The fashion industry is drawing a collective deep breath as fashion month kicks off today with the AW12/13 shows. At EDITD meanwhile, we’re cracking our knuckles in anticipation for all the data the month creates, because we do something quite special with it. Last season, we launched our digital fashion week reports which went down a storm. And now we’re back to do it all again!
So the graphs may look pretty, but what is it we actually do? Where does that data come from?
EDITD’s Fashion Week Reports
1. Reaction to shows
We monitor exactly how popular each and every show is with users of social networking sites. With the huge volume of industry professionals and fashion spectators now vocal online, this provides an excellent insight into how well the collections will be received, and sell. Archiving our data means we can see how well a designer’s collection has fared against previous collections. We’ll process close to 30 million tweets and updates across the month. Wish us luck!
2. The trends that will sell
Not only can we measure the volume of online chatter surrounding a topic, we’re also able to analyse the sentiment towards it. This comes into its own when we start looking at the emerging trends across the month; from styles and prints to textures and shapes. Just because a bunch of designers all back a trend, does not mean consumers will bite. Last season, a proliferation of retro styles were sent down runways, but consumer sentiment was overwhelmingly negative. Buyers can then use this sort of data to decide which items to buy into their stores, avoiding any mistakes from editorially over-hyped trends. Makes sense, right?
3. The colours we’ll be wearing
Those clever bods on our team built a way of looking at every single collection to pull a colour palette from it. Simple enough, but when you pool all of that data you can see which colours were used most often and then the trends start to emerge. We build a colour wheel for each city, and then take all that information to generate an overall season wheel. The more often a colour was used, the larger it’s representation on the colour wheel and the more likely you’ll be wearing it next season!
4. Who attracted followers
Another good way of analysing the success of a designer’s collection is seeing how their online fanbase increases. It’s an indication of the remit of their customer base made up of Twitter and Facebook followers. Again, our archived data enables us to see a brand’s progression. We can even break that information down to see the countries those followers are from, which buyers and merchandisers use to better understand their customers.
5. The key looks
When we pull out the week’s key looks, we don’t go for the outfits we want in our wardrobes. Our decisions aren’t based on whim, but fact. Our trend analysts apply the data we’ve uncovered about the week’s top designers, most popular trends and most-backed colours to discover the most influential looks. And then we want them in our wardrobes…
We put these free reports together to showcase the kind of data we collect and the fashion industry uses to make decisions. They also raise awareness that fashion’s audience is now global and vast. Everyone has become a critic with a constant fashion dialogue, and as you can see, applying metrics to that conversation offers a wealth of information.
Our reports will launch on the last day of the New York, London, Milan and Paris shows. Better still, sign up to our newsletter and you’ll be notified as soon as they arrive. Hope you’re excited, because we are!
Katie Smith
