The Fashion Forecasters

The fashion business has been collecting and analyzing information about colors, fabrics, silhouettes, and styles since the 18th century - activities that have long been shrouded in mystery. The Fashion Forecasters is the first book to reveal the hidden history of color and trend forecasting and to explore its relevance to the fashion business of the past two centuries. It sheds light on trend forecasting in the industrial era, the profession's maturation during the modernist moment of the 20th century, and its continued importance in today's digital fast-fashion culture.
Based on in-depth archival research and oral history interviews, The Fashion Forecasters examines the entrepreneurs, service companies, and consultants that have worked behind the scenes to connect designers and retailers to emerging fashion trends in Europe, North America, and Asia. Here you will read about the trend studios, color experts, and international trade fairs that formalized the prediction process in the modern era, and hear the voices of leading contemporary practitioners at international forecasting companies such as the Doneger Group in New York and WGSN in London. Probing the inner workings of the global fashion system, The Fashion Forecasters blends history, biography, and ethnography into a highly readable cultural narrative.

Regina Lee Blaszczyk is Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society and Professor of Business History at the University of Leeds in the UK. She writes about design and innovation for the creative industries. Her books include Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (2000); Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers (2008); The Color Revolution (2012); Bright Modernity: Color, Commerce, and Consumers (with Uwe Spiekermann, 2017); Fashionability: Abraham Moon and the Creation of British Cloth for the Global Market(2017); and European Fashion: The Creation of a Global Industry (with Véronique Pouillard, 2018).
Ben Wubs is Professor of International Business History at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication in Rotterdam and an appointed Project Professor at the Graduate School of Economics at Kyoto University in Japan. In terms of research, he is engaged in projects on multinationals, business systems, transnational economic regions, Dutch-German economic relations, and the global fashion industry. His books include International Business and National War Interests: Unilever between Reich and Empire (2008) and (with Ralf Banken) The Rhine: A Transnational Economic History (2017).

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
1. Beyond the Crystal Ball: The Rationale Behind Color and Trend Forecasting
Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Ben Wubs

Part I: When Paris Led and America Followed
2. The Rise of Color Forecasting in the United States and Great Britain
Regina Lee Blaszczyk
3. Tobé Coller Davis: A Career in Fashion Forecasting in America
Véronique Pouillard and Karen J. Trivette
Part II: Going International
4. From Window Dresser to Fashion Forecaster: David Wolfe of the Doneger Group Tells How He Got Started in Trends
5. What Do Baby Boomers Want? How the Swinging Sixties Became the Trending Seventies
Regina Lee Blaszczyk
6. The View from Paris: Nelly Rodi and the Early Days of French Trend Forecasting
7. Fibers, Feathers, and the Future: Ornella Bignami on the Importance of Materials
8. Fashion Prediction and the Transformation of the Japanese Textile Industry: The Role of Kentaro Kawasaki, 1950-1980
Pierre-Yves Donzé
9. Interstoff's Fashion Table: The Internalization of Fashion Forecasting at the World's Most Important Fashion Fabric Fair
Ben Wubs
10. The Role of the Pitti Uomo Trade Fair in the Menswear Fashion Industry
Mariangela Lavanga
Part III: The Digital Imperative
11. Looking Behind the Scenes of Swedish Fashion Forecasting
Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson
12. Trending Online: Valerie Wilson Trower Discusses Stylesight in the Asia Pacific Region
13. Fast Fashion, Fast Futures: Catronia McNab on WGSN and the Global Digital World

Part IV: Conclusion
14. Fashion Futures
Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Ben Wubs
Select Bibliography
Index