YASS’S -2-

Hello everyone, so this week’s post is going to be all about trend forecast. Yes I know what you’re thinking right now, how on earth can we predict future trends right?! Well keep on reading to find out!

As you all know the fashion world moves incredibly fast and trends are always a year ahead of us. So what about UNIQLO’S SS 21 trend? As I mentioned in last week’s blog, UNIQLO has basic designs responding to the customer’s need in terms of quality and comfort.

According to WGSN (2019), the current trend in young women’s fashion 2020 is about Romantic Rebel. Grunge grows up. It’s a mix between casual wear and event wear that creates a new urban style. The key point of this trend are: ‘clean graphics, fresh fabrics and a discordant colour palette providing a fresh direction for the young women’s market‘ (WGSN 2019). The colours for this trend are ones that could work during the day as well as the night. They transitions from deep dark to lime green through navy blue, dark mauve and raspberry red.

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According to WGSN (2019), AI Aqua blue will be the colour of the year 2021; it represents artificial intelligence and can look both sporty and trend-forward.

Fig 1

Other colors trending in 2021 according to (WGSN 2019), would be Lemon Sherbet, Quiet Wave, Good Grey, Oxy Fire.

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Lemon Sherbet is a soft yellow that represents happiness, optimism and creativity. It encourages innovation and thinking but also has a calming effect.

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Quiet Wave is a cool optimistic/futuristic green that represents personal growth and strength; key to creating real, human connections with consumers.

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Good Grey is a cool grey that represents minimalism, calm and a sense of rebalance. It has a stabilizing effect on other colours with which it comes into contact.

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Oxy Fire is a punchy, fiery and powerful mix between red and orange. Its boldness signifies intense activity, which can energize products and collections giving it a contemporary twist.

UNIQLO uses in its design neutral and pastel colors such as almond green, light pink, beige, white and black. I personally think that those trend forecast colours could really work with the brand because UNIQLO already uses similar colours to those forecasted. This will expand their colour range while sticking to the original ones.

After reading my blog 1, I think that you all have a certain idea about UNIQLO, hopefully. So UNIQLO is known for its multiple segmentations and one of them is Kids and Babies. I think it’s great concept because they also target a much younger generation and therefore establish a strong connection and relationship with these customers since their younger age. It creates a sense of fidelity and membership.

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Concerning the trend forecasting SS 2021 for Kids, I found the Kids Wear Trend Rainbow (ModAcable 2020) as well as Kids Wear Trend Horizontal (ModAcable2 020); which I think are quite fun and playful and appealing to a kid’s eye. It’s a mix between strict and fun and I think that UNIQLO could really integrate this in its collection because the designs are quite basic and kids are usually attracted to flashy colors and funny shapes. In this order, UNIQLO could expand its clientele and therefore compete even more with its competitors and get higher profits.

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UNIQLO is known for using soft hues and pastel colours, which I believe, is a trademark of this brand. The collections don’t change completely from a year to another, but some changes, development and collaboration may happen. Collaborating with artist or other designers increases UNIQLO’s popularity and sales. For example, in 2019, they collaborated with KAWS, an American artist known for its figurative characters and pop culture sculptures, very famous and trendy in today’s world and T-shirts were sold out in seconds (Noel 2019). Moreover, ‘Uniqlo stands out from its competitors because the focus is not oriented on the quantity of styles produced and their relevance to fashion trends, but rather their quality’ (Retviews 2019). So the quality is one of the most important criterions for UNIQLO, which means good materials and good production. Comparing to its main competitors ZARA and H&M, UNIQLO produces much less clothes then them, therefore less fashionable designs following the trend. A very positive point concerning the pervious idea is that UNIQLO answers the question of sustainability: by producing less, they favor the environment and human’s well being.

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In the graph below, we can clearly see that T-shirts are UNIQLO’s bestsellers. We can also notice that lingerie such as Airism and hosiery play a major role in the sales and ‘this is an excellent strategy to attract customers into stores’ (Retviews 2019). ZARA on the other hand, has a big part of its sales based on dress and skirts, which are a trend these days, and this shows that ZARA is ahead of UNIQLO trend wise.