New Look is best known for their budget-friendly wardrobe staples for women, teen girls, and men across the globe. As one of the leading retailers by value for women aged 18-44, it makes sense that the brand is a household name for many.
Moreover, New Look is uniquely positioned in both men’s and women’s apparel, giving their collection assortment a greater range than other retailers. With this in mind, we took a look at their e-commerce platform in order to better understand their assortment and ultimately better gauge consumer demand for future collections. The following will analyze three key trends from New Look’s current assortment, and compared with our data, we will provide insights for more precise, efficient collection planning for the Winter 2021 season in Europe.
Trend forecasting a top Winter 2021 collection
By comparing New Look’s current assortment with our data drawn from images on social media, we analysed trends for the retailer’s Winter collection in men’s and womenswear. Here we outline three trends to provide a clue into the power of trend forecasting insights: ribbed knit, stripes, and yellow. Each trend has varying predicted behaviors to demonstrate how New Look could refine their current offering to adapt to the European market’s needs for the upcoming Winter season.
Planning a collection for Winter 2021 that covers all of the must-have men’s and women’s trends could be what sets New Look apart from the crowd.
Why is this important? New Look can refine their design process by knowing in advance which of the key trends to include for upcoming seasons for men and women to ensure all of the bases are being covered, thus avoiding missed sales. Additionally, New Look can enhance their menswear assortment by ensuring that all of the must-have men’s and women’s trends for upcoming seasons are taken into account, starting from the design stage.
1. Ribbed Knit
Ribbed knit has been a major staple in Europe over the past year, appearing in the form of skirts, tops, outerwear, and more. It comes as no surprise that this trend will continue to be a big hit this Winter. For both men and women, we forecast that ribbed knit will rise in visibility by +12% compared to the same season last year. This trend also has a big magnitude for women and a medium one for men: magnitude refers to a trend’s level of potential market demand during the season of interest. Paired together, the growth rate and magnitude of ribbed knit makes the trend a fashion bet for Winter 2021.
The female consumers that will be most drawn to ribbed knit later this year will be the trendy and edgy segments, likely due to the type of designers that have featured the trend in their recent collections such as Jacquemus and Nanushka. For men, ribbed knit will most appeal to the trendy and mainstream, giving New Look more ease in their assortment choice. New Look would do best to push ribbed knit during its high seasons of Spring and Winter to maximize sell-through and give their customers what they want.
2. Stripes
Stripes are an undeniable wardrobe staple — they can be worn in various directions, thicknesses, colors, fabrics, and pieces. This Winter 2021, stripes will indeed continue to behave as the staple they are: the pattern will increase in visibility by +1% among women and decrease by -2% among men. These numbers indicate stability, and coupled with the trend big magnitude for both genders, stripes are a safe bet for this Winter season.
While we analyzed this pattern for Winter 2021, its high seasons will actually be in Summer and Fall of this year, giving time for consumers to integrate their new stripes into their wardrobes in time for the colder months. Additionally, New Look should keep in mind the trend’s consumer segmentation when creating the collections’ product assortment. Trendy and edgy women will go for stripes, while it will be the mainstream and edgy men who wear the trend.
3. Yellow
Wearing yellow requires some boldness and creativity, which may be why yellow often fluctuates throughout the years and seasons in fashion. What’s interesting about this Winter season is how differently this color will behave among women compared to men: while yellow is a mark down in womenswear, it’s a steady trend in menswear. For both genders, yellow has a small potential market demand, which is not surprising, but its growth rate varies significantly between the two. We predict yellow to decrease by -11% in visibility among women compared to Winter 2020, and to increase by +5% among men.
As yellow is often associated with good weather and positive energy, it makes sense that its high seasons will be in Summer for both genders. For its womenswear collections, therefore, New Look should push their remaining yellow inventory to their mainstream and edgy customers this Summer and Fall and avoid including the color in their next Winter collection. For menswear, on the other hand, the retailer should continue to feature yellow through the year and into Winter, targeting their mainstream and edgy male customers.
Trends for both men and women: Forecasting New Look’s ideal Winter collection
We’ve looked at a few key trends taken from New Look’s e-commerce platform and compared them with our data to provide a glimpse of how they will behave in the European market for the Winter 2021 season.
- Ribbed knit is a fashion bet for both men and women, making it a fabric trend to be sure to include for the Winter ‘21 season.
- Stripes are a classic print, and a safe bet for both men and women to include in New Look’s Winter ‘21 collections.
- Yellow is a mark down trend for women and should thus be avoided for Winter ‘21, while for men the color is predicted to be steady for Winter ‘21, making it less risky to include.
New Look’s teams have a lot to consider when planning future collections due to the broadness of their consumer base: they create apparel for men and women of a wide age range. But with trend forecasting, New Look can better help their brands anticipate their assortment mix and satisfy all of their customer’s desires.
