Trending now: the fashion edit
client
Multiple
services
Strategic Insight, Trend Reports,
Asset Packs, Guidelines
date
Now, next and future
Today in their London stores, the likes of Next, Zara, Warehouse, and Cos are wrestling with Fendi and Prada for our disposable income. Shopping the high street no longer means compromising on style or luxury.
An abundance of choice for buyers means brands are under pressure to perform. We’ve put together an edit of some of our favourite fast fashion assets to show you how we can make an impact with an audience that has seen it all.
Who What Wear?
Showing up to a buyer meeting without any insight on why your brand works for their audience (and with the assets to deliver on it) is like suggesting a steak house for your first date with a vegetarian. So how do you show you’re better informed than the competition? For a brand looking to enter a new category or colab with a partner, trending is an essential first step. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around trending but it’s really just a process like anything else.
At its core, trending is all about having the widest view of visual culture possible. That means paying close attention to influencers, catwalk shows and influential product drops but also what’s going on in music, movies, exhibitions and games too. And that’s just considering the micro trends. You also need to put that into a macro context by considering what’s going on in people lives, politically, economically, socially and in technology (PEST for those paying close attention). Pulling that information together allows you to make informed decisions and plan for the future.
Opportunity Knocks, Swipes and Taps
The next step is identifying patterns. In some cases, taking what’s working now and extrapolating into the near future is enough. Noting that a graphic trend has become a staple means it should work well for your brand and will run and run. In other cases taking a longer view is required, such as when you’re aligning your brand’s values to the bigger picture of a culture war or environmental impact. In both cases what we’re talking about here is spotting opportunity.
It’s typical in fashion for trends to be presented as design concepts in mood boards, often as part of a bigger brand story. Buyers can then easily connect the dots between your fans, their consumers, and wider culture to see where the opportunities lie.
How to build a Capsule
Trend boards are great for one-to-one presentations and even better IRL, but the reality of brand extension and brand licensing means we need to develop information that is accessible for everyone. That’s why we put together the complete picture digitally in asset packs, look books, guidelines, and interactive presentations.
These assets bring the trends and your brand together in a vivid display of colour, pattern, and product development. For sales teams, these visual tools are an essential way to build relationships with buyers. You can send them out regularly with updates, and back it all up with trend information that’s relevant to a hyper-informed audience.
Exclusives and Collaborations
It’s not just buyers that need to seize opportunities with fast, informed choices. Colab partners are swamped with as much choice as we are. The trends, assets packs and look books we produce for our clients succeed in making the connection between overlapping groups of fans. It means that retail, licensees and brands can work together more effectively, make decisions faster and reach their market with an offer that delights their audience.
Selection of our works done for: Playstation, Natural History Museum, Rugby League World Cup 2021, Transport for London, For Honor, The Open, National Portrait Gallery, University of Oxford.
Selection of our works done for: Playstation, Natural History Museum, Rugby League World Cup 2021, Transport for London, For Honor, The Open, National Portrait Gallery, University of Oxford.
It’s not just buyers that need to seize opportunities with fast, informed choices. Colab partners are swamped with as much choice as we are. The trends, assets packs and look books we produce for our clients succeed in making the connection between overlapping groups of fans. It means that retail, licensees and brands can work together more effectively, make decisions faster and reach their market with an offer that delights their audience.
It has honestly been a real pleasure working with you and the team and thank you for your dedication to the project and such thorough attention to detail throughout. It really shows in the final output.
— Creative Development Manager, Natural History Museum
