Trend Report NTU FMB

Trend Map Report 2019/2020

Contents 1 3 5 7

Introduction

Introduction Purpose of forecasting The Media

9 11 13 15

Influences

Influences Tailoring with a Twist Evolution of the trend

17 19 21 23

Influences on trend

Influences on trend Theories

Theories

25 27 29 31

Theories

Conclusion

Editorial

Concept

1

Introduction

What are trends?

Trends are the foundations of the fashion industry. Today’s fashion consumers can’t read a magazine article, blogpost or promotional email without being persuaded to shop the latest trend; but what is a trend? In short, a trend is the direction in which something new or different moves. Trends have become associated with aspects of our culture; the way today’s society live their lives, their everchanging outlook on life and their personal goals and aspirations.

It is a process influenced by an abundance of factors. Companies depend on trend forecasts to ensure they are selecting the correct trend for their consumer and not wasting their money on a fad which is irrelevant to their target market.

Trend Forecasting

Introduction

3

Fashion forecasting is an ongoing process. Companies are continuously assessing external factors and identifying potential influences on their upcoming seasons. Successful, well respected brands allocate huge budgets for their forecasts. According to Georgia Illingworth (notjustalabel.com), in 2016 businesses were paying around £16,500 annually for their WGSN subscriptions; this price is likely to have risen in the past 3 years due to the validity of the website’s information. Many companies use external trend forecasting specialists and sites (such as WGSN) to gather the information they need; others choose to do the research themselves to keep originality (Jackson 2001), most will use a combination of the two.

Any indication of a shift in consumer lifestyles or thought patterns could be used to detect an upcoming trend. Trend forecasters will be sent all over the world to observe art, fashion, music, shopping and other cultural factors that could influence fashion change. After a business has gathered relevant information, they will use it to fuel the direction for a specific season, put their own interpretation on it and then identify what type of consumer it will be aimed at (Kim et al, 2011).

The Bohemian Trend interpreted by different designers

CHLOÉ

AYNI

ELISABETTA FRANCHI

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Purpose of forecasting

Kim (2011) explains “long-term forecasts contribute to a fashion firm’s development strategies and help it make decisions related to repositioning or extending product lines, initiating new businesses and reviving brand images.” This quote gives an insight into the need for fashion forecasting. Kim is essentially saying that long-term forecasts help businesses plan up to 5 years ahead, which gives all departments a shared goal.

Additionally, brands can feel prepared and confident knowing that their plans are likely to succeed due to the science behind forecasting.

From business to business the purpose of fashion forecasting may differ slightly depending on the type of company they are. For early majority brands, such as Zara, trend forecasting is a huge part of their business as they need to be delivering the latest trends. Late majority brands, such as Next, will want to know the latest trends but won’t necessarily be concerned with introducing them into their lines instantly. Therefore, forecasting can be modified to suit each company, but the end goal is to maximise the profit made from each collection.

Purpose of forecasting

Fashion forecasts are used to identify new design elements that have the potential to become trends across a line, all of which can be influenced by several factors. These predications begin around two years before the style is introduced into the market (Kim et al, 2011).

The media

As the digital age has developed, so has the concept of trend forecasting; it has become a trend itself. Companies want as much background information as possible in order to plan their new ranges efficiently. Social media has only fuelled this movement further by unearthing the world of trend forecasting, making it more accessible to not only companies but consumers too.

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This, combined with the fact consumers no longer wait months for collections to go from catwalk to store, takes the exclusivity and mystery away from new trends. As the internet has developed, the amount of fashion blogs has also risen, yet another channel used to spread new trends.

Role of the media

“The Internet’s evolution over the years has been a key contributor to increasing the momentum of fashion information reaching consumers. This shift began as the new millennium approached, with the emergence of a handful of fashion-focused websites, which began producing fashion content online for the fashion-conscious consumer.“ - Bendoni (2017)

L

Influences

ynch and Strauss said “Fashion in the new millennium is brash, and doesn’t stop to ask permission. […]. Our lives, our intellect, our religion, our creativity, our sexuality are all the vocabular y of fashion.”

(Changing Fashion, 2007) From this quote it can be drawn that in the 21st century, there are many factors involved in influencing fashion. These influences are explained in the following section.

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Fashion is a form of expression for many consumers.

Therefore, having a firm grasp on changing attitudes, demographics and behaviours is essential for a business to survive and thrive in the fashion industry.

The Zeitgeist (spirit of the time) plays a vital part in trend forecasting as it represents a widely adopted mindset of what is socially and culturally appropriate. An example of a company being ignorant to the Zeitgeist is Gucci.

Gucci released a roll neck jumper in 2018 (left) which they withdrew after social media erupted (see Tweet to left) and rightfully accused them of blackface. If this had happened even as little as 10 years ago, the repercussions for Gucci would’ve been far less serious as racism was more overlooked and disregarded.

Lifestyle has a major impact on developing trends. The surge of conscious consumerism has caused a rise in micro trends such as veganism and vegetarianism, this affects consumers purchasing habits; including the source and material of the products they buy. “Consumer demand for sustainable products that are ethically-sourced, good for the environment and made by brands that have shared core beliefs has never been greater.�(Baizley, 2018) This quote from a WGSN article on the sustainability macro trend supports the idea that consumers are changing their own lifestyles in a fight to protect the planet from further damage.

71%

Of younger consumers would like to receive rewards for recycling unwanted clothing

57%

Would like to receive rewards preferring to buy clothing from environmentally conscious etailers

(Mintel, 2019)

Influences

Fashion trends are also influenced by the current economic environment. For example, the UK is currently experiencing some uncertainty in their economy due to Brexit, this is provoking consumers to become anxious. Mintel reports “[consumer spending] is expected to slow as consumers are adopting more cautious spending habits, which will inevitably have a negative effect on discretionary categories like clothing and accessories.” Economic anxiety has caused there to be a rise in vintage and second-hand clothes, it has also influenced younger millennials to start reworking old clothing to meet their financial needs.

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of Gen Z participants claim it’s important to get real value for money.

- Chiquoine (2017)

65%

Marian Park at WGSN (2018) explains “Young Millennials are shopping vintage in a new way, with vintage boutiques creating strong followings on Instagram, reinvigorating the resale market with strong styling, photography and an approachable price point – items are often under £100.” This shows that consumers adapt the clothing they wear and buy depending on the economic climate, this in turn creates new trends.

“Gen Z is rapidly growing in spending power, and has developed a finely honed sense for deals�

- Jackie Chiquoine

Tailoring Tailoring with a Twist

with a Twist

13

This section will use the ‘Tailoring with a Twist’ trend to illustrate how trends develop, evolve and are influenced.

Tailoring with a Twist takes any classic tailored piece such as the blazer or trench coat and puts a vibrant twist on it using bright colours, patterns, textures, silhouettes or a combination of the above. This trend has taken a classic style and refreshed it to meet consumer wants and needs.

Street style

Hellessy Cavalli

Prada

“According to global fashion search engine Lyst, searches for “suits” have surged by 23 per cent in the last three months, with “pink” and “bright” among the most common search terms, reflecting a unilateral craving for suits that are vivid and vibrant.”

(Petter, 2019)

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ution

1940

1950

Wartime Silhouette

Fit & Flare

1930

Pantsuit

1920

Casual Chic

Suffragette Suit

Evolution of the trend

1910

To understand Tailoring with a Twist, understanding the evolution of tailoring itself is essential. Being a classic, tailoring has experienced an abundance of alterations due to the zeitgeist and political events.

The evolution of women’s tailoring is illustrated in the timeline.

1960 1970 1980

Anything Goes

The Power Woman

Masculine Pantsuit

Skirt Suit

The

Evolution Evolu

1990 2000

Influences on the trend

Influences Social & Cultural

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Firstly, female empowerment and feminism have been major influences on this trend. Women have been protesting through their style for decades; from the timeline it’s clear there are links between women-in-the-media’s style and social events.

Lady Gaga wore an oversized, Marc Jacobs suit to a Women in Hollywood event in October. Gaga commented “As a woman who was conditioned at a very young age to listen to what men told me to do, I decided today I wanted to take the power back. Today I wear the pants”.

The suit Gaga wore had a masculine silhouette which disguised her figure.

This connotes empowerment as the event was celebrating women for their brains and not their physical appearance (Schmidt, 2018), Gaga’s suit paired with her quote was a salute to this.

Secondly, as gender fluidity is becoming accepted, more androgynous styles are appearing in collections.

Designers, such as Thom Browne¬, have been incorporating stereotypically feminine pieces like skirts into their menswear collections.

“The first time women wore suits on the red carpet was in another period of protest and change: in the late 1960s & 70s.�

- Hannah Marriott (2017)

“Few other articles of clothing adhere to the gender binary as strictly as the everyday suit.

Most suits worn by men aim to make them look more masculine. Often that is the manufacturer’s intention.

Most suits worn by women emphasize the curve of the hips and bust. The arc of the spine, and every delicate taper prescribed.”

Influences on the trend

Tailor Cooperative (n.d)

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The acceptance of gender fluidity has caused tailoring to evolve, designers no longer require their suits to adhere to gender binary.

In 2018, WGSN reported that “the market has become saturated [with athleisure wear], leaving female shoppers wanting something fresh and different. In A/W 17/18 we saw the tailoring trend start to trickle into assortments and for S/S 18, this was amplified.”

This quote suggests that Tailoring with a Twist has been influenced by consumers demanding something fresh and different, this shows that it was accelerated by the saturation of another trend within the market.

Influences Economical This trend could also have been adopted by consumers due to the current economic state. As mentioned previously (pg.16), UK consumers are becoming more cautious which is expected to negatively affect the amount they spend on fashion items.

Women may be borrowing their male family members tailored items instead of purchasing their own, this allows them to follow the oversized, masculine aspect of the trend without spending any extra money.

Another economical influence on this trend is gender equality in the workplace. In 2015 the NYC commission on Human Rights announced new guidelines that prohibited “enforcing dress codes, uniforms, and grooming standards that impose different requirements based on sex or gender.”(Greenberg, 2016) This law change has influenced female consumers in the US to feel more equal and less like they are required to assert themselves in their workplaces by ‘fitting in’ with their male counterparts. This has had a negative influence on this trend as women have started to dress more casually in jeans and skirts.

(Adapted Spenceley, H, 2019)

The Life of A Trend – Henrik Vejlgaard

Theories

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Trend Drivers

Inventors, policy makers, world events, cultural, political, social change, changing attitudes

Trend Setters

Conceptual brands - translate concepts into actual products

Early Adopters

First to tap into emerging concepts

Early Majority

Like to see evidence of the trend in the media before adopting themselves

Late Majority

Late mainstreamers adopt the trend after it is firmly established

Conservatives

Don’t adopt trends until it is waning for other sectors/becomes a classic.

Anti-innovators

Actively resist faddish or short lived trends.

Sometimes become triggers for new trends.

Tailoring with a Twist According to Henrik Vejlgaard’s diamond theory, there are many different adopters of trends. Different types of brands fall into different brackets depending on when they adopt trends; some brands don’t need to take on trends instantly as it wouldn’t meet their consumer’s needs.

The Fashion Product Life Cycle

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This cycle helps a business to predict how long a trend will last, allows them to decide if it is practicable and if so what the approximate sales and profitability would be.

Time

Decline

Saturation

Maturity

Exploitation Stage

Market Development

Introduction

Product development

Fashion trends cannot last forever, each product has a life cycle; they are introduced, they peak, then decline and finally expire. Although the rate and duration of use vary, the diffusion of a specific fashion tends to follow a predictable cycle. [‌] The fashion cycle includes four major stages; introduction, growth, maturity, and decline (Easey, 1995).

Sales

Theories

(Brandon et al. 2015. adapted by Spenceley, H 2019)

Trend Position After passing through the Exploitation Stage; where businesses have exploited the trend and fully maximised on the sales opportunities which it provides. Tailoring with a Twist is now operating in the maturity stage. Plenty of variations of the product are available on the market; from brightly coloured Power Suits to vinyl trench coats.

Prada

More adventurous consumers can be seen wearing the trend from day to night, but some may still be buying for the first time. The next stage for this trend to enter is the saturation stage. When a product reaches saturation, it means it is widely available and sold at all levels of the marketplace. Tailoring with a Twist has currently only made its way into collections by early majority brands such as Zara and Topshop on the high street and Chanel and Prada at high end.

Zara

Theories

Shop Safari

Trickle Theories

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Historically, fashion trends follow a trickle-down pattern.

The trickle-down theory refers to a trend being born on the catwalk by early adopters and letting it trickle down to the late majority or conservatives. Trickledown theory is explained as “a hierarchical process whereby individuals with high status establish fashion trends, only to be imitated by lower status individuals wearing cheaper versions of the styles.� (Kaiser, 2010). Consumers who shop at high street and the more affordable brands seek identification with the more affluent and those at the top want to differentiate themselves from those socially below them. (Revell DeLong, n.d.)

Trends can also trickle across groups on similar social levels. As companies release looks at high-end down to ready-to-wear ranges new groups will adopt them.

Currently, trends can trickle-up from high street to the catwalk. An example of this would be the chunky trainer trend; the trend started in performance brands like adidas (and has now been adopted by designer brands such as Chanel.

Shop Safari

Nottingham

These pictures were taken in Nottingham in March 2019 when the shops were preparing their S/S19 ranges.

It was observed that there wasn’t a great deal of bright coloured tailoring in the high street stores; most of the tailoring identified was still very workwear focused without much differentiation in silhouette and style.

Nottingham is a city with a high student population. The Tailoring with a Twist trend hasn’t been able to establish it’s self fully there as students tend to dress casually to fit their lifestyles.

This shows that the Tailoring with a Twist trend has not been fully established and therefore has not been adopted by the late majority.

The

Future

Conclusion

From this report it can be drawn that all trends spark from a driving force, whether that be; a political event, social shift, a new policy or a domino effect of all the above. The media is the kindle which helps to fuel this spark into a fire by publicising the driver and putting it under the noses of trend setters who unearth a concept. From here, the concept is interpreted by early majority who make it more apparent to a wider audience of consumers.

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This report has analysed that trends can be influenced by several factors; they can take inspiration from different cultures, countries, social groups or events in the media and the economy. Trends can be short-lived (fad), slow diffusers (fashion) or they can stick for a long period of time and even come back around (classic).

Tailoring with a Twist is a variation on a classic style; therefore, it is likely to become a longer lasting fashion because the actual concept is something consumers are used to. Although this trend has potential to be long lasting, it has already hit the maturity stage; according to the cycle the next stage to enter is saturation. It has been observed that cheaper variations are starting to slowly appear, with mass market companies such as Pretty Little Thing starting to test the trend; this could accelerate the trend into saturation more rapidly and high-end brands will be onto the next concept.

Key Colours

In the future, this trend will be adopted by wary consumers for the daytime. For example, consumers will take a bold tailoring piece such as a patterned or block colour blazer and pair it with distressed denim jeans and trainers for an everyday look. This trend will still be used in formalwear. WGSN reported that the blazer dress is here to stay for A/W 19/20 and Tailoring with a Twist will remain current using simple silhouettes and fabrics (Walters, 2018).

As you can see from the ‘key colours’ the focus is earthy tones, WGSN said the palette “highlights the increasing importance of sustainably produced tones.” (Boddy, 2018) Trends in general are currently being heavily influenced by sustainability.

Brands will not only be using tones of a natural colour palette, they will also be more sustainable to produce (Boddy, 2018). Many high street brands such as H&M are bringing out ranges marketed as ‘sustainable’, this is likely to rise so companies can stay competitive. Although, most high-end brands won’t be as quick to adhere to this trend as they know their consumers have more loyalty, less choice and will shop with them regardless; until more affluent consumers demand sustainability it will be difficult to convert these brands.

Luxe Leather Brocade

Key Fabrics

Velvet

STEP INTO THE

BRIGHT Sleek shapes, bold shoulders and vibrant tones...It’s time to take tailoring to the next step.

Photoraphy by Marta Juhkami.

Styling by Heather Spenceley & Ella Swanson

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Tailoring is taking a twist this season. Bold colours are used to give this beloved classic an injection of vibrance. An essential for Summer. This page: from left: Elis wears lilac flared trouser, £25, belted blazer, £45. Both Pretty Little Thing. Gold hoop earrings, £1, Primark White chunky sole trainers, £49, Tamaris.

Suits no longer hide in the office. Opposite: lime green oversized blazer, £55, Asos.

Gold hoops, £6, Topshop.

Sunglasses, £3, Primark.

Black barely there heels, £25, River Island.

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LEFT TO RIGHT: SYDNEY WEARS LIME GREEN OVERSIZED BLAZER, £55, ASOS. GOLD HOOPS, £1, PRIMARK. SUNGLASSES, £3, PRIMARK CORAL BLAZER DRESS, £35, PRETTY LITTLE THING. GOLD HOOPS, £6, TOPSHOP. NIKE TN AIR MAX, £100, NIKE. 305

The

Concept 69% aged 16-34

71%

are employed Vogue (2019)

Concept

The concept behind this editorial was empowerment. Bright colours and natural lighting were used to lift the images. The bold stance and focused expression of the models shows power and confidence. This editorial would be featured in Vogue as the trend is classic and fits with the overall feel of the magazine and would also appeal to Vogue’s consumers. As most of their readers are employed females aged 16-34; these are attributes of a younger, affluent consumer who are is in the position and environment to adopt this trend.

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