Trend forecasting is not specific to fashion, and it can be used for many different fields. It is defined as predicting a certain market trend in order to predict consumers buying habits. You can see how this can be used for many different products on many different types of markets. In fashion, it is defined as focusing on upcoming trends in “colors, fabrics, textures, materials, prints, graphics…” in order to create products consumers will want to have in their wardrobe in the upcoming seasons.
So now that you know what exactly fashion trend forecasting is, how do you do it? There are so many methods and many colleges offer year long classes on predicting upcoming trends, so this article will just scratch the surface. If you personally are looking to forecast in order to be ahead of the curve, look at fashion shows. Fashion houses typically release their Spring/Summer collections in January and their Fall/Winter collections are unveiled in June or July. That gives you plenty of time to study what these brands are predicting trends to be. Obviously designer brands runway pieces are not going to be seen on the street, but take note of the colors, shapes, patterns and materials most commonly used throughout Fashion Week. For example, six months ago, Versace used a lot of oranges and blue in their SS21 (Spring/Summer 2021) collection. Now, we are seeing those two colors become very popular for the upcoming seasons.
Another method if you are just an average consumer is to look at the influencers on your feed. Find influencers who are really into fashion and take note of what they are wearing. If they are a fashion influencer, then you obviously know they are paying attention to what is happening in the fashion world. Follow as many influencers as you can in order to find the overlap. Every influencer’s style will be different, but you will probably be able to pick up on similarities in the forecasting parameters (colors, textures, etc).
If you are not just the average citizen, or maybe if you want to be really ahead of the trends, look to ages past. Every time period has their own new and unique trends, but many trends are new twists on old ones. Fashion trends have their own small cycle pre-sergence. These trends start out by being introduced to the fashion world. They then rises and peak in popularity. Soon after, the particular trend moves to its steady decline after it’s peak and enters the outdated phase.
But not all outdated trends stay that way. The overall fashion cycle of trends is about 20-30 years long. Most trends peak and then die and then come back in the same form or a re-imagined way after 20-30 years. Have you noticed the trends of the early 2000’s coming back? Or maybe the trends of the 70’s and 80’s, which also saw reinvented versions of common trends from that time period in the early 2000’s; that is all thanks to the trend cycle. So if you are trying to think of possible trends for your latest collection, look to the past to predict the future.