Durand went on to explain that as the Fashion Director of Macy’s, you are handed a number of responsibilities. One of the main tasks is trend forecasting. This involves discovering what colors, silhouettes, patterns, and more are going to be instrumental in the coming seasons, and then using that information to help direct your buyers as to what they should purchase. “As a Fashion Director,” Durand explained, “your mind has to be on four seasons at once; prepping for the coming spring and fall collections in the next year, handling the incoming inventory for the current season, and reflecting on the lessons learned from the previous season. You need to be present, yet forward looking.” Guion also stressed that trend forecasting can be a tricky task to master. “You never want to be too early or too late to a trend, as that can be detrimental to your sales. With the recent rise of social media, the trend cycle has become even faster.” Anyone can log on to Instagram or Snapchat and view the most recent looks from New York Fashion Week quite literally as they are walked down the runway. As a Fashion Director, you need to be able keep up.
“How do you personally predict trends?” a scholar asked. “Part of it is research, and part of it is gut instinct,” Durand said honestly. “You really have to live it. You need to look at things like what other stores are doing and what celebrities are wearing.” Durand went on to mention that because of the variability in trends, it can be hard to convince your company’s buyers that the trends you predicted are really what the consumers are going to want to purchase. “Influencing buyers to make purchases on items they are not quite ready for yet can be difficult,” Durand said. When you are purchasing products for 500 department stores around the country, it is a huge financial investment. If your trend predictors are really off, it can mean a big loss in revenue. “As a Fashion Director,” Guion said, “you need buyers to trust you.”
With so many different aesthetics, managing trends can be difficult. “Sometimes many different trends can rise at once,” one scholar noted. “How do you balance all the different trends within Macy’s?” Durand responding saying that, “We run things through what we call the ‘trend curve.’ The curve starts with incoming trends at the base, then moving to pre-peak, peak, and then down with post-peak, and out going trends,” he explained. “You need to time your purchase of trend items accurately. Sometimes trends can last quite a long time. When trends sit at peak for a long time, as a Fashion Director you need to find ways to evolve it, and keep it fresh. But at the same time, what is a lasting trend in the west coast stores may not be what is popular in the east coast stores. You need to be able to manage trends regionally as well.”
“As we’ve seen become more and more popular in recent years, men get extremely excited about purchasing items like sneakers and shoes,” a scholar noted. “It seems like men’s fashion has begun to evolve. How do you channel the excitement men get from shoe shopping into shopping for clothes?” she asked. “Men’s fashion has definitely begun to evolve, which I love,” expressed Guion. “For men, you need to make fashion feel really accessible. I took a risk this year and convinced my buyers to purchase khaki suits for the spring 2017 season. They were very apprehensive at first.” Durand went on to explain that the typical Macy’s consumer wouldn’t really want to make a huge investment in a seasonal suit; they would prefer to purchase a classic navy or black. Making a sale on a seasonal suit has historically been rather difficult for them. “What I did to make the khaki suit more accessible however, is show its versatility. I did a whole spread about five ways to wear your khaki suit – cuff the trousers and wear it with a patterned shirt, wear the jacket with a pair of jeans, and so on. When the suits hit the stores accompanied by that campaign, it was amazing. The khaki suits were a huge success.”
“With the age of the internet, e-commerce has really taken off,” a scholar mentioned. “How does Macy’s plan to handle the recent surge in e-commerce?” they asked. “While e-commerce is certainly a huge deal right now,” Durand said, “it is important to remember that it is only 10-15% of all worldwide sales. While retail is certainly evolving, brick and mortar is not dead.” He went on to say, “However, the retail experience needs to change. People need to feel good when they enter a physical store. The way people shop has changed. One of the reasons for this is that we don’t have different wardrobes for every occasion anymore. You can wear whatever you want whenever you want. People are spending less on buying clothes and more on traveling and eating. We need to make retail an experience consumers want to invest in.”
The scholars closed out the session by asking Durand what his personal aspirations were in his role. “You’ve been at Macy’s for such a long time now, and I’m sure have evolved a great deal in your role,” said one scholar. “What are your own goals for growth?” she asked. “I’m a doer,” said Durand, “but with time I’ve learned that I can’t do everything. What I need to learn to do, and what I strive to do, is to teach, encourage, and motivate those around me.”