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Hot or Not?

by Cynthia Nellis – http://makeover.about.com

When Fashion Trends Die

It’s a fashion follower’s worst nightmare — worse than looking fat, more humiliating than wearing the same dress as another party guest — it’s the dread of looking last year.

Fashion trends, sometimes referred to as fads, are notoriously fickle. The fashion industry is always on the hunt for what’s new, what’s hot. For every new, must-have handbag, there’s another that gets tossed aside like, well, last year’s trend.

The Fashion Cycle

1. First, there’s the emerging trend (the American Marketing Association refers to this as the “distinctiveness” part of the cycle where the trend is highly sought after. You know this as when you see that great hat/dress/shoe on the runway, red carpet or music video.
2. Next, comes what the AMA calls the emulation phase, where everyone wants a piece of the trend.
3. You’ll see it in fashion magazines, newspapers, internet and TV during this phase.
4. Finally, the trend becomes saturated in the market, usually at very low prices. With trendy items like a must-have designer handbag, the item becomes widely available as a knock-off.

Most of us will buy it somewhere between phases two and three. Only celebrities and fashion industry types have access to fashion fresh off the runway that hasn’t appeared in stores yet, like in the first phase of a fashion trend.

At the second phase a look is often available in high-priced designer collections. Only in the third phase, when a look makes it to the mass market, does it become affordable for most consumers.

Twenty or 30 years ago it might have taken a few years to make it from red carpet to mass market, but today’s manufacturers have put the fashion cycle into hyperspeed. Sometimes a hot trend makes it into lower priced retail outlets in as little as a few months.

In or Out?

Affordable trendy clothing (sometimes called “fast fashion”) is a double-edged sword: it makes fashionable looks accessible to those of us on real-life budgets, but when the market is totally saturated with a look a trend loses its appeal. It basically helps to kill the trend quicker.

So how do you know how long a trend will last? A few general guidelines:

• Generally speaking, most fashion trends stick around for at least a year. Some trends, usually the most understandable ones, last longer. For example, the personalization or initial craze started with Sarah Jessica Parker’s “Carrie” necklace during season two of “Sex and the City” in 1998. The look saturated the mass market in the fall 2003 with initial handbags, sweaters — you name it — a full five years after it started.
• One school of thought says that fashion cycles about every 20 years. Thus, the minis of the ’80s have come back into favor now (as did the nameplate necklace mentioned above, which was hot then, too).

A big part of deciding on how long a trend is viable depends on where in the fashion cycle you bought the trend. If you bought it as a knock-off or at a discount store, then you should count on it being in for just one or two seasons. Because the fashion industry often lumps together Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter, that gives you approximately six months of wear out of a look before it looks dated.

• Although there is no hard-and-fast rule about how long a fashion trend will stick around, you can bet that the more-difficult-to-pull-off looks (Uggs, large cuff jeans, trucker hats) are just fads that will fade. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have fun buying them, just know that they aren’t looks that will be fresh this time next year.
• Buying power can keep a trend on life support. Sometimes consumers love a look so much they just won’t let it die. Capris, crops, tank tops and flip flops are all examples of former trends which actually became wardrobe staples.
• The higher the profile — boho chic and mod are recent examples — the more likely it is that the trend will look dated by the same next year. Likewise, the more radical the cut, color or print — microminis, army jackets, mod graphics — the more certain that the trend will be long over by the same time next year.

The best defense against quickly changing trends is to have a wardrobe stocked with mostly classic looks: jeans, T-shirts, blazers, little black dresses. Use trendy items as an addition to a core wardrobe to give it some kick.

Five Myths and Five Tips for Breaking into a Career as a Fashion Designer

by Jennie S. Bev, StyleCareer.com Editor-in-Chief

For many women, becoming a fashion designer is a lifelong dream. We all love to wear beautiful clothes and make ourselves feel good from the inside out.

We often imagine what it feels like to actually make money doing something this great: dressing people up and making them feel good, models cat walking the runway gracefully to showcase our designs, stylists working frantically at the backstage and we are introduced as “the designer” at the closing. Ah, pretty tempting, indeed, but somehow it feels so surreal. Can I actually become a fashion designer?

Despite the misconception that only those who graduate from New York prestigious fashion schools can make it big in this highly lucrative and competitive field, many fashion designers literally work their way up working from home.

Karen and Warren Hipwell, for instance, started and still operate design studio from their residence in Massachusetts. Despite their humble start, now their products are sold in 110 retailers nationwide. Pure luck? Think again.

You, too, can become a fashion designer even if you have never worn “designer” clothes, don’t have a fashion degree, can’t draw or sew, and live far away from New York or Los Angeles. These are no more than myths. Let me briefly explain them to you.

Myth One: I have never worn “designer” clothes.
Reality: All clothes, including those in your closet, are designed by fashion designers. Many people confuse designer “collection,” which means high-priced seasonal line designed by top designers, with “the person” who designs clothes.

Myth Two: I don’t have a fashion degree.
Reality: Unlike the medical professions, which require extensive classroom and hands-on training, you can learn how to design anywhere. No special education is needed. You’ll be surprised to know that many established designers don’t have any special training.

Myth Three: I live far away from New York or Los Angeles.
Reality: While NY and LA are great places to find an internship position with established designers, fashion is a part of life and fashion designers can be found everywhere. Whether you live in a city of millions or a town of 10,000, there must be at least a few local fashion designers.

Myth Four: I cannot draw or sew.
Reality: Nobody can at the beginning. Strong motivation and perseverance are more important than how well you can draw or sew. Such skills can be learned easily (including using some free resources).

Myth Five: I don’t feel comfortable working in a high-profile industry.
Reality: Well, this glamorous image is no more than the most over-rated trait of the fashion industry. This image is created by the media with the help of fashion publicists and marketers to boost sales. Thus, the purpose is pure business. The better the coverage, the better the sales will be. Fashion designers work very hard for 18 to 24 months to deliver the best designs of the season.

Now you’re ready to plunge into this often-misunderstood field, here are some tips:

First, a fashion designer is an artist and an entrepreneur in one. Why? Because if you design in the name of art without considering the marketability, it’s very likely you won’t be successful. Many designers fail because of this.

Second, you can choose your design specializations from a long list of classifications. Trivial items, such as beach and leg wears, are highly profitable products and relatively easy to produce compared with haute couture pieces.

Third, understand what your career goal is. You can choose whether you want to work for others or for yourself. Whichever one your choice is, apprenticeship is always a great option for new designers.

Fourth, keep up with the industry trends and news. Travel and read a lot to be informed and inspired. New insights will keep your creative skills fresh and ready to roll.

Fifth, persevere. Perseverance is the most important virtue of all because without it, nothing can be completed. Perseverance is your ticket to the peak of your career.

Jennie S. Bev is an author and the Editor-in-Chief of StyleCareer.com (http://www.stylecareer.com). StyleCareer.com publishes eGuides that help fashion job seekers breaking into and succeeding in their dream careers.

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Lifestyle Feature

Tastemakers: Fashion Designers -www.forbes.com

Which 100 creative talents are changing the way we eat, drink, dress, think and live?

You’d have to be walking around with a shopping bag over your head to not realize that fashion is everywhere.

Pictures of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes cover the sides of buses, fill hours of prime-time television and dominate page after page of advertising in magazines, newspapers and, increasingly, on the Internet. Thanks to shows like Sex and the City, viewers around the world know about Manolo Blahnik shoes, even if they have never been within miles of an actual pair.

Americans are spending more on clothes every year. For the period between September 2004 and August 2005, from the boutiques that line Madison Avenue to Wal-Mart Stores across the heartland, more than $177 billion–up 2.2% from 2003–went into filling the nation’s closets, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based retail research company.

But as expenditures increase, so does competition. In order to succeed in the often cutthroat–and frequently debt-ridden–world of fashion, designers can no longer hide behind their model’s skirts. In the past, designer labels didn’t exist. Most women of means had a dressmaker who would create garments according to the latest fashions. It wasn’t until Charles Frederick Worth began to design dresses in Paris in the 19th century that designers were seen less like servants and more like artists.

Today, the most successful designers are also businesspeople. Part of their success is pegged to a carefully cultivated celebrity and image. Instead of catering strictly to a few wealthy clients, coveted fashion designers now create product lines ranging from perfumes to pantyhose that can reach consumers at every price point.

This fall, Forbes.com browsed the glittery world of fashion to pinpoint its ten most influential tastemakers. Some, like Ralph Lauren, have long been household names. “He is a constant, somebody who doesn’t entirely believe in fashion yet manages to stay contemporary,” says John Birmingham, editor-in-chief of DNR, the trade newspaper of the men’s apparel industry. “He’s not selling this season’s fashion, he’s selling great clothes.”

Others, including Christopher Bailey of Burberry and Stefano Pilati, the new face at Yves Saint Laurent, are better known by fashion insiders. Designers were also chosen for their intellectual edginess (think Rei Kawakubo), or, like Lauren, because their approach to clothing fits the way Americans live: comfortable, more casual than the Europeans and with less of a distinction between work and play, day and evening.

Great looks don’t necessarily spring from deep pockets, but they do arise from the deep recesses of the imagination, as is apparent in the range of estimated sales figures of those on our list. Designers, like Isaac Mizrahi, who has a collection at Target Stores as well as at Bergdorf Goodman, and Karl Lagerfeld, who has created clothes for Swedish chain H&M in addition to being the fashion mind behind Chanel, now sell in mass-market outlets for which only the likes of Jaclyn Smith once dared to design. Their straddling of the stratospherically expensive and the giddily cheap means they understand the power of mass marketing; Today, good design is within everyone’s reach.

“Fashion is getting more accessible,” says Nandini D’Souza, senior fashion features editor at Women’s Wear Daily, the trade newspaper of the women’s apparel industry, and its sister publication, W. “It is entertainment and it is fun. It is incredible business and incredible entertainment.”

Marshal Cohen, NPD’s chief analyst, says that the presence of high-end designers in lower-end stores shows that retailers are finally responding to what the consumer wants: cheap but fun fashion. “I wouldn’t say they are going to buy more stuff, but they are going to feel good about the same amount of stuff and about finding new ways to stretch their dollars,” said Cohen, author of Why Customers Do What They Do, to be published in November by McGraw-Hill “Consumers at the middle and lower level have realized they can get just as good a fashion direction with clothing at disposable prices that they can wear once and throw away–or if it falls apart, who cares?”

For all of their differences, the designers on our list share the belief that clothing is a means of self-expression. In a cookie cutter world, fashion becomes a pick-and-choose undertaking, helping individuals carve out an identity or identify with a “tribe” by donning a uniform, such as Prada’s Miu Miu line for the hipster crowd, or Lauren classics for the country club set. And all are doing work that advances the fashion industry by sending stuff down the runway that people want to buy.

Some of the names that didn’t make our list were legends in their own time but are no longer moving fashion forward; Calvin Klein, for example, who sold his brand and repaired to his massive mansion on the beach, as well as Donna Karan and Giorgio Armani. We still love their clothes, but they are no longer the innovators they once were.

Forbes.com compiled the list of ten Tastemaker fashion designers by interviewing industry insiders and observers and factoring in media exposure, significant awards, reader polls, branded products and press clips compiled by Factiva for the 12 months ending in August 2005. We also threw in a dash of our own expertise. Sales figures were supplied by most companies, but others were derived from numbers reported in the trade press.

The one thing you can always count on in fashion is change. People and brands come and go. Once-mighty brands like Halston and Givenchy are now struggling, while others, like Mizrahi’s, whose career has been revitalized, are back in favor. Even Tom Ford, the designer who successfully reinvented the Gucci brand before parting ways with the company in 2004, has announced he’s coming back for a return engagement in menswear next year. Maybe he’ll take a page out of Karl and Isaac’s book and sell his new line at Sam’s Club. www.forbes.com

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Portrait of the artist as a fashion addict

Lisa Armstrong

Ten years ago David Downton was an fashion virgin. Now he is one of its most sought after illustrators. Lisa Armstrong looks at his career and he recalls ten high points

The popular conception about couture is that it’s a world filled with neurotically thin people consuming unrealistic amounts of champagne and sitting on uncomfortable gilt chairs, while frocks which cost as much as a luxury executive villa on the Algarve waft past and everyone speaks and behaves in a code that would floor Dan Brown.

The reality is obviously nothing like this. Sometimes the neurotically thin people perch on uncomfortable white boxes. The etiquette and behaviour however — circa 17th-century Versailles, but more arcane — are just as coded. It was into this world that the illustrator David Downton was parachuted ten years ago as he says, “on an art editor”s whim”.

Downton, who had established a solid career in magazines, newspapers and yoghurt pots — he’s illustrated everything at sometime, including the top 50 positions for a sex book — found himself seated at the Versace couture show watching Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss and Claudia Schiffer walk on water (or, to be technically accurate, walk on the marble catwalk Versace erected each couture season over the Ritz swimming pool). No wonder he was hooked — or that the fashion world is hooked on his elegant, economical yet teasing lines. For the past five years he has covered every couture collection for times2 as well as contributing weekly to Ask Lucia and working on projects for, among others, Valentino and Dior.

Simultaneously, interest in illustration has seemingly soared, although in his characteristically lugubrious style Downton thinks “it may just be that everyone is talking and writing about how interest has soared. I’m not sure you see more of it around. But it’s true that computers and the arrival — at last — of women in the field has opened it up much more.”

To mark a decade’s fruitful, and reasonably harmless, addiction to fashion shows, the London College of Fashion is holding an exhibition of couture illustrations from 1996 to 2006 entitled Couture Voyeur. Times2 fashion is offering readers the opportunity to purchase a Downton print and Downton offers his Top 10 couture fashion moments — one for each year.

DOWNTON’S TOP 10 MOMENTS
· The first show that I was commissioned to illustrate was also the first one I saw. Versace, 1997, in Paris. Kate, Naomi, Linda and Claudia on a marble catwalk over the Ritz’s swimming pool. They came out like gorillas of glamour. I’d never even seen a fashion show before. It was 0-60 in an instant. It was also the dying fall of all that. After that shows became far less extravagant.

· Apart, that is, from John Galliano’s for Dior at the Paris Opéra, which opened with a thunderclap. The first model ran up the enormous sweeping staircase like a reverse Cinderella. The train was so massive it was still at the bottom when she was at the top. Then she began running through the galleries and the dress sent everyone’s champagne glasses flying. All you could hear was the sound of glass shattering and little cries of distress as champagne hit cloth.

· I can’t remember who threw the fiancée de vampire ball at the Ritz, but it was masked and ridiculously glamorous. I remember watching Gwyneth Paltrow dance with Valentino and thinking, this is what everyone thinks a fashion party is like.

· The pub quiz that takes place nightly during Fashion Week at a Scottish themed pub in Paris. All the Brit models and rock stars go along and take part and pull pints behind the bar. I’m not saying who, or they’ll kill me.

· Dior’s belle époque show involved a lot of macabre make-up — nooses round the neck,that sort of thing. Afterwards a group of models, including Sophie Dahl and Marisa Berenson, had to stand around on the street waiting for a bus to take them to a shoot. I think it’s the only time the public have crashed into Planet Fashion in broad daylight. Crowds gathered. Nooses, traffic chaos, fag breaks — it just sums fashion up really.

· One year Madonna arrived at the Gaultier show an hour late surrounded by a man-mountain of security. The rest of the audience was pretty hacked off. And since craning your neck to look at a celebrity in the front row is social Siberia, they all “nonchalantly” looked the other way. It was like watching a giant Mexican wave backwards.

· After the huge extravaganzas came the intimate shows, back in the salons. We were so close to the models that I had to tuck my knees up under my sketchbook and before I knew it my pen had been abducted by the folds of one of the dresses. I was too afraid to see if it leaked but if there was a Jackson Pollock moment in fashion that year, I’m the one responsible.

· It may be cheesy, but I love the end of each Christian Lacroix show when everyone throws the carnation placed on their seat on to the catwalk. It’s like a blizzard of flowers. There’s so much genuine affection for him — and it shows that in France carnations aren’t a tacky Mother’s Day garage flower.

· The secret Valentino show. Ever season he puts on a full-scale show rehearsal the night before. Valentino sits at the end of the catwalk with his pugs, watching.

· I had a meeting with Catherine Deneuve because I’d drawn her. We were walking into a cocktail party at YSL and I didn’t have a ticket. They tried to stop me and Deneuve just said, in that imperious way: “Nous sommes ensembles” (We’re together). I thought that could go on — no, not the gravestone — the back of my book.

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