Peclers Paris..."fashioning the future"

On Tuesday, June 1, our group visited Peclers, a styling and trend agency specializing in textile, fashion, cosmetics, home decoration, consumer and retailing industries. Peclers offers products and services including: 1) trend books; 2) trend consulting and personalized trend analysis; 3) innovation consulting for trends, concepts, products and services; and 4) style consulting and design recommendations.

We met with Ms. Emma Fric, Global Development Director. Ms. Fric informed us that in the late 1960s, large-scale manufacturing of fashion and design products allowed for the replacement of haute-couture production methods and commenced the ready-to-wear industry. As a result of this emerging market, Dominique Peclers launched Peclers Paris as a consulting agency for the fashion industry, home and decoration retailers in 1970. By 1980, Peclers realized it had paved the way for trend publication based on its use of historical trends to decipher and anticipate future trend direction. A huge hurdle for Peclers is predicting consumer behavior, anticipating future attitudes and imagining future aesthetic preferences. Interestingly, Peclers employs no focus groups and instead relies upon research teams that recognize innovation and know emerging areas. These teams frequently travel to access and formulate new trends, as well as research and strategize the industries and clients they want to advise.

While some brands request exclusivity, other clients realize fashion trending is a global enterprise in which trends are not created in a vacuum. Fashion trends often encounter a 2-year-forecasting-to-market timeline, whereas architecture (10-year timeline) and cosmetics (5-10-year timeline) take longer to emerge in the marketplace. A recent trend is the myriad of interplaying contexts in nature due to the introduction of sustainability. Peclers is utilizing this trend in an effort to appeal to emotions and issues surrounding over-consumption.

Today, Peclers garners 55% of its revenue from consulting and 45% from trend and forecasting publications. Ms. Fric told us that some trends are cyclical and consumer thoughts tend to come back around to people and profiles in different global areas. Out of the 18 trend books produced by Peclers, "Futur(s)," utilizes global analysis to understand evolving values and future consumer behaviors. The 10^th, and most recent, edition of "Futur(s)" is printed in both French and English and retails for approximately 5,000€.

Although the global economy has affected sales of Peclers' trend books, we were told the fashion industry will not stand still. Trends will revamp and reintroduce themselves to the global market and consumer purchasing behavior, though different from before, will still require agencies like Peclers to aid brands in deciding what to produce for which markets.