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 the past, the present and the future of forecasting. Analysing lifestyle trends and framing trends within a wider social and cultural perspective is indeed paramount for every trend forecaster to enhance participants’ understanding of the influence that trends have on specific industries such as fashion and design. During the week they will familiarize with different dynamics of trend diffusion and with the lexicon of the trend forecaster, discovering the difference between mega trends, macro trends, lifestyle trends redefining social behaviors and consumers’ expectations, social media-driven fads. At this point 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 put together in a presentation and ‘pitch’ a simple trend-forecasting package or preview of related trends including colour and fabric samples, silhouette and design detail ideas, inspirational supporting case studies, data and opinions for authoritative experts, KOL and trend setters.