Due to globalisation, fashion brands and fashion products aim to meet the desires and requests of consumers on a worldwide scale. Meanwhile, local and subcultural trends are constantly emerging, creating a knock-on effect to change what is ‘fashionable’, or directly influencing sales of the most ‘desirable’ fashion products.
This short course in trend forecasting looks at the interaction of shifts in fashion, consumer lifestyle and culture, and some of the key methods used to perceive upcoming trends, and predict what consumers are willing to buy several seasons ahead of time.
Participants are shown forecasting skills, and discover how to contextualise and interpret information to construct the basis of a trend preview: an assembling of work and research, that goes beyond simple ‘fashion intuition’.
Week 1
The course begins with an introduction to two different types of forecasting; intuitive and predictive, the difference in both research techniques, and the companies that deliver such services.
Analysing lifestyle is paramount for every trend forecaster and important to enhance participants understanding of the influence and power that trends have on fashion and design. During the week they will discover how high culture, popular culture, and subcultures influence key trends in fashion, in a variety of ways. At this point in the course they are also shown specific research skills, focusing primarily on where to locate source material and how to read current trends.
Week 2
During the second week participants will learn how to capture, analyse, interrogate and read their initial findings. They collate and present multimedia resource material into a trend story or basic trend preview concept, and are shown skills of extracting key colours, textures and silhouettes for themes in fashion design.
At the end of the week participants will draw together a simple trend-forecasting package or ‘preview’ of related trends including for example, colour and fabric samples, silhouette and design detail ideas. They present and ‘pitch’ their ideas to tutors and peers for additional feedback and a valuable exchange of their research and forecasting outcomes.