Accessories Magazine

Accessories Magazine is written for people who sell women's fashion accessories in any type of retail environment.

While it's not directly aimed at professional craft artists who are creating accessories, Accessories Magazine will provide you with plenty of information on accessories trends for upcoming seasons. Because the magazine reports on trends many months in advance, you'll get that information in time to reflect those trends in your own work.

Accessories is one of the first magazines I added to my list of subscriptions when I first began selling handmade jewelry. The magazine is published six times a year, and although the subscription is rather pricy as magazines go, I personally have always felt the information in the magazine is worth the price because it is information that is core to my business and not readily available elsewhere.

The information in the magazine will allow you to see upcoming trends in accessories well before those trends are in stores or fashion magazines aimed at consumers (as opposed to retailers). That way, if designing "on trend" is important to you, you will have plenty of lead time to source and order products, develop designs and create your items with upcoming trends in mind.

You can also use this information to help promote your handmade accessories directly to customers or to potential wholesale customers or consignment partners. Having on trend items in stock is particularly important to many fashion retailers, so if you are able to point out the ways in which your accessories are in line with expected fashion trends, that information can help you to promote your work to store owners who may sell your items on a wholesale or consignment basis.

In addition to reporting on emerging accessories trends, Accessories also provides insights into people and companies that are making news in the fashion accessories industry. These reports on business are focused on larger retailers and may or may not be of interest to you, depending on the nature of your business and your long term goals. I personally find myself jumping straight to the trends stories, and feel that my Accessories subscription is worthwhile for that information alone.

Some professional craft artists are more trend conscious than others. Whether your work reflects current trends or not will depend a lot on your own aesthetic sense, your goals for your business and your target market. If you do include fashion accessories as a major part of your line, and you want to create items that are on trend, Accessories Magazine is a very good resource that will allow you to learn about future trends well before they are in stores and in time to encorporate them into your products.

I have not seen Accessories Magazine on newstands anywhere, but if you are interested in adding the magazine to your collection, you can subscribe drectly from the Accessories site.