New, Luxe Office for Barbara Fields
Trend forecaster Barbara Fields has witnessed the fashion business change and grow from many different vantage points in the California Market Center. During her more than 20- year career running the Barbara Fields Buying Office, she has maintained offices all over the showroom building.On July 19, she announced that her latest stop is a 3,327-square-foot space at suite A1289.
“I needed a bigger presence in my hometown,” Fields said from New York, where she was working during one of her frequent trips researching the latest fashion trends among juniors. She said she was researching fashions that won’t be in stores for another year.
The new office is more than double the size of her most recent office, which was in CMC suite B1221. The new headquarters also reflects growth in Fields’ back-office operations.
For most of her career, she outsourced bookkeeping and printing operations for her monthly trend-forecasting publications.Fields’ new headquarters makes space for an office for a recently hired bookkeeper and a printing center, which is less than 200 square feet.
The office was designed by Jamie Avines, Fields’ vice president and a former interior decorator. One of Avines’ main goals for the office design was to give Fields’ employees stretching room. “Everybody worked almost on top of each other in the old space,” Avines said.
Visitors to the new office will be greeted in a reception area featuring a lacquered concrete floor, frosted glass and kentia palm plants. Formal meetings will be held in the corporate conference room, which is dominated by a cherry-wood conference table. There also are framed covers of Fields’ publications in the room, as well as fashions that Fields picked up on her trips.
Past the corporate conference room is a bank of offices, an informal meeting room and a kitchen. Adjacent to the informal meeting room is a presentation center for informal modeling.
Barbara Fields’ clients include Wet Seal, Kohl’s and JC Penney. On Oct. 8, she will also produce the Spring 2008 Fashion Show at the California Market Center.—Andrew Asch
