California Apparel News

Imagine scouting trends on the show floor of Bread & Butter’s Barcelona trade show, then dropping into a few boutiques in Los Angeles to find out who’s hot and who’s flying under the radar. Then imagine reviewing the Paris runway shows and New York street trends, then checking out the work of a team of graphic artists as well as T-shirt designs from Tokyo before checking out shop windows in Satilde;o Paulo and a few boutique hotels in Montreal and reviewing stock prices of public apparel companies and reading up on the latest acquisition by one of the big manufacturers and the most recent international trade agreements.

Now imagine doing all of this before lunch. From your office.

And that would just scratch the surface of Worth Global Style Network’s Web site (www.wgsn.com), the nearly 10-year-old trendforecasting and research company founded in London by Julian and Marc Worth.

WGSN’s team of trend forecasters scours the world for what’s happening now in fashion, art and design from offices in New York, Paris, Milan, Beijing, Moscow, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Seoul, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Tokyo.

The company’s 2,600 subscribers (and nearly 36,000 users) include designers, manufacturers, retail buyers, retail executives, marketing companies and analysts.

The company boasts a client list that ranges from Benetton and Ben Sherman to Chicos FAS and Ocean Pacific. Anaheim, Calif.–based team retailer Pacific Sunwear is a subscriber, as is Swedish fast-fashion purveyor H&M and Hong Kong–based luxury department store Lane Crawford. Denim mills Cone and Parras subscribe, as do fiber makers DuPont, Milliken and Nilit. The site is more than an online trend magazine; it’s a portal for fashion businesses to research, review and confirmthe direction of their businesses.

Visitors can research by city, by market segment, by trend or by season. The site forecasts trends as far out as three years in its “Think Tank” section, which covers emerging macro trends and cultural indicators. The site’s forecasters keep tracking trends up until they hit the trade-show floor and the shop window. WGSN recently introduced its “Close to Season” trend analysis, which includes everything from “of the moment” colors and items to original design sketches and original prints, which can be downloaded and edited into Adobe Illustrator.

There is access to business resources such as financial news and industry analysis. And each page offers links to related articles and features, allowing the reader to explore subjects in depth.

All this global research does not come cheap. Annual fees vary depending on the number of users, the number of brands and the company’s geographic location.

The company’s West Coast office opened this year and is already building up its stable of trend watchers. Among the staff in Los Angeles are Sally Lohan, the West Coast content editor, and Nick Wright, the vice president of West Coast sales.

Lohan will host three trend-forecasting seminars this month at the MAGIC Marketplace. And WGSN will co-host the Color & Trend Gallery in the Sourcing at MAGIC section of the giant trade show Aug. 27–30, 2007. Curated by Lohan, the gallery will cover trend directions for Autumn/Winter 2008/2009 for womenswear, menswear, childrenswear, denim and accessories, including color, fabric and styling details and graphic design.