Always Trending: Why Trend Forecasters Must Be Held Accountable For Wasteful Fashion

By Fran Sheldon

For an industry whose supply chain is wrapped and tangled around the globe like a defunct yo-yo, transparency is an ongoing struggle. Fashion is a secretive, and some might say protected, force which thrives on an aura of magic and wonderment; the backbone of its allure. Trend Forecasting is one such mythical element. But it’s a crucial part of the product development process, and likely the starting point to the majority of products we buy, wear, and throw-away each year. Trend Forecasters are rarely recognised for their considerable contribution and artistry, and by the same token are rarely challenged for their role in our wasteful industry.

There are fundamentally two types of insights that Forecasters provide to brands and retail teams— the detection and monitoring of large-scale shifts in lifestyles and behaviours (See Fig 1), and the translation of these drivers into specific product directions. It is the commercialisation, pace and mixed-messaging of the translation type insights that is most cause for concern. 

Figure 1

Figure 2

To provide for the fast-fashion business model, forecasting bureaus will release reports continually. WGSN for example promise to “Drive sales by staying on-trend with over 250 new reports each month”. The faster fashion retail gets, the more spoon-feeding of information is required. We’re at the point where product direction reports, downloadable colour palettes and designs offer brands a paint-by-numbers approach which they cross-reference against past sales figures, and executive strategy to result in a range. It’s no surprise then that what gets churned out lacks originality. You can go from one shop to the next and see imitation after imitation of these reports, sometimes even in the same prints and styles (these reports are also sold to suppliers). Competition is bad enough in retail now that the customer can price-compare on their phones at any time, add the issue of excess and similarity in product, the need to be the cheapest on offer is paramount.

Alongside the compliance in pace, and the spoon-feeding, there is the issue of mixed-messaging. As you might expect trend forecasters have been advocating the importance of sustainability in market and product reports for far longer than brands have been acting on these insights. It’s their job to be ahead. 10 years ago it was exciting to see intelligence on new fibres, recycling technologies and ethical manufacturing, but now the frequency and variety of these reports trivialises the message. We might think there is no fault in inspiring change by repeating the message until all are converted. But, we should hold all of the industry to account for being this tokenistic. It’s greenwashing— just like brands whose primary function is disposable fashion yet touts a small range of organic cotton basics as ‘saving the planet’.

One of the biggest global forecasting agency perfectly illustrates this issue even through its social media feeds by posting “We bring you the hottest global trends, three times a day, curated by the experts […]”, on the same day as posting “this sustainable underwear brand should be on your radar”, and also “In a market struggling with overstock, retailers are increasingly resorting to competitive discounting during Black Friday Week”. The mixed messaging of this huge forecasting intelligence agency is a perfect symmetry of the disingenuous communications we confront brands for. Figures 3 to 5 illustrate the images posted on the same day.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

In the same way as brands, Trend Forecasters must be held accountable. If anything Forecasters have a responsibility to wean their customers away from the trend suckling and focus on the bigger ideas. In reality the agencies themselves are huge businesses who have targets on customer retention, and depend on market share. Their customer wants fast, easily actionable content. That being said, as these forecasters become bigger, and their influence greater, how can we determine whether they are truthfully predicting trends, or instead implementing them?