Soon the Spring Summer 2013 collections will be upon us and I feel for every editor and publication team who must pour over the copious collections that will be cramming calendars over the next several weeks. This does not take into account the other collections outside of the Big Four around the world that get missed in the process.

One has to look at thousands of ensembles, be it in person or on “film”. That so many design houses have taken to showing in the Big Four have made it a near-impossible task for those that look to attend, be it editors or buyers. We now have a game of chance to risk missing a show that may be groundbreaking in order to cover one of the more established houses that may or may not provide something truly unique, interspersed with some collections that really are more fit for a trade show, given that their commercial delivery hardly warrants a stage and that their offerings are way too tame to demand special attention (their practical delivery alone assures them a sale).

We have an economy that is still looked at globally as tenuous and hard decisions to be made by our world’s talent to compromise vision for the sake of guaranteeing sales with a public that is in less of a position to take chances with jumping towards new fashion ground than when times are more financially secure. And yet it is in tougher times that we see newer approaches in reaching out to the public.

Not only do we have more attempts at collaboration to make the experience interactive (see last article) but we also have initiatives to get fashion into the less than accessible areas, such as in recent stories on fashion going mobile with boutiques on wheels gaining  traction. And pop-up stores seem to be more popular alternatives where a designer can offer their wares without having to necessarily commit to a location. Chanel took advantage of the Olympics in this fashion and Comme des Garcons has combined the pop-up store with collaboration to support lesser known deign talent, thus broadening their base.

Innovation to reach out and include the customer will not abate, but eventually fashion has to move forward, and while some trends such as cultural (Russian, South America, Roma) and period (Art Nouveau, 70s, 90s, New Wave) are bound to make their presence we will all have to wait and see how much of what we expect turns out to be so and how much of what we don’t expect takes us by surprise. And you and I just have to wait.