CaliforniaApparelNews.net

Fashion Group International will kick off the holiday season on Dec. 6 with a party—complete with saki tastings, sushi samplings, a silent auction and drawing for a week in St. Lucia.

The party is set for 3–6 p.m. at Agura in West Hollywood. Cost to attend is $30 for FGI members and their guests, and $45 for non-members.

For more information call (323) 687-4131 or e-mail fgila@earthlink.net.

FGI has had a busy season. The group kicked off Los Angeles Fashion Week with a designer-filled event at The Standard.

And our own N. Jayne Seward spoke on a recent panel organized by FGI and held at BOXeight in downtown Los Angeles.

Jayne was joined on the Nov. 19 panel by several local fashion journalists, including Los Angeles magazine’s Laurie Pike, BlackburnandSweetzer.com’s Tasha Adams, StyleSectionLA.com’s Erin Weineger and The LookBook.com’s Keirsten Calavas. Palm Springs Life magazine’s Susan Stein moderated the panel.

The panel fielded questions about trend reporting versus forecasting. “Trend services are always thinking on a micro and macro level. They’re a year or two years out, it’s more what’s going on culturally, socially, politically,” said Adams, who has worked for trend forecaster WGSN.com before launching the Blackburn and Sweetzer site.

For Jayne, the key is to identify trends before retailers come to market. “In my job, it’s a little more multifaceted,” she said. “Before we go to market, we’re doing our photo shoots. It’s a little bit of trend forecasting and trying to stay one step ahead.” 

The group, which included journalists from both print and online publications, discussed the importance of blogs and the different between writing for blogs and for more-traditional outlets.

“To me, blogs are about branding yourself,” Pike said. “A lot of them have allowed people to express themselves authentically. [But] now that there’s all these blogs, they need content. A lot of those people are not journalists. There’s a lot of information dumps. It can be confusing as a designer.”

John Arguelles, FGI-LA’s regional director, played host (and provided some impromptu comedy when he donned a bandana to illustrate a trend Weineger has resurrected). He underscored the importance of groups like FGI and the networking opportunities they provide. “Places like this give us an opportunity to come together, meet and take on these topics,” he said.

 The panel of fashion journalists

John Arguelles, FGI-LA’s regional director and Staci Riordan, FGI-LA’s program chair