14 minute read
The End of Trend
from Spring/Summer 2020
by SMU Look
Trend forecasting companies have controlled the fashion industry for the past fifty years, but will they stay relevant in the age of social media? The End of Trend
By Meredith Welborn
Photo courtesy of Burnett New York/Dan Lecca Photography
What you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns ... And then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs.
- Miranda Priestly to her assistant Andy in the 2006 film, The Devil Wears Prada.
Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Miranda Priestly, a character based on the tyrannical but respected American Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour, shed light on a truth about how the fashion industry dictates style. For years, powerful people like the editor of Vogue have defined what is “trending” in fashion. But that is changing as individuals gain power through social media.
“The whole world of trend forecasting is changing,” said Courtney Maum, a former forecaster and author of the 2017 novel “Touch,” about a trend forecaster.
According to Debra Johnston Cobb and Kate Scully, authors of “Color Forecasting for Fashion,” trend forecasting began in the 1950s. Rather than predicting trends, however, forecasting companies would look back at the previous season’s work and point to what they saw as recurring themes on the runways.
By the 1970s, forecasting had expanded significantly. Companies were now forecasting trends up to eight months in advance, in essence making decisions about colors, skirt lengths and heel heights.
“Fashion forecasting is the practice of predicting upcoming trends based on past and present style-related information, the interpretation and analysis of the motivation behind a trend and an explanation of why the prediction is likely to occur,” said designer and Southern Methodist University fashion media professor Elif Kavakci. “Fashion forecasters communicate the information they gather to designers, retailers, product developers, manufacturers and business professionals.”
Rather than letting artisans and designers make their own creative decisions, these powerful groups began deciding what’s in and what’s out, becoming a powerful force in the fashion industry. A trend, explains SMU fashion media professor Dr. Ethan Lascity, “is all really sort of a social construct: Who is making these decisions? Who are we following?”
Today, Pantone and World Global Style Network are among the premier trend forecasting companies making those decisions. WGSN alone has upwards of 70,000 designers and merchandisers who subscribe to its daily and annual reports. These reports tell designers, for instance, millennial pink is the new it-color or insist merchandisers stop spending money on skinny jeans because that trend is now history.
Miranda Priestly may have been a fictional character, but her observation is very real: Consumers nowadays rarely have control over what they like and don’t like.
But today’s tech-savvy generation is taking back the reins.
“Observant people, now with the tools that we have through technology, can do what Pantone does,” Maum said.
Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat are disrupting the world of trend forecasting because social media allows for a higher level of creativity than established trend forecasting companies can provide. They are also losing credibility to social media influencers, who are now dictating trends directly to consumers. Ultimately, trend forecasters can’t churn out predictions fast enough to keep up with the rapid pace of fashion and beauty trends as demanded by today’s social media-obsessed culture.
A trend forecasting agency is only as successful as its ideas, and that’s where the problem begins. Trend forecasting powerhouses like Pantone and WGSN have to answer to shareholders, which can hinder creativity. Because these companies can’t always deliver cutting edge ideas, it has become harder for them to prove to their clients that they are the ones in the know.
“The mass-market retail sector is increasingly seen as more reactive than innovative, and despite the number of agencies now operating, many major companies are obtaining information from the same place, causing the high street, in particular, to become overburdened with facsimile products,” wrote Kate Hart in her 2015 article for notjustlabel.com, “The Future of Fashion Forecasting.”
Hart said because so many designers and merchandisers religiously follow the predictions of large-scale trend forecasters, their products can seem almost plagiarized — turning away potential new clients.
The idea that true creativity lessens in a professional setting is not new. American sociologist Herbert Blumer described the phenomenon in his 1969 essay, “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection.” In this essay, he introduces the Collective Selection Theory, which states that the way women dress is reflective of society and its happenings, like the political climate of the time.
“This responsiveness in its more extended form seems to be the chief factor in formation of what we speak of as a ‘spirit of the times’ or a zeitgeist,” Blumer said in his essay. Because professionals in the fashion industry are so closely intertwined, they all tend to generate the same ideas, Blumer writes. Distance from this professional world allows for more creative freedom.
Bloggers and social media influencers may not only experience increased creativity but may also be more deeply immersed in the cultural zeitgeist. Their distance from this industry allows them to curate, originate and generate trends that more directly speak to what the general public is experiencing.
This is what makes influencers so powerful as marketers. According to research conducted by the financial news website Business Insider, the influencer marketing industry was a $9 billion industry in 2019 and is expected to grow to $15 billion by 2022.
- Courtney Maum
At one time, the most successful product endorsements came from royalty, celebrities or others considered by the general public to be the richest, the prettiest or the most elite. What makes social media influencers different is that they came to fame by communicating directly with their audience. Their followers listen to them because they feel like they can achieve, for example, the smoky eye from a tutorial, or the New Year’s Eve outfit from an Instagram post.
This open communication also allows for influencers to keep up with the wants and needs of their followers in a way that established fashion forecasters cannot, said Dr. Lorynn Divita, a fashion forecasting professor at Baylor University and author of a fashion forecasting textbook. “Formerly, the gatekeepers were fashion journalists and editors, and now it has broadened to include bloggers and Instagrammers,” she said.
Influencers have become increasingly appealing to marketers, sometimes even designing their own lines in collaboration with a company — no forecaster required. From Claudia Sulewski’s recent line with Nordstrom BP to Jaclyn Hill’s successful “Champagne Pop” highlighter with Becca Cosmetics, influencer partnerships have infiltrated the beauty and fashion industries. Some influencers have even created their own lines, including YouTubers Lauren Elizabeth and Amanda Steele.
And there’s a bonus benefit to brand-influencer collaborations: When an influencer acts as the face of a brand, it gives the brand an opportunity to broaden its appeal to a wider range of consumers. “When you have someone younger or more diverse doing this, that representation certainly helps. You’re seeing other people that reflect you in that way,” Lascity said.
With influencers dominating social media and its marketing message via constant posting and promoting, one thing is certain: There will always be a need for speed. The very role of the influencer drives consumerism and guarantees constant content creation, reinvention and production in the fashion and beauty space.
Fast fashion is a prime example of this because it has changed the very nature of the trend, said Divita. “By having weekly deliveries of new products instead of seasonal like traditional retailers, people are motivated to shop much more frequently, and by doing so they are more inclined to try out new trends.”
Unfortunately, this rapid pace is at odds with the way traditional trend forecasters are able to operate. In years past, trend forecasters have extrapolated trends up to 20 years in the future. “The challenge has been to compete with this new generation, not only in terms of cost but also in terms of being seen as leaders in up-tothe-minute and relevant trend information,” Hart said.
While Pantone or WGSN may not go away anytime soon, social media shows that trend forecasters no longer hold the keys to the next big thing in fashion.
Models: Ashley Wang, Class of 2023; Paulina Leiva, Class of 2021; Kennedi Feigl, Class of 2023; Taran Stahle, Class of 2021; Alison Sheehan, Class of 2021 Photography: Chase Hall Stylists: Maddy McGuire, Terrell Kikis, Hailey Haase, Maggie Higgins, Emily Rourke, Isabel Meadows, Ryan Mikles Makeup: Eleanor Brown All clothing from MARKET unless stylist’s own.
Spring Awakening
Revel in the romance of this season‘s ultra-femme, flirty styles.
Picnic Perfect From Left:
Dress: LoveShackFancy, $365 Dress: Derek Lam, $695 Dress: Sea New York, Stylist’s Own Dress: Caroline Costas, $395
Top: Zimmermann, $595 Shorts: Zimmermann, $375
Spill the Tea On Left:
Dress: Sea New York, Stylist’s Own
On Right:
Dress: Derek Lam, $695
Daydreamer
Dress: Acler, $550
Better Together From Left:
Dress: Zimmermann, $695 Cardigan: Maison Margiela, $580 Skirt: Maggie Marilyn, $415 Dress: Rococo Sand, Stylist’s Own Dress: Zimmerman, $1100 Dress: Acler, $550
Think Pink
Top: Zimmermann, $595 Shorts: Zimmermann, $375 Jewelry, Model's Own
smulook
smulook Pick up your Spring/Summer issue of SMU Look and head to your nearest pool #summervibes
Formulating Change
Facing few options for flattering foundations, women of color get creative.
Lauren Perry steps up to the cosmetics counter and braces herself for the frustration of finding the right foundation. Perry is African-American, and she said that’s why she knows the process will be neither quick nor easy. “It is so rare for me just to pull something off the shelf and know it is going to hit my skin tone every single time,” said Perry, a 25-year-old marketing professional from Dallas. “I’m not the darkest, I’m not the lightest, and I’m not even the medium, so it is all just a pain in the neck. I never have just one foundation. It never fits me.”
If she can’t find the right shade, Perry launches her backup plan: mixing different shades of foundation on the back of her hand. “I’ve gotten really good at it so I don’t waste too much product by over-mixing a specific shade,” she said.
Southern Methodist University student Annette Bolomboy can relate. As an African-American, she said she’s had to blend her own formula before. Bolomboy also works as a model, and she said not even professional make-up artists can find foundation shades for her skin. “For the other models, who typically are white, they’ll always have their foundation color, but for me, I don’t even ask anymore, I just bring my foundation,” she said.
Major beauty brands have made progress. Fenty Beauty, for example, boasts 50 different shades, up from 40 when it launched in 2017, and last year Lancôme featured black actresses Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o in ads for its new Teint Idole foundation. The incentive is certainly there: Black women spend over 80 percent more on beauty products than the rest of the market, according to a 2018 Nielsen Company report on the impact of African-American consumers. But women of color say there’s still a long way to go.
While the range of colors appears to be growing, appearances
By Olivia Mars
can be deceiving. That’s because a visual color match doesn’t always correspond to an actual color match when the liquid is applied to the skin. Chemists hired for a 2019 Business of Fashion industry study analyzed multiple commonly available foundations marketed to women of color and discovered that, despite pigment differences, many of the foundations were formulated with the same base shade, which can make darker shades appear chalky, according to the study.
Luckily, African-American businesswomen have stepped up to fulfill the foundation needs of this still-underserved market segment. Melissa Butler founded Lip Bar in 2011 in part because she was frustrated with the beauty industry and its lack of diversity, she told Instyle magazine. Lip Bar offers 26 shades of its foundation online. Customers can request up to three free foundation samples, and there’s even a virtual matching tool that compares its shades to other brands to help facilitate a perfect match.
This spring, Black Opal relaunched with new ownership and a renewed commitment to luxury cosmetics formulated specifically for women of color. Originally founded in 1994, the brand was bought last year by Cheryl Mayberry McKissack, former COO of the publishing company behind Ebony magazine, and Desiree Rogers, former social secretary to Michelle Obama. “You’ve got two black women advocating on behalf of women of color globally, on their skincare, on their cosmetics, on their colors, on the ingredients that are being put into their product,” Mayberry McKissack told Vogue magazine. “We take that very seriously.”
Bolomboy is hopeful that the big brands will begin to face reality. “They need to break the barrier as to what they define as beauty,” she said. “Beauty is everything — different skin colors, different hair types. Diversity within everything.”
#Shelfie good looks
Straight from your countertop to your Instagram feed, here are the products pretty enough to post — that actually work.
1Beauty Fridge Keep cool with the chicest addition to the beauty scene, a skincare fridge. These pint-size appliances help extend the shelf life of your favorite products, make them work better and provide cute content for your social media feeds. Use your fridge to store products with active ingredients, sheet masks, facial tools, probiotics and even nail polish. — Caroline Lidl Amazon.com, $40
Latisse Need a lift to your lashes? Latisse is your best friend. Swipe a drop of the serum on your lash line at night, and before you know it, your lashes will reach new lengths. This product requires a prescription, but it is so worth it. — Meredith Welborn 2
Diptyque Mini Candle Get a whiff of this! Parisian candle company Diptyque offers an array of olfactory indulgences that look as great as they smell. Illuminate your beauty counter with these petite luxuries. — Caroline Lidl 3
Aesop Meet the Melbourne-based skincare brand that is blowing up. Aesop’s sleek and modern packaging paired with its high-quality plant-based ingredients provide a positive sensory experience. Try out these hand soaps and lotions and quickly fall in love with the rest of this brand’s amazing products. — Chloe Smith 4
BergdorfGoodman.com, $39
5Fenty Gloss Bomb The perfect product in the prettiest packaging, this fan-favorite lip gloss by celebrity brand Fenty is an absolute essential. Its combination of unbeatable shine and conditioning ingredients are the simplest way to loveable lips. — Caroline Lidl
Sephora.com, $19
Glossier Solution Skincare junkies, we’ve found your Solution. This chemical exfoliator is a Glossier go-to. It is gentle enough for everyday use, but the combination of AHA, BHA and PHA turns over dead skin cells to reveal incredible glowy skin. — Mary-Wesley Maddox 6
Glossier.com, $24
7Bamboo Makeup Remover Pads Remove makeup, reduce waste! Bamboo is one of the world’s fastest-growing renewable resources and the secret behind the best reusable makeup remover pads. The bamboo fabric is gentle on skin and so easy to wash. — Caroline Lidl
