Fashion Seasons: The Main Seasons & Their Dates | Retail Dogma (2024)

What Are The Fashion Seasons?

The fashion calendar has four main seasons: Spring/Summer (SS), Autumn/Winter (AW), Resort/Cruise and Pre-Fall. The first two are the main runway seasons presented at fashion weeks, and the latter inter-seasonal collections have been introduced to bridge the gaps between the main two seasons and introduce newness more frequently.

Fashion Seasons Months

Knowing the fashion seasons months is important in fashion business for planning merchandise deliveries and Open to Buy, and also for markdown planning to clear inventory by the end of each season.

Here are the key starting months for the main seasons and the pre-collections

The Rationale Behind This Fashion Calendar

The key fashion seasons are Spring/Summer, which runs from January to June and Autumn/winter, which runs from July to December. (That’s why OTBs are usually planned on a 6 months basis, Jan to June and July to Dec). However; with the rise of fast fashion business model, which pushes new drops to the stores on a weekly of bi-weekly basis, major designers started introducing the inter-seasonal ready-to-wear collections or “pre-collections”, which include the Resort/Cruise and Pre-fall.

This has resulted in an overlap between the 4 collections trading times in the stores, but that is healthy, as while a season is being phased out and will start having broken sizes and out-of-stocks in many items, another collection is being phased in with new items that trade at full price. This helps in driving footfall back to the stores with more freshness, and also with elevating margins.

The other reason for the introduction of inter-seasonal collections, especially the resort/cruise collection is to address the fact that many customers might reside in places where the climate is very cold, but would like to travel somewhere else , e.g the Mediterranean, for warmer weather to spend some time. That’s why it was named the “resort” or “cruise” collection, because it was initially made for travelers going on a cruise somewhere that is warmer, while their local stores were stocking heavy winter items.

It also addresses the variation in climate between different markets where the fashion brand trades. For example, it might be extremely cold in New York in December, but in Dubai this would be the best climate, with a slight cold breeze, but not so cold to wear heavy winter clothing. Having this addressed through the overlapping collections helps customers in different climates find suitable items, which ultimately helps drive sales, and is actually a smart fashion business management move for a global brand.

Fashion Seasons & Fashion Weeks

Fashion weeks are made to showcase future seasonal collections, around 6 months in advance.

So the Spring/Summer collection will be shown in September of the previous year, while Fall/Winter collections will be shown in February of the same year.

So, basically, while the Spring/Summer is being launched at the stores, the next Fall/Winter is being shown at the fashion shows, and vice versa. This is to give enough time for fashion buyers to place their orders, and for brands to complete manufacturing and shipping to stores by the next season.

This is also why Open to Buys are done 6 months in advance, so that buyers can start placing their orders with that budget, and receive the products 6 months later.

For example, in January I should have my July to December Open to Buy ready, so I can go and place my orders for the next Fall/Winter season.

For brands that make their own clothing lines, planning a collection starts 7 to 8 months in advance, and even up to 10 months if they will sell to other buyers. This is because they have the additional phases of designing and sampling the collection first, before placing production orders with manufacturers.

More Resources

Thank you for reading this article on Fashion Seasons. We believe you might also find the following resources useful:

• Fashion Week
• Clothing Boutique
• How to Run a Successful Boutique Business?
• 4-5-4 Retail Calendar
• Open to Buy Planning
• Buying Courses