A handful of fashion forecasting companies such as Doneger Group, World Global Style Network (WGSN), and Colour Association of the United States monitor signals and connect the dots to predict what people would be wearing (colour, designs); a year or two from now.
The signals could be objective (not influenced by personal feelings but based on facts) or subjective (based on personal taste & feelings).
The fashion meetings where Doneger, WGSN and the like share & discuss their findings are attended by some of the biggest names in design (Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren etc.), retail (Saks Fifth Avenue, Cotton Inc. etc.) and manufacturing.
The information from the presentations and inputs from attendees are then synthesised, and final predictions are agreed to, and ‘locked’.
Other designers and retail labels (medium & small) also buy these trend reports from fashion forecasting companies.
Now, big retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue give fashion media advance notice of styles that will appear in their stores.
It is a win-win for both media (they get a scoop) and retailers (helps them warm up the consumer to the ‘upcoming fashion’).
Similarly, designers that have based their designs on this ‘coordinated information’ hold fashion shows and send invitations to fashion media and fashion photographers.
Designers also arrange for their designs to be featured on movies & TV programmes and donate their latest creations to celebrities, who get photographed in this ‘new-fashion’ by paparazzi.
At the same time, this coordination among fashion forecasters, designers and retailers leads to the clothes on the store racks sharing quite a few features.
Consumers get exposed to the same fashion from all touch-points – media, celebrities, stores & other people.
In a certain sense, therefore, the prediction in itself is the cause.
And so, many believe it is not the signals-caught-by-forecasters (even if the signals were objective, for them to hold relevance in 2-years time is wishful) but who all buy predictions based on those signals that decide fashion.
