How to predict fashion trends?

Every year the fashion world tells us what to wear, what looks modern and stylish now. However, fashion trends don’t just pop up.

Today we will reveal to you a little more professional secrets about how fashion is born and how fashion trends can be predicted.

There are 3 categories of people:
Category 1 – people who are not very good at fashion and clothing.
They call fashion “the herd mentality”, they believe that fashion is created only for those who do not have their own taste.

Category 2 – those who are at least a little interested in fashion and style.
They understand that fashion trends are not born out of nowhere, fashion has its own patterns.
These people are interested in fashion, they try to follow it, but they do not fully understand how it appears and therefore they listen to the advice of fashion magazines and other sources when determining what will be trendy in the next season.

Category 3 – professionals from the world of fashion.
They not only understand where fashion trends come from and how to predict fashion, but they are also trendsetters – those who, to one degree or another, can set various fashion trends.

Photo source: https://www.pinterest.ru/pin/331014641370117176/

So, the world of fashion does not exist in the disorderly and chaotic way, as some who are completely unfamiliar with this world think.
And very often some of us notice that things that were worn by our mothers and even grandmothers many years ago are becoming on trend again.

Why it happens?

Let’s figure it out with you.

Fashion is a set of certain fashion trends, that are relevant at a certain time.

Fashion trends can be a certain color that is relevant in the season, for example, blue; certain material – denim or fur; a certain silhouette of clothing, for example, a mini bag or an oversized coat.

Each trend that appears in fashion is most often born from the past, that is, it repeats clothes that were once trendy in society.
However, any trend always looks somewhat different. For example, the flared pants worn by our moms in the 70s will look slightly different in 2022.

The famous English art critic, fashion historian, James Laver in the 30s developed his own scheme for understanding fashion trends.

He came up with the following pattern:

• the clothes that a person begins to wear 10 years before it becomes fashionable was considered indecent in society; (for example, it was indecent to wear a mini dress in the 50s, which became trendy only in the 60s)
• if a person started wearing certain clothes 5 years before they were fashionable, it looked shameless;
• in one year – it looked bold enough;
• in the year when the certain thing was on trend and the person wore it, it seemed clever;
• a year after the fashion trend left, it was considered tasteless to wear these clothes;
• 10 years after the trend passed, it was disgusting;
• in 20 years it looked terrible;
• 30 years later, the past fashion trend already looked funny;
• after 50 years – unusual;
• and 100 years later – romantic.

This scheme operated only until the middle of the 20th century, because after the 60s-70s, especially in the 90s, the cycle of fashion trends began to be greatly shortened.
This became especially noticeable in the 2000s, when mass-brand stores such as H&M and ZARA became very popular.

Previously, collections of designer items were released twice a year, and one could talk about fashion trends that exist in spring-summer and autumn-winter.

Nowadays, new items in many mass-brand stores arrive every two weeks (for example, in ZARA). Therefore, some trends only last 1-2 months. A person has not even had time to buy a thing, but it is already becoming unfashionable and irrelevant.

In general, it should be said that any trend stops coming back into fashion when it becomes useless and non-functional in terms of clothing.
For example, let’s remember such a thing as crinoline. Crinoline is no longer used by anyone, simply because it is non-functional and useless nowadays.

The second point, which explains why certain trends are returning, and how you can understand which trend will be considered stylish for a long time, is that if a fashion trend lasts for a long time, it becomes boring and people try to find something opposite.

If you remember, in the 80s people really liked oversize things: jackets with large shoulders, huge earrings, Afro hairstyles. Tired of being so flashy, in the 90s, people began to choose minimalist black and white clothing.