L.A.’s Endless Summerwear Poses Stock Problems for Shops
The annual crap shoot of a fashion question--when to let summer end and fall begin--leads L.A. retailers to try to please both planners and procrastinators with a fashion season they call transition. It means stocking for summer and fall simultaneously--and offering still another compromise: garments that combine warm-weather fabrics with autumn hues.
In Los Angeles--never eager to turn its back on summer--that mid-July transitional mix can be more intricate than in regions where stores give in to fall heavyweights by Independence Day.
“Customers are buying everything from black wool crepes to white washed (crinkled) silks,” Claudia Wright of Bullock’s, Beverly Center, says of July’s confused fashion state.
Perhaps the best July choice in live-for-today Los Angeles is something between those extremes: lightweight season-less clothes carried out in khakis, olive, rose and browns--all leading-edge shades for late summer, early fall. And in what seems to be a quirk of L.A.’s trendy West Side, retailers continue to put their faith in black--summer or winter.
“Anything that’s black always sells well in this mall--black, white and red,” says Torrey Bogust, manager of Banana Republic, Beverly Center.
Midsummer mode at Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills, means using fashion themes that will dominate for fall--but with a levity that still speaks of summer. A Heidi-like, folkloric look--using soutache, rickrack, lace and ruffles--is a fall trend that Saks is previewing in July, says Lloyd Hassencahl of Saks’ fashion office. Acid-washed fabrics, stretch knits and an abundance of slim and flared miniskirts also tell of themes to come.
July also is prime time for what retailers call high-ticket basics. At career-oriented Anne Taylor, many summer customers are in pursuit of knee-length leather skirts and leather-trimmed denim pieces, says one West Side manager.
This split personality, midsummer fashion sense comes in part from changes at the designer and wholesale levels. Traditionally, designers release two fall collections--Fall 1 and Fall 2--for early and late fall tastes. But those seasonal definitions are blurring as some designers create lighter-weight, brighter fall collections aimed specifically at the Sun Belt.
Other firms further obscure the old seasonal boundaries by delivering new collections almost monthly. Esprit, for instance, divides the fall season into several “mini-collections”--with up to three groups arriving in stores every two weeks from mid-July through September, according to Susan Lassalette, Esprit public image associate.
Others in the Los Angeles clothing game choose an easier seasonal equation: Simply delay fall until the bitter end.
Claudie Segovia, owner of the Beverly Hills boutique Davantage, says when she opened the private-label store five years ago, she tried to sell fall clothes in June, as she does in her Paris store. The L.A. shopper couldn’t relate. “People would ask me ‘but what about now ?’ ” Segovia says.
Now she sells white cotton bubble skirts and gauzy items into August, and she’s come to subscribe to this retail philosophy: Show your fall clothes as early as you like----but don’t expect customers to buy them in bulk until September----”especially in California.”
