A style of clothing or accessory that is popular at a particular time is a fashion trend. For months or years, microtrends like cropped sunglasses and high-waisted jeans switch between fads and fads. Macro trends evolve and are more influenced by demographic and lifestyle shifts than by the most recent fashion trends.
What is forecasting fashion trends?
Predicting the market's future is the focus of the field of trend forecasting. Trend forecasters work in a wide range of industries and use data from previous sales to predict potential future opportunities. As a result, the field of the fashion industry known as fashion forecasting is responsible for making predictions regarding upcoming fashion trends like colors, methods of styling, and fabric textures that will increase demand from customers. Trend reports are created by fashion forecasters and used by product developers to create new clothing and accessories.
What is forecasting long-term trends?
Macrotrends, which are significant shifts in a fashion that is relevant for at least two years, are the focus of long-term forecasts. The fashion industry is defined by these broad trends, which include shifts in how clothes are made and sold, demographics, and lifestyles.
What is trend forecasting for the short term?
Microtrends are connected to short-term forecasts. Color, fashion, current events, and pop culture influence short-term forecasts, which fluctuate seasonally.
Top Five ways fashion companies anticipate trends:
Each brand has its unique method for trend forecasting. Women’s clothing brands, for instance, spend more money on micro trend analysis than men's clothing brands because they typically produce more collections annually. The size of the company and the target market both play a role in forecasting, but there are a few reliable ways that brands can predict trends.
- Trend forecasters within-house: Vertical integration is common among fast fashion giants. Simply put, trend forecasting is carried out internally. Fashion forecasters can collaborate directly with product development teams to develop new products because of this.
- Agencies for Forecasting Trends: Trend forecasting firms often provide large, non-vertically integrated brands with trend research reports for a fee.
- Attend Fashion Week: Trend forecasters used to do most of their research at fashion shows before the internet came along. There, they focused on the most promising looks and fed that information to designers of products and fashion retailers in chain stores. To Vogue and other magazines. This is referred to as "top-down" forecasting, and it describes the process by which fashion trends spread from couture runways to department stores.
- Look for influential people: Today, influencers, blogs, and street style are more common sources of information for trend forecasters. “Bottom-up" forecasting involves keeping a close eye on the target market to predict future demand trends.
- Consider other sectors: For her collections, a small independent fashion designer might create mood boards based on art, film, and nature instead of forecasting trends.
Most trend forecasters use a combination of "top-down" and "bottom-up" forecasts as well as extensive personal knowledge and intuition regarding the fashion scene to predict the future of fashion.