Fashion Makers vs. Fashion Followers
September 19, 2006 by Tammy Powley
Filed under Designing, Jewelry Design Careers, Project Runway
The line between the fashion world and the wearable art designer has always been sort of blurry. Are we part of the fashion community who often wear our products, or are we on the outside since we wearable art designers are responsible for crafting fashion goods. How important is it for designers, for example jewelry designers, to keep up on current fashion trends when we actually should be the ones making the trends?
I’ve often heard designers claim that they don’t pay attention to trends. In fact, I heard a number of the designers from Bravo’s Project Runway show makes these claims in their early interviews this season. And you know what? I think that’s a big line of whooie. I also think there’s a big difference between following trends and paying attention to them, monitoring them in a way, and I subscribe to the “pay attention” attitude.
Here’s a few examples of what I’m talking about. A number of years ago when I was still on the art show circuit, the angel craze started up. They were everywhere, and hey, I liked them, so I bought a gazillion angel charms and made a lot of jewelry with them. Know what? I still have a good number of these charms. While it was a trend I liked, I made the mistake of blindly following it, and it bite me in the you know what.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that there’s a trend now toward larger accessories in general – big bags, chunky shoes, and, yes, big jewelry. I love hoop earrings, so I decided to make a few pair of super big hoops and post the projects. My readers loved them, and they ended up being a huge hit too when I wore them out. I was inspired by the trend rather than blindly following it, so it worked out for me.
So, what do you think? As designers, should we care about trends or is it better to ignore them?
If you are designing for the sake of designing by all means the trends should at most be of passing interest, however if you are designing for the profit you best not only be interested in trends but become a student of trends and your reaction to them as well. For example if you find yourself always being late in adopting a trend, then except that about yourself and conduct your affairs accordingly by keeping inventories to a min. and making “only what you sell”. Where as if you find yourself always early be prepared to “gear up” quickly and build the inventory you need to profit from your “early detection”. Of course in addition to this you need to try and understand trends with in trends. For example I believe the major over powering trend in jewelry at all levels is to smaller and smaller niches, to the point where the ultimate market will be one and the so called mass markets for jewelry will eventually all but disappear. Therefore with this premise in mind when we spot a trend we look to see if it is running in the direction of the major trend or counter to it. If this new trend runs with the major trend we look for ways to invest in it and design for it, if it is counter to the major trend we look for ways to liquidate any inventory or assets we have that maybe supported by the “counter trend”. And oh this is so much easier to say then to do..Thanks for the opportunioty to comment.