TO TREND OR NOT TO TREND

I study trends a lot. It’s one of my jobs. I run a Monthly Marketing Bundle program for other stylists and image professionals. I’m their behind-the-scenes cheerleader creating professionally written material that helps them grow their businesses. I think the world of stylists and I want to see them thrive. This is my way of supporting their efforts.

Each fashion season I create trend reports for this MMB group. And believe me, it’s not an easy job!

Runway fashion is such a spectacle. It’s rock ‘n roll, theater, performance art and some fashion paraded around via super thin bodies that should never be considered role models, but they are, but that’s another subject! Models are the frame that fashion rests on, much of which will never be seen in stores because buyers don’t think it’ll sell in Peoria or perhaps a town near you.

So this month I attended my Association of Image Consultants International San Francisco Bay Area Chapter meeting (AICI SFBA) for a program and panel discussion of spring trends for 2014 — all in the line of duty.

It’ll take many, many more hours of study before I can edit out what I personally believe will suit actual women who work in offices, run homes, raise kids and purchase clothes. But one of the panel members, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, said something that really struck me. With fashion trends being all over the place right now (maybe a product of our short attention spans), a nice alternative is to check out locally grown fashion.

While backpacks are going to be “in” for spring (and maybe by then I’ll grow fond of them) for now I’m really enjoying a couple of handbags I purchased this year at one of my local favorite fashion boutiques, Robindira Unsworth in nearby Petaluma. I met the artist, Calleen Cordero, formerly of San Anselmo (where I started my business and raised my kids) who know lives in Los Angeles (where I lived and worked for five years).

As a reference point, I told her I used to live in West Hollywood near Fred Segal’s, the home of rock ‘n roll style, for sure. The shoe department was like a museum! Turns out that was the first place she got a job when she left San Anselmo. We started putting more puzzle pieces together and realized we’d met when she was a teenage prodigy of fashion, hooked on shoes and and working for a delightful woman, Joy, who owned a great shoe store in San Anselmo. It is so fun to reconnect and now be a fan of her work.

I own four pieces of hers: two handbags and two leather cuffs. I wear one of them every day. They just suit me.

Here’s the bottom line about fashion: it exists to please us. It’s not all about trends, what’s next, what’s in and what’s out; it’s about owning and wearing what you love and taking the time to discover what that is.  Now that’s seasonless!