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Wearable, beautiful cruise (or resort) collections are the answer to your between-the-seasons woes.
Do not dismiss the Cruise collections for having a silly name. For one, they actually have several silly names (Resort, pre-collections); plus, they probably contain the clothes that you will actually end up buying.
Sure, the fashion food chain remains dominated by the mainline collections that are shown in New York, London, Milan and Paris every September and February. This is fashion’s main course; the food that press and buyers feast on, which inspires thousands of high street rip-offs. But the designer snacks in between, these smaller collections that are shown to just one or two photographers and a bevy of top-end buyers, are growing in importance.
Cruise itself is an old name that once described a range of clothes for women who were lucky enough to enjoy warm cruises in the cold winter months. Back then, designers did the decent thing and created a tiny selection of summery dresses, lingerie and swimwear for this affluent set.
Today, though, the flannel jumpsuits have been replaced by a quiet fashion phenomenon.
“Resort is becoming an increasingly important collection for us as our customers are demanding pieces that bridge the gap between the autumn and spring seasons,” says the designer Christopher Kane. Importantly, “the prices are also much more affordable”.
The Australian designer Richard Nicoll, who shows his main collection at London Fashion Week, thinks that these smaller early collections are also a place for commercial experimentation. “Cruise is the most important season that we do each year in terms of order volume and value. This season is very helpful for sales, but also allows me to experiment with new techniques and themes and test-drive them from a sales perspective. In essence, it reduces the commercial risk of launching entirely new ideas for spring.”
It is telling, in today’s fashion industry, that the most significant collections are actually the ones with the least hype and flash bulbs. The bright lights certainly don’t dazzle Bridget Cosgrave, the buying director at Matches. She spends 70 per cent of the store’s buying budget on these in-between collections, mainly because they guarantee early delivery at a time when her customers want to buy new clothes. If Cosgrave is leaving such a paltry amount for the “main” event, could this be a slow goodbye to flashy fashion shows as we know them?
