What’s the next big thing in fashion? A very obvious question every fashion designer would want to know. For a matter-of-fact, there’s always something new and upcoming in fashion like a new silhouette, colour prediction for the season, a new pattern or style or even a new fabric.
Talking about fashion these days, there are many fashion designing institutes that have introduced courses like Marketing and Merchandising. These courses cover important topics like Visual Merchandising, Fashion Forecasting, Marketing Strategies, etc. For a student who is serious about taking fashion designing as a career, it enables the student to get an in-depth knowledge and get a better understanding of the market trends.
A course in fashion designing not only fulfills all the required aspects of designing, but also guides you in marketing the product. The importance of trend forecasting can help you build a strong career.
Fashion designing doesn’t only start and end with designing, there is a lot that happens in between this chain. Predicting the future or let’s say fashion forecasting is one such part of fashion that cannot be skipped.
It is vital for every fashion designer to quiz oneself by asking the following questions:
What was in trend?
What is in trend?
What could be in trend?
The answer to the above questions act as a guideline in gauging the market and take a smart decision as a designer.
Having said that, every fashion designer needs to pay keen attention and keep himself abreast with the changing trends. An in-depth research for the upcoming fashion lines, is something that a designer needs to look into. Using fashion forecasting as a guiding tool can help scale up your business.
The advancement of technology has completely changed the face of fashion forecasting. Everything is digital. In the process of predicting future trends, fashion forecasters have adapted many new techniques. This helps them keep pace with the future trends that could be out in the next 5 years.
Today, we have stepped into a new era of ‘Customisation’. What we mean by customisation is the alteration of garments as per the customer’s style and preference. This strategy of personalisation has been adapted by many designers and has become quite popular.
Apart from forecasting the colour, style, etc., understanding customer psychology also plays an important role in setting future trends. Today, everything is customer centric. It’s all about word-of-mouth, if your client is pleased with your designs, you immediately become the talk of the town.
There is immense pressure from clients that has led forecaster to raise their bar. Most designers depend on data analysis for good results, but when it comes to using fashion instincts, no one wants to take the risk.
If you have a strong intuition for a particular trend, use it! There could have been trends in the past that would have failed, but giving it a shot is never a bad idea.
Fashion designing has a lot to offer to the aspiring designers. Being a fashion forecaster is a challenging role but has a promising future too. All we say is, if you believe in yourself, it’s time to let the world see it.