Trendzine www.fashioninformation.com

Dawn Pedersen – lives, eats and breathes fashion. Editor and co-founder of the website www.fashioninformation.com Dawn is responsible for influencing some of the key trends of tomorrow. 

The site is crammed full of detailed reports covering all aspects of women’s fashion from around the globe. There are edited catwalk reports, street style, retail trends, fashion news and the trendzoom report, which is the year ahead forecast. Absolutely everything is covered including – accessories, footwear, junior, contemporary, classic styles, sportswear, knitwear and tailoring to name a few. Photographs and detailed computer aided illustrations structures the bulk of the site – making it a valuable resource to related industries. “Our clients cover quite a broad spectrum of people, designers through to big corporations use our site,” Dawn mentions.

Designed like an on-line book – the site breaks away from the usual type of layout. You can flick from page to page rather than scrolling up and down, which makes it more user friendly if clients need to print pages out. Fashioninformation mainly focuses on womenswear, “we offer a more traditional forecasting formula, with very intricate illustrations – a pattern cutter could use them for instance,” Dawn says keeping her competitors in mind. 

After leaving school she went on to complete various arts and textile courses and briefly ran her own design label in Manchester, but London was beckoning. “It was the place where it was all happening.” Moving in with a friend she landed a design job in the city blagging that she could do everything but was conscientiously learning along the way. 

With extensive industry experience, a husband and two daughters later – the web concept cropped up. “My husband – Torgeir, a former computer science student, came up with the idea of doing something on the internet.” Dawn had previously worked with a New York based forecasting company, so they merged thoughts and the pair of them gave birth to the fashioninformation format. 

They began by producing small retail reports as they both were still in full time employment. The feedback was extremely positive, “people were saying that the retail reports were very interesting but could they take it one step further with some prediction style reports, that’s when I said to Togeir – ‘let’s give them what they want,'” enthuses Dawn. The duo decided to get serious about the venture and packed in their day jobs to concentrate solely on fashioninformation. The site has now been up and running since early 1998 – expanding steadily ever since, employing freelancers around the globe and creating an ever flourishing list of clients. 

“It’s a life decision almost – to be involved with fashion, it’s something you are constantly aware of.” 

Dawn describes the job as gathering and compiling all the information that surrounds you – from the media, the catwalk, the street, textile shows, even who’s in power and what the current political mood is, the influences are everywhere. “It’s a life decision almost – to be involved with fashion, it’s something you are constantly aware of,” she declares. Dawn cites the catwalk as a major indicator, looking to see what you like and why – you analyse it. 

Current fashions travel on a constant merry-go-round, trends and fads come and go at an ever-rapid pace. Dawn insists that it’s not necessarily a bad thing that fashion goes in cycles, with experience you can see them coming before they’ve arrived. “You take it as an influence, although things do come around again there’s always a twist, an angle – something new to look at.” 

The future for this established and successful site sees yet more broadening and growth. The team is currently putting together the new trendzoom forecast for spring/summer 2005, as well as planning lots of new additions for the site, which will include a few free access areas too.

To find out more about the trendzine service and subscription fees please visit the website – www.fashioninformation.com

 

By Jo Iles