Whether you think it might be your top, gorpkor or casual wear, a trend forecaster predicted you’d be wearing it years ago.
Trend forecasters use data analytics and insights to identify specific micro- and macro-trends occurring in the fashion industry. They point out how and why these trends appear and reappear, and use their knowledge to predict what will be hot for years to come.
In the pre-internet era, the process was generally reserved for high fashion’s front-row forecasting elite, a group that compiled trend reports based on a collection’s particular prints, fabrics and styles. These reports are filtered from fashion weeks to editorial spreads before finally coming to consumers on up to two years of department store clothing. Now, as TikTok becomes a more current and guiding source in society, forecasters are turning to the app to predict where fashion is headed.
Today’s forecast
The process varies by individual forecaster or agency, but fashion soothsayers provide valuable insight into all kinds of trends, whether it’s the death of skinny jeans, the renaissance of the king, or the adoption of outerwear into every career and life journey. Most of the major trends are recycled every two decades, which makes forecasting easier. Today, however, TikTok’s whirlwind of ideas and content presents forecasters with new qualitative and quantitative challenges.
Kendall Baker, a New York City-based trend forecaster and assistant fashion director, says TikTok’s growth as a forecasting tool means there’s a lot more content to sift through. “You have to be very smart now about spotting micro trends and the right macro movement,” she says. Entry. Micro-trends refer to current, one-time episodes that take over social media for a short period of time, while macro-trends are green concepts that last for many cycles. Sunny’s green bodycon dress, a micro-trend, can be seen everywhere on social media before disappearing after a few weeks. Meanwhile, trends from the early 2000s, such as bold prints and embellishments, have survived several seasons over the past few years.
“You must be very smart now about seeing Han Micro-trend And concrete Macro activityHe said.
When reporting for department stores or content for her followers, Baker often relies on her knowledge of fashion history and her library of past runway shows on social media. She says that, even if someone in Brooklyn is getting in on the hot micro-trend, the style might not drive sales at major retailers like Nordstrom. Identifying a particular style, pattern or image on TikTok as a big and influential trend in society is a difficult task for forecasters because of how quickly trends emerge on the platform. But one of the biggest misconceptions about trend forecasting, says Becker, is the assumption that it’s purely item-driven. In fact, assumptions are often seen from a more psychological perspective.
It came out unexpectedly.
Although traditional forecasters still provide reports to retailers, others are using their visibility on TikTok to skip the middleman and deliver their insights directly to consumers. Focusing on youth and internet culture, Diggy Fairey’s creative agency delivers exciting trends with over 93,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram. His Tik Tok feed is from Dusk Resurgence to “Whimsigot”. Rather than specializing in trend forecasting for big businesses, the agency focuses on creating connections between fashion and other cultural fields such as beauty, music and film.
Tik Tok is becoming a platform that generates micro-trends faster than they can be predicted and produced by retailers (unless you’re a super-fast fashion company like SHIN). Biz Sherbert, culture editor at DigiFairy and the face of TikTok, believes it’s more important to explain why trends happen than to market products that can be sold.
“Is there a culture shift building toward this that might not be so obvious by looking at a small, comfortable, Tik Tok-based trend?” says Sherbert. “How can I make this meaningful with an audience that doesn’t know all the words or the different contexts that go into a trend?”
Consumers are paying more attention to social media accuracy in recent years with concepts like photodumps and filter-exposing content. The shift in consumer values and spending habits during the ongoing pandemic has affected what items and trends people are willing to invest in and why. Loyalty and values change predictions allow you to delve deeper into the psychology of a particular trend’s popularity.
One such investing macro movement is the resurgence of things driven by love and femininity. Although ’90s grunge and punk resurfaced in graphic T-shirts, Vivienne Westwood and Dr. Martens galore, brands like Mirror Palais and Lemaire tackled the rough edges with lace, flowing silhouettes and soft fabrics. “People want to embrace their softness and femininity now,” Baker says. They want to get dressed and feel lusty again.
“There have been some trends. It remains in the past due to”
Some re-evolved trends strike a nerve, however, with people who have experienced psychological damage to the standards of beauty associated with them. Low-waisted jeans, mini skirts, and cropped brows are back in the Y2K revival. But in their early days, the dresses were often associated with a razor-thin body type.
“I think there are some trends that have been left behind for a reason,” Baker says. “And it’s sad that when something works so well on a social network, suddenly it feels like pressure to become a trend.”
Still, Sherbert says the younger generation’s intolerance of negative portrayals of body image prevents those harmful stereotypes from regaining the power they once had. “People have responded to that and [said]’If you don’t really fit the body type that was most ideal in the early 2000s, you can and still should wear these trends that have come out since then,'” she says.
in your business
Although Tik Tok users are having positive conversations about subcultures and their various sub-trends, forecasters often have to make judgment calls about what a really big macro-trend is. As brands and retailers increasingly embrace the app and use it as an opportunity to drive sales, they pose a challenge to the process.
Although a product can be a “trend”, it can be wrong to associate it with the phrase “TikTok viral”. The phrase is often used on the app to market an organically tainted product, such as the rarely-recovered viral Dior lip oil. Brands with a sponsorship budget can pay influencers to promote a product, go viral and boost sales that way.
One of the industry’s most extensive (and expensive) trend forecasting companies, WGSN offers over 70,000 design templates to corporate retailers. Each template is updated regularly to reflect trend forecasts for future seasons. Not only does the database provide the same information to all of WGSN’s big-box customers, it also adds to the sense of a mindless fashion factory that is deprived of originality, as many stores carry the same or similar pieces. But Tik Tok is still an untapped source of knowledge for many professionals and companies who think that the app is a combination of boring and dangerous challenges. In fact, Tik Tok is a valuable resource for the new age of forecasting for those who want to keep up to date with all the trends coming from Gen Z.
No matter how long we continue to see Y2K butterfly tops and vintage-looking dad shoes, in Baker’s experience, wearability is the number one determinant of how long a trend will last. Some styles may be picked up by high street retailers, but a piece needs to be wearable, make people feel good and be an “easy buy” to really make an impact. And if you’re part of the 71 percent of TikTok users whose purchases are directly influenced by the app, you might want to start checking out the forecast.
