California Apparel News

The industry’s color and trend forecasters are starting to see the California market in a whole new light.

With more focus on the West Coast as a result of Los Angeles Fashion Week, the region’s hot contemporary women’s market and an emerging young men’s market, demand is rising for trend services that incorporate a West Coast influence, said forecasting companies.

“California is as hot as it’s ever been,” said Barbra Night, principal of Los Angeles–based Trends West, which provides reports on the Southern California retail market. “Even designers in New York are looking here for inspiration.”

Night’s staff shops local retail hot spots from Melrose to Montana avenues daily. Reports go to international companies as well as local retailers and manufacturers looking for inspiration and direction. “We see items before they become trends,” Night said.

Direction from the West Coast has always been much sought after, said color and trend forecasters, but there’s currently a confluence of inspirations from almost every element of the West Coast lifestyle. Local color and trend agencies have been stepping up their services to answer demand.

Los Angeles–based forecaster Design Options recently entered the young men’s market, issuing a color report for Fall/Winter 2005. The company is also working on a trend report for a future date.

“California has the hottest young men’s market in the country,” said Fran Sude, creative director. “A lot of people on the East Coast would disagree with that, but it’s never been so hot here.”

Sude said influences are coming from all directions, including surf, urban and contemporary sectors. She said color is the key to recent success in the men’s market.

“You’re seeing Donald Trump wearing pink ties now,” she noted. “You have ’Queer Eye’ and ’metrosexuals.’ There’s a lot happening.”

Sude’s color reports are segmented into a variety of themes. Her men’s Fall/Winter report displays colors ranging from bright to moody on swatches and skeins on acrylic boards.

“Blue is still the No. 1 color, but green is also hot now,” she said. “If you walk into a Bloomingdale’s, you’ll see Lacoste shirts in a rainbow of colors. It’s what’s making people buy right now.”

Design Options is one of the few fullservice color and trend forecasters based on the West Coast. The New York or European forecasters still dictate much of the direction, but that’s changing, according to local resources.

Design Options’ account base includes many of the industry’s heavy hitters: The May Department Stores Co., Talbots, Mervyn’s, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. and others. The company also publishes reports covering women’s and children’s apparel, lifestyle trends and home furnishings.

The West Coast focus led former California Market Center Marketing Director Trish Moreno to launch TrendSyndicate at www.trendsyndicate.com. The trend report focuses on West Coast young designer and contemporary fashions gleaned from Moreno’s extensive line shopping and runway viewing. The reports include style numbers, prices and descriptions, as well as color images.

“We try to enhance buyers’ edits by nailing the key items because that’s what good retailing is all about,” said Moreno, a former Bebe Stores Inc. executive who has also been an art director, filmmaker and stylist. Moreno has compiled a subscriber base from local, national and European buyers.

Los Angeles’ largest buying office, Directives West, is also expanding in the forecast arena by bringing its California color and trend report to a broader base. The report has been offered to clients and local manufacturers, but Directives West will soon break an ad campaign to market the book, said principal Sandy Potter. The report covers street trends in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. The latest “See and Be Seen” covers Spring/Summer 2005.

“The California perspective is very important and getting more important,” said Terry Katana, who researches the market with Directives West in addition to running her own company, TMK Trend, in Toluca Lake, Calif.

Bill Glazer of Bill Glazer Associates agreed. “There’s more creativity and competition here,” he said.

Glazer provides trend and retail reports covering Los Angeles men’s and women’s apparel as well as European reports that incorporate digital sketches of garments that clients can manipulate.

While California’s stock is rising in the trend market, most of the industry continues to rely on Europe for color, said Trudy Adler of Santa Monica, Calif.–based Trudy Adler Design. Adler markets books from Parisbased Carlin International as well as from several other European companies.

“[Carlin is] working with mills and lace factories, and the people that are dyeing and doing colors need this information very far in advance,” she noted. “They’re at the forefront of direction.”

Adler estimates that about two-thirds of the industry relies on some type of forecasting service. Annual subscriptions can run from $400 to thousands of dollars. The trend industry remains competitive but is on the wane overall, Adler said.

“It used to be bigger. There’s more competition for fewer people now,” she said. —Robert McAllister