For many fashion designers, New York is a great source of inspiration. The city never sleeps on anything – including trends. Our chief designer Dagmar travels to the Big Apple twice a year, always on the lookout for new fashion highlights and ideas for Olsen’s next collections. We sat down with Dagmar to get the download on her last trip to New York City and a few sneak peeks on what’s to come next season. Enjoy the interview!
Dagmar, welcome back! You were just on a business trip to New York. What exactly were you doing there?
When designing our collections, it is always our main priority to offer our customers new, fresh styles that are absolutely in line with the latest trends. That’s why it’s so important to constantly get new inspiration, along with an overview of the trends for the coming season. New York City, along with other fashion metropolises like London and Paris, are just the right places to do this. Twice a year, I travel there together with our Canadian colleagues to go on a store check and visit our New York Colour Service, researching for the coming seasons.
Colour Service?
Yeah, that’s right! So, a colour service is a trend agency from which we gather information on colours that are up-and-coming in the fashion world. We work together with several trend agencies from different countries – since colour trends vary from place to place, we like to gather international information to deliver the best of the best to Olsen customers. We believe our styles should appeal to women all over the world. That’s why I’m researching which colours will be hot on all continents.
How does such a trend agency know which colours will be popular in the coming seasons?
Across the world, there are trend committees made up of numerous experts from the fashion industry who follow the development and movement of fashion closely. One can more or less say that they determine the trends for the coming seasons with the help of their cumulative expertise, and then pass that information on to the trend agencies. This often happens well in advance. For example, it is already clear what the trends will be in two years’ time.
Can you already tell us the trend colours for the coming Spring/Summer 2020 season?
I’ll give you a few hints of what’s to come… there are lots of beautiful shades coming down the pipes. Fired earth tones will be very on-trend, and reds and yellows will also play an important role. These more primary shades in combination with neutrals like khaki and sand create particularly beautiful pieces, which we are definitely looking to infuse in our collections.
You mentioned you did a store check in New York, too. What is that?
Store checks are an important part of trend research. When we visit trend agencies or trade fairs in important fashion hubs such as New York, we still plan on spending some time visiting selected fashion stores and boutiques. The main focus of this is to get a feel for the trends other designers are focusing on, which helps to determine which trends will be strong moving forward.
And I bet you’ll come across special looks on the street in New York that will inspire you as well, too?
It is definitely inspiring to see how different the street style looks are in different cities. The looks you encounter in New York are often very different than what you might see in Paris or London. Of course, I’ve observed a variety of looks on the streets over time, incorporating inspiration from them in some of our upcoming designs. I will keep some surprises – I cannot wait for our Spring/Summer 2020 collections to arrive to show some of the beautiful trends for the next season!
