Top designers showcase their designs for each upcoming fashion season during “Fashion Week” events in Paris, Milan, London, Madrid, Hong Kong and New York. Multiple fashion shows take place daily during fashion week and it’s what these designers send down the runway that ultimately influences retail fashion six to ten months later. Fashion editors, fashion buyers, fashion critics, fashion designers and fashion photographers are invited to various fashion week events around the world and based on what they see, begin to plan and translate our next retail season.

Fashion Weeks are instrumental trend predictors. And while catwalk creations are often unwearable, general tendencies towards particular colours, silhouettes, items and fabrics are apparent with each collection that’s sent down the runway. These general tendencies are interpreted and filtered by the fashion industry who in turn make clothing available for us to purchase in stores. New York Fashion Week is currently taking place, showcasing designer collections for Fall 2008. While we discuss Spring and Summer 2008 on this site; fashion buyers, designers, merchandisers and clothing manufactures are working on the next season (Autumn 2008), which makes its debut in stores in August.

Fashion weeks cause a lot of hype because predicting what’s in store for us in future is a hot topic. I don’t pay close attention to what goes on at each fashion week every season because trends are still in their infancy at that stage and there is no guarantee that runway fashions will become mainstream in one season. But from what I’ve gathered at the New York fashion week, the waist-cinching belt and hour glass silhouette has never been stronger, and we can look forward to this for Autumn 2008.

British designer Nicole Miller recently showcased her Fall 2008 collection in New York.