lost when trying to
make choices for what will sell 6 months or a year from now!
Color
Forecasting is one type of trend-spotting. Pantone has taken the art of color
forecasting to the level of a Breaking News item, with their Color of the Year.
We may well ask, what does the Color of the Year
mean? Is it something that is selling well at retail right now, something that
we'll see flooding the stores for the next year, or something designers should
be putting in their next collection?
Well, it is all 3, depending on what
industry, what price point, what area of the US (or the world!), and what age of
the customer…. and a few other market variables. A trend that is hot in New
York or Los Angeles now, can take 2 to 3 years to reach saturation in the
Heartland… sometimes longer!
To illustrate my point, on the evolvement
of trends over time and distance, I am going to tell you a story.
About
10 years ago when all the eyeglass designs were of small rectangle lenses, those
of us who actually want to SEE out of our glasses, became very frustrated. (I've
worn glasses since I was 10, and can't function without them.) Every eyeglass
shop I went to had the same teeny frames. For the last 10 years I've bought
stylish funky frames from France, because I didn't
want to have glasses that looked like everyone else. In the meantime I
hunkered down and waited for this small eyeglass trend to pass. Unfortunately it
lasted for a very long time, and as I graduated to progressive lenses, I had
even less space to see through because my lenses were divided into 3 zones of 3
different prescriptions. Ack!
Then while I was in New York last week, I
saw the eyeglass frames of my dreams! I saw them worn by a young woman in a
restaurant. She probably wondered why I kept staring at her. (I was committing
the design to memory, but was too shy to go ask her where she got them.) I came
back home and spent a week hassling my local hipster
eyeglass stores, trying to figure out who makes these frames!
The
closest thing I could find was on a blog in Europe. I went to my local eyeglass
shop that carries this brand, and was told that style had not even been released
in France yet, and it wasn't possible that I had actually seen them online, and
they wouldn't be sold to the US market anyway. Sigh…
Meanwhile the
market is saturated with tons of tiny rectangle frame glasses. Personally I like
larger lenses – preferably in a Cats Eye or Retro style. I know this style is
coming, and it may take 3 more years for it to filter down to the hippest
eyeglass shop in Boulder. In the meantime versions of this design are in New
York and Paris, probably Rome and Milan too, and I am determined to get my hands
on a pair.
This is one way of spotting a trend.
So when you are
wondering – what is the next big trend? – take this advice I got from my first
boss as a young fashion designer:
"I'll know it when I see
it!"
Speaking of which, if you are a Modern Quilter, be sure to snap up a
copy of the new
Modern Patchwork Magazine. After I saw the preview copy last week, we
doubled our autoship!
May you finish your tax forms early this weekend,
so you can have fun looking at all the new
fabric trends on our website. *wink*
