Tag: Gossip Girl fashion When actress Leighton Meester dons a new headband or colored tights — with contrasting fishnets on top, no less — she can set off a virtual race to the cash register. The same goes for her Gossip Girl co-stars, whose fashions can be found on The CW cable channel's website, which typically enjoys a big post-show uptick in visitors. The Gossip Girl phenomenon — which mirrors the impact Sex and the City had on high-end footwear sales — shows how retailers can capitalize on trends in popular culture. It also illustrates how vital it is for them to quickly seize on the hottest clothes and accessories, given today's impressionable young shoppers, and to closely track sales to avoid shortages of the latest fashion passion. Trend watchers at retailers including Target and J.C. Penney monitor fashion-forward people in cities around the globe. Increasingly, though, retailers also need to watch a lot of TV and movies and read stacks of celebrity magazines, lest they miss out on the Next Big Thing. As recently as a couple of years ago, trend spotting often had to be done a year in advance — for next summer's seasons, say, even before the current summer's merchandise had been sold. Penney and other retailers were forced to make "educated guesses," as President Ken Hicks calls them, based more on speculation than hard data. Now, thanks to advanced software and computer systems, months have been shaved off the time needed to achieve "concept to cash," as Steve & Barry's calls it. Stores can closely monitor what styles are selling, at what rate and in which sizes. Department stores and the larger specialty chains can better compete with boutiques. They're also better positioned to take on such retailers as H&M, Zara and Forever 21, which specialize in moving the latest styles into, and out of, stores with sizzling speed. "It tells the retailer what's selling and what's not selling, so they get higher inventory turns," says retail analyst Jennifer Black of Jennifer Black & Associates. "If you want to be more productive, you have to turn (merchandise) faster." Especially if you want to attract trend-conscious young shoppers. "Younger people of this generation are more much interested in fashion than they were when I was in high school," says 29-year-old Meredith Barnett, founder of StoreAdore.com, a guide to retail boutiques. "Most of the reason they are so interested is they are so much more exposed to it. They are highly influenced by what they see on TV and what they see celebrities wear." If they watch Gossip Girl and see a lot of "girly headbands," Barnett says, it isn't long before you see them on young women everywhere. Her website, which features top boutiques in several cities, is helping accelerate the trend. Earlier this month, it touted its picks for the best headbands. Celebrity-inspired fashion has "definitely been amped up," says Gossip Girl costume designer Eric Daman. A former assistant designer on that über-trend-conscious show Sex and the City, Daman says he's been amazed by how much faster buzz flies about Gossip Girl's fashions in today's social-network-dominated era than it did in the heyday of Sex and the City. There's even been talk at stores in New York, including Barney's, of displaying clothes in a way that helps shoppers achieve the Serena or Blair look, Damon says. (Serena is Lively's character; Leighton Meester plays Blair.) "The girls' names are becoming like labels, " Daman says. "It's almost kind of crazy to see how great the reaction is to it." When Hicks saw a photo of Angelina Jolie at the Cannes Film Festival wearing a batik dress, he knew the batik trend would be hot. Penney is stocking a hefty selection of the Indian-inspired print this summer. And its improved inventory systems mean it can get more such apparel into stores quickly if the trend really has legs. That's the importance of what retailers call "cycle time" — how long it takes to turn a sketch into something hanging on a store rack. It's being "able to react to what the trends are in season," Hicks says. Penney will carry more pink, Hicks says, in part because of the color's prevalence in the new Sex and the City movie, along with such celebrity favorites as aviator glasses, white jeans and ombre prints. Even some shoppers who aren't trying to emulate celebrities seem to be attracted to "fast fashion." Avery Jaffe, 22, says she likes Forever 21 and H&M because they help her stay current on fashions, even if, she says, the clothes don't always last as long as she'd like. "They both bounce back the trends rapidly," says Jaffe of Atlanta. "We post on Facebook what we wore out the last night and have to have different outfits (and) looks each time." Celebrity-driven style is hardly limited to teens or twenty-somethings. Jaye Hersh, owner of Los Angeles boutique Intuition, says that just as young shoppers in her store will want a purse they see Miley Cyrus buying; older shoppers will do the same for celebrities closer to their own ages. "It crosses the ages," says Hersh, who says her boutique is a favorite of the Desperate Housewives and of such stars as Jessica Simpson. If women buy something a celebrity is wearing, "They can pretend they have a piece of some shiny life and feel like theirs is a little more exciting."
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