They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. And the fashion industry has a problem: The calendar is broken.
Even when I worked in fashion, I struggled to understand the reasoning behind a system that kept designers "creating" at a relentless rate, so stores could fill their racks with winter sweaters come July, and bikinis shortly after Christmas.
At the end of last year, I was trying to make sense of this and called for backup. Enter Tomoko Ogura, who oversees the buyers of Barney's Co-op, and Michelle Goad, a merchandiser for Marc Jacobs. When we had lunch the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the young women were recovering from buying and selling, respectively, the pre-fall 2010 collections. But on a personal level, Michelle was in the market for a new winter coat. She had stopped by Barney's with high hopes, but all the good ones were gone in her size.
That's because the wool and cashmere coats had been out since July, when the average temperature in New York hovers around 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tomoko said she understood her friend's plight.
"No matter how much they want a winter coat," she said of her customers, "they are not going to buy it three months ahead of time."
But, because Barney's follows the fashion industry's general calendar, the designers Tomoko buys from ship her wool coats in July and swimsuits in January. She said she tries to give her customers a reasonable reprieve between the holidays and swimsuit season by pushing those designers to ship swimwear just a few weeks later. But in order for this to be effective, she said, designers would have to ship to all their stores later, not just Barney's. Otherwise, a Diane von Furstenberg bikini may be in the window at Saks weeks before it hits Barney's, and no one likes to appear behind the ball.
