the weekly: pre-spring market recap

and an announcement

I’m taking a break from intro-ing this weekly with woeful tales of life in 2025 in to talk instead about something perplexing: pre-spring collections!

If you’ve not been here very long, you should know before we start that my day job is as a buyer in the fashion industry. I work for an independent store in Nolita, and buy everything from home goods and shoes to both men’s and women’s apparel. This provides me a decent amount of access to the fashion industry, and a significant part of my job entails walking through and previewing collections in advance so I can decide what to buy for the shop. For the totally uninitiated, the buying season occurs about six months before the products land in store, give or take, so in February, I look at and buy items that will arrive in September, and in September, I am buying for February.

As technology has improved and trend cycles have sped up and consumers have become more demanding and social media has exasperated the whole thing, brands and designers have started offering more than just a fall or a spring. Now there is fall, pre-spring, spring, and pre-fall. Most have multiple “drops,” leading to functionally constant deliveries of new products to retail sales floors and e-commerce sites. This is a generalization, of course, and there is a lot of nuance in the industry, seasonal deliveries, and the fashion calendar…but you get the gist.

Anyways. Not all brands opt to show the pre-collections, many still just do two collections a year (fall and spring), even though a third and fourth are becoming increasingly popular. I have a lot of thoughts, actually, on why we shouldn’t have those two additional seasons, but money’s gotta money and the expectation customers have put on retailers and designers to put out more, more, more has only increased throughout the years and once the genie is out of the bottle it’s really hard to put her back in.

Which is why I found myself back in yet another market, looking at pre-spring collections a few weeks ago. Also, on occasion, called holiday collections, and sometimes resort collections, there is an incredibly varied approach to how brands design and develop this season. One brand will show knitwear, the other holiday party dresses, and yet another swimsuits and sarongs. Some may even have hints of all of the above, and trying to organize that in one’s buyer brain is no small feat. Will people want buy now wear now and heavy knits and sparkly fits for New Years or are they shopping for their vacation even though it’s snowing outside? Maybe, again, all of the above?

Further challenging these decisions are the delivery windows of these collections, which can range from early October through even the end of January, with most delivering between November and December. One would think this is great - get new stuff in right around the busiest shopping season of the year! - but in reality, it’s pretty much the worst time to receive new stuff. For one, the logistics of getting new stuff in and processed that time of year can be challenging. Especially at a small retailer, the staff is needed on the floor to sell, not back of house unpacking and steaming. But timing around the holiday season is crucial, and if a delivery that is meant to arrive in early November comes even just two weeks, that could kill your whole selling window. And not only that, end of season sales usually break in January, allowing for only a few short weeks of full price selling.

There are, of course, workarounds to this. Don’t put things on sale. Let them live through the next season. Buy in a way that isn’s so seasonal. Etc. But at the end of the day, unless you’re a resort shop in a tropical destination or a resort shop in a ski area, the pull of seasonal markdowns is hard to resist.

That all said, I always delight in walking through collections every season, even if I am unable to buy them! It’s fun to keep an eye on the market and suss out trends, and I am forever on the lookout new brand to watch. I saw far fewer collections this time as I do during main (coming up next month for men’s and in September for women’s), but at the request of

Anna Newton

, he’s a little recap of some stuff that caught my eye. (Please excuse in advance the quality of these photos, this is literally how I take them for work to remember what I saw, and I did not intend for most of these to see the light of day, but I suppose it’s a nice glimpse into the realities of how I do my job, right?)

PARTY DRESSING

Because this season often delivers right around the holidays, I love the touch of party dressing I was seeing. Think sequins and sparkles, lace and silk, and a little bit of skin. I also fell in love with those taffeta leopard pants, and wish I had it in me to wear them. (Collections featured: Baum und Pferdgarten, Stella Nova, and Aeron)

FANCY KNITS

If you know me you know I love knitwear. All of it. But I’m especially loving all the fun iterations I’ve been seeing out there this market. There are a lot of mesh and open weave textures I’m seeing, which supports this weird season in being a) fun to wear to a party with a bra underneath, b) transitional to spring in being open and light, and c) translatable to fall with the right layering and outerwear. Bright prints and fun colors are also catching my eye, as shoppers are always drawn to a rail by color and print - myself included. (Collections featured: Eleven Six, Marle, Jumper1234, and Stella Nova)

EVERY DAY STAPLES

I feel pretty strongly about having a good balance between fun, bright pieces and every day staples on a retail sales floor - with every day staples making up the bulk of the offering. Although the fun, bright pieces tend to draw customers in, it’s those classic piece that they can see themselves wearing over and over that translate to sales, and therefore a lot of what I look at are takes on every day pieces. I try to find things that are at least a tiny bit unique or interesting, but lord knows we all love a basic sweater vest or simple black sheath, you know? (Collections featured: Marle, Mille, Bembien, Hey Gang)

VACATION READY

As mentioned above, this season is also called “resort” for some brands, who show collections rooted in vacation dressing. It’s not a category I personally buy for - it’s mostly resort stores and department stores that dabble here - but I did find some cute things along the way, like that striped set that would be great for lounging around a pool, layered with a swimsuit. (Collections featured: Stella Nova, Momoni, and Mille)

If you’ve made it this far, then you get rewarded with an announcement!! Because I needed one more thing in my life to tackle right now, I have launched another Substack! But really, this community has been so great, it felt like the right time to dig in even deeper. The new one is called

shopkeep

and it will be focused and solely about the fashion industry, rather than personal style. I wanted to explore the apparel and retail industries at large in more detail, and in doing so, felt that it was the right time to separate it out and keep mom friend mom friend. With shopkeep, you can expect more personal insights and recaps from my buying excursions like the above, round ups of news stories and analysis from the industry, trend reports and brand deep dives, and discussions about things like how tariffs and immigration policy affect the industry. Right now, it’s all free and monthly-ish. Moving forward, who knows. My stack, my rules. So if you’ve liked reading the above and want to dig in deeper, go give it a follow…

Moving on!

Below the paywall this week you’ll find:

• TV I love right now

• An excellent, easy recipe I can’t stop making

• A short list of things I want to buy

• A long list of things I did buy

• A bunch of shitty outfit selfies and, more importantly, the reasons behind the fits

Enjoy!