BRIGHT IDEA: All Aboard the Downton Abbey.

Apropos to my last Bright Idea!, I am willing to bet that editors newest fascination will be the British melodrama, Downton Abbey and that product round-ups and fashion spreads are, at this very minute, being produced with a tie-in to Edwardian grandeur as displayed on the PBS Masterpiece Classic darling. Market and fashion editors will be looking for gloves, ascots, bowler hats, velvet skirts and jackets, anything with a corset-closure, hats with feathers and equestrian-style jackets with tails for their pre-fall and fall stories. In the other departments, fancy tea services, china sets, vintage luggage, doctor’s bags, classic umbrella styles will be the order of the day. If you make fanciful hairpins, fascinators or jeweled headbands, start pitching now. Inevitably there will be hair stories around the newest craze, pincurls and loose rolls. If you can use the trend to jumpstart a pitch, do it now!

Photos clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

Bright Idea!

Editors create stories around popular culture and current events. One clever way to predict ideas editors may be hatching is to look at the calendar of major museum exhibits. If the MoMA, for example, has a Mark Rothko exhibition slated for May, then you can bet fashion editors would tie it in to spring's color-block runway offerings. Relating news or current events to your pitch, no matter how loose the reference, shows that you are working to connect the dots and may also give an editor an idea they can use.

Images 1, 2

BRIGHT IDEA