week 11: on fashion forecasting.

This is obviously over simplifying it but, essentially there is really only one trend and it takes on different forms but it goes like this: There is a norm. There are people that like to push against the norm (usually rebellious youth or fringe culture). Those people push and get more and more people to join them until that is the norm, then the pushers start pushing back the other way. It can be seen anywhere, names, colors, hemlines, facial hair, diets, basically anything people make decisions about. So whatever is considerered really ugly or bad by the norm will be a trend before you know it. I mean the thought of skinny jeans when I was in high school (90's) was the most laughable thought, yet popular in the 80's and 2000's. in the 20's the general public notion was to conserve and reuse and care for possessions and keep them for a long time. In the 60's the general thought was disposable, easy, convenient, available, out of sight=out of mind. Now conserving, reusing, and long-term quality is becoming in fashion again. The length of the ping and pong is different for each variable, but the concept is constant.

So when we look at a designer like John Galliano, we still see trends emerge within his own body of work, shifting from edgy/scary badass to sexy/soft darling and back or combining different components of different era's to create  new styles. There is still an ebb and flow to it even if it's not dictated by an outer contemporary source. He's got the whole bag of tricks up his sleeve and in choosing which tricks to pull out when, he influences the broader global concept of what's in. He's a pusher. Even if it looks like he "didn't hold to a lot of trend" it would be naive to think that what is popular isn't influencing him, because obviously he's not going to put something down the runway that has recently been done, so he has to know what is in vogue so he can push it!

Ali's response:

Very well put - no matter how avant garde the designer there is always a trend followed to a certain degree -if nothing else the color palette at least. There is too much money depending on a collection to leave it to the free will of the designer - he/she would not want that risk and responsibility either. It might sound sad in a certain way that there is always a sort of compromise but that is how fashion is as an art form. It has to really relate to to the pulse of its customer. Fashion forecasting allows us to feel that pulse better.