When I was at university, I had no idea that trend forecasting was an industry. I studied a Bachelor of Design and thought the job streams coming out of that were pretty binary: you would either become a designer or a buyer for someone else. But it was always the narrative behind the product that I loved most: who was the customer? What were their views and values? And what would motivate them to wear my designs? I then did a Master’s of Communication and created a blog all about that narrative: why people choose the outfits they’re wearing and the psychographics of people’s style. While researching, I discovered that this is actually an area of fashion that’s used by designers, merchandisers and retailers. And it’s not just used in fashion – businesses in food and beverage through to home goods increasingly want to know more about the future of product and the future of people’s mindsets and values. That’s when I discovered trend forecasting as an industry.

A good trend forecaster is a good historian, because they read the cues, study the text and spot the signals (a signal is something on the fringe that will forecast where the future will go). A big element of it is intuition. The most common framework of trend research, or trend theory, is the trend curve. The social science of that model was actually founded out of agricultural processes from America in the ’60s, to explain how, over time, an idea or product gains momentum and spreads through a specific population. When we think of trend curves, we usually think of fashion. The trend cycle is created by the ‘innovators’, who are often designers and those on the fringe of society. Historically, we might think of people like Vivienne Westwood and the punk counterculture. The trend moves from the ‘innovators’ to the ‘early adopters’ (so, the punk rockers hanging out with Vivienne), and then it reaches the mainstream. It then becomes volumised and saturated, and you will see it stocked at discount department stores, like Kmart. Then, the trend is adopted by the ‘laggards’, who are the last to the party. Eventually, that curve follows through and dies. It’s quite a rhythmic process. Fashion seems to move in a 20-year cycle, and so too do consumer tastes. The PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal) framework measures the longevity and impact of a trend. If we look at something like sustainable fashion, technologically and environmentally, we know that it’s not going to be a flash-in-the-pan trend. We’re in an environmental crisis, so we know sustainable fashion will be a lasting trend.

I work for SOON Future Studies – a global think tank. We do bespoke consultancy projects and publish reports on things like ‘the future of snacking’ or ‘the future of cities’. We work with food and beverage clients, department stores, fashion clients and also beauty clients. Health and wellness is an emerging category we're working with, too. Any business that has a customer will engage a trend-forecasting service. They’ll have a question, problem, or opportunity that they want to address. For instance, they might want to know more about the Alpha generation – an emerging cohort of consumer who will be teenagers as of next year. We want to know what resonates with them, so we’ll look at macro trends using the PESTEL framework, then at cultural trends and human behaviour. We map and track these ideas to give a road map of how to connect with the Alpha generation, and present that to the business.

When we were peak pandemic, there was a lot of hype around the idea that we’d all get really dressed up and hit the town when we got out of lockdown. But I don’t think people are shaking off the comfortable clothes as quickly as we anticipated. Comfort is a really hard behaviour to change, so that early prediction might have been too bold. On the other hand, we published our Future Forecast 2024 report in August of 2021 and wrote about the ‘great resignation’ – how there’ll be a fundamental shift in how people view their nine-to-five, and young people redesigning their relationship with labour and hustle culture. It’s a trend to watch and I’m excited to see how it continues to unfold, because we’ve seen such an uptake in entrepreneurship being reimagined. Whether it’s TikTok creators or people starting side hustles, they're rolling into new ways of working for themselves.

TikTok is the greatest source of surprise for me – it’s such a petri dish for niche ideas. Take that guy whose truck broke down in California, for example. He had to skateboard to work, and filmed himself drinking a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice while listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”. It skyrocketed “Dreams” to the top of the charts, and that is so truly random. It’s not so much a trend, per se, but I think that chaotic transience of TikTok is so interesting and exciting. It’s such a step change from the highly curated Instagram era.

The biggest challenge of my role encapsulates the plight of individuals today, particularly Millennials and Gen Z: it’s very hard to switch off my brain and unplug. I’m always on socials, reading every newsletter, and fear missing anything in the 24-hour news cycle. But I love the trade itself, and I love the access to the minds of people who I work with. Trend forecasting is such a stimulating and intoxicating line of work. We’re constantly mapping and tracking the zeitgeist, examining cause and effect, and thinking creatively and analytically. It fuels a constant curiosity.

This chat comes straight from the pages of issue 110. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.