Climate change & ramp

Rachel Hosie

Unpredictable weather patterns — frosty springs, mild winters and wet summers — are posing a challenge for fashion designers.

As our climate becomes more changeable, the fashion industry is struggling to create clothes we’ll want to wear in a year’s time, with no idea what the weather will be like when their collections hit the shelves. And when they get it wrong, the clothes simply stay in the shops until they end up being heavily discounted, which hurts sales.

“Because of the extreme weather changes, there’s no real separation between spring, fall, winter and summer,” designer Jason Wu said. But some of the biggest retailers have started hiring climatologists to help them predict what the seasons might have in store. The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York has even launched a new course called, Predictive Analytics for Planning and Forecasting: Case Studies with Weatherisation.

In fact, the FIT — whose alumni include Calvin Klein and Brian Atwood — as a whole is being overhauled to include more topical issues including weather. It’s hoped that it will help the fashion industry deal with the impact of climate change. Students embarking on the course need to be prepared to get technical — graphs and spreadsheets and equations feature heavily.

One class was asked “When should a Los Angeles store stock swimsuits?” Students are also given challenges like incorporating weather data into calculations to work out when a shop in Chicago should sell more fleece.

The course is divided into statistics, taught by math professor Calvin Williamson, and merchandising and marketing, taught by Gary Wolf, who is assistant professor of fashion business management.

— The Independent