Dive Brief:

• The influence of the street on fashion trends may get a boost from Google, which has published its first report on the subject, leveraging data from searches.

• To get a cohesive report on fashion trends, Google looked at 6 billion searches from January 2012 to February 2015 related to apparel, look at their monthly volume, and then applied algorithms to find patterns and seasonality.

• Tulle skirts, for example, are getting more popular — 34% more searches from January 2014 to January 2015 — sweeping from the West Coast where the trend began, east across the country. Black and white are the winning colors, although all colors are sought after, according to searches. Jogger pants are also hot, while 60s-style midi skirts may be arriving here from the U.K.

Dive Insight:

Data geeks will tell you how important search is when it comes to gleaning useful information, and Google search information is at the top of the line. For the first time, the company has compiled its information to gain insight into fashion, an effort it says it hopes is useful to “designers, planners, marketers, trendsetters, and tastemakers.”

This could be especially useful to retailers like Target and fast-fashion outlets that must have their fingers on the pulse of top trends and quickly get them into stores while those trends are still hot enough to sell to a mass market. This is the company’s first fashion trends report; we’ll see how the information is applied.