Designers showing during New York Fashion Week aren’t the only ones under pressure from the calendar. Vendors at the Fashion Coterie here also are scrambling to get ready for the next installment, which will take place at the Show Piers here Feb. 14-16.
“We’re rushing like crazy to make it happen,” said Walter Baker, designer of the New York-based contemporary collection Walter. “The timing is hard. We make a lot of our stuff in China, and they’re having their Chinese New Year now, so whatever we got from them two weeks ago was it,” Baker said. “But that’s part of the deal. We want to be in the fashion business, so we just have to do it.”
For fall, Walter consists of skinny pants and fitted jackets with a Fifties or Sixties inspiration, but dresses are a crucial part of the collection this season. Colors range from shades of grey, blue and black to pink and red, “to pop it up a bit,” Baker said.
Tops in the collection wholesale between $40 and $50, pants wholesale for less than $100 and the wholesale price range of jackets is between $100 and $150. Walter is available at more than 2,000 specialty boutiques worldwide as well as department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Henri Bendel and Nordstrom.
“My goal, at Coterie, is to increase our market share in specialty stores around the world and increase market share in department stores,” Baker said. “I want our areas within stores to get larger as the brand gets more recognized.”
Baker is anticipating a strong show at Coterie and anticipates a wholesale volume of about $300,000 over the three-day period. “And that’s just orders people leave on the spot,” he said, noting that most of the major department stores tend to place orders directly from the showroom.
“Coterie is the best venue for seeing all the stores and everyone comes to Coterie no matter what,” he said. “They want to see what’s fresh and new.”
And Baker pulls out all the stops to make sure buyers see the big picture. “We’ll have models in the booth, which makes it so much better for the buyers to actually see the product on a live person. It’s a small investment, but it’s totally worth it,” he said.
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David Lim, owner and designer of the Los Angeles-based
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denim-driven brand Kasil, said the February installment of Coterie is always a particularly busy show because fall is a big season at retail.
“Coterie has a reputation of being a juried selection and because of that, buyers at Coterie write orders more often than at other shows. Buyers tend to want to stock up their stores during fall,” Lim said. “We always want to do our best there.” Lim declined to provide a projected three-day wholesale volume, but said he would like to increase the number of specialty stores where his collection is offered.
At Coterie, he intends to build the brand up, while maintaining what he calls “the cool factor.” One way of doing this is by sticking with smaller boutiques and forgoing the department store route.
The wholesale price range of Kasil denim is between $85 and $120. Corduroys, which wholesale for $85, are expected to be a big hit for fall. Kasil’s cords come in chocolate brown, khaki and maroon. A small sampling of women’s blazers made from 100 percent cotton will be introduced this season, wholesaling for $175.
The timing of the show was an issue for Lim, but since all of the merchandise is produced in Los Angeles, it wasn’t the Chinese New Year affecting his schedule. Producing domestically brings its own unique set of circumstances.
“No matter how long you do it, it doesn’t get any easier,” Lim said. “Since Los Angeles is the denim capital, there are so many brands here using the same facilities and there are so many samples going through. If something comes out wrong, we have to take it back to the drawing board.”
Alice Cheng, founder of the New York-based contemporary line A. Cheng, said she’d like to move into more department stores, but understands such a move takes time.
“Department stores like to look at you for a couple of seasons before they take you on,” Cheng said. Currently, A. Cheng is available in 80 specialty boutiques in the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Denmark. Wholesale prices of the collection range from $98 for blouses to $200 for coats. Dresses wholesale for roughly $140.
This season, Diana Lee joined Cheng as co-designer. Lee previously designed her own collection of sweaters. With Lee on board, Cheng said the collection has grown by about 40 percent.
“Since the collection is now twice as big, I think we should do about $900,000 in wholesale volume for 2006,” Cheng said, noting that the total was double last year’s volume.