Fashion Industry discussion, review, analysis, news, and information

In the fashion industry, everything happens at the speed of lightning.  As fast as you can say, “Grey is the new black”, all of a sudden it’s changed to “Brown is the new black”. As soon as we start getting used to a certain brand of clothing, the company turns around and hires another designer with completely opposite style.  As Eric Wilson points out in his article, The Latest in Fashion:  Pink Slips, we’ve seen designers who have been fired at companies like Anne Klein, Emanuel Ungaro, Chloe, and Bill Blass just in the past 2 years alone.  

This issue all boils down to a couple challenges for big corporate fashion houses:
1.  Finding designers who have the ability to balance their creativity with good business sense.  

2.  Having enough patience to allow newly hired designers to get used to designing for a new company.   

It’s up to the designers to reach out and get a feel for the customer base of a particular brand.  They have to keep in mind that ultimately it is the customer who makes the decision on whether or not a designer will succeed.  That’s not to say that designers should sacrifice their creativity to please the customer, but that designers should be taking into account what the customers want as well.  

That said, I also think that companies shouldn’t be placing all the responsibility on one designer to bring in the money.  After all, don’t they have marketing and advertising departments whose job is to create buzz about their brand?