You All Look The Same

There's that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly delivers her monologue about the "cerulean" sweater Andy is wearing. She spits venom at Andy's smirk about two belts chosen for a shoot looking identical, and dissects the fashion industry in a few seconds, explaining how Andy's decision to pick the frumpy sweater was decidedly out of her hands, tracing the department store sale-box find to its earlier colour origins from collections of Oscar de la Renta and Yves Saint Laurent, directed through rooms of fashion brand builders, creative directors, department store buyers, and those souls selecting the outfits for shoots at Runway Magazine where Andy now works. It is a humbling realisation for Andy, and ultimately sets her on the path to fashion freedom. Or is it fashion prison?

You see, you too may likely be clothed in designs selected for you from a few folk in fashion forecasting. Perhaps you have fashion free-will and this does not apply to you. But anyone stepping into a clothing store these days will undoubtedly be subject to selected sameness. The first reason for this may just be down to technology. New fabrics with new technologies spun in to them, shown in trade shows around the world, will find their way into many new garments from fast fashion to designer brands. But there is another reason cerulean blue sweaters might be just on the horizon.

Trend forecasting consultancies. There are a handful of global businesses that offer these services to the fashion industry. The gold standard is WGSN. Looking ahead between six months and two years, depending on what they are forecasting and for whom, they use social media, global cultural and consumer data, pop culture and street style (yes, you in the baggy jorts) to advise big brands what everyone's going to want to wear in the near future. Like sniffer dogs, finding the packed chourico in your luggage from your trip to the Med, they delve deep into getting the low-down of what's what. Dissecting the work of global creative and art directors, trawling the freshest feeds on IG and TikTok, noting the snaps of the best, artsy photographers, and mingling with the finest at every fashion week fandango, these sleuths add a 'lil AI to the mix and, voilà, a taupe jacket with shoulder pads and diamanté epaulettes, snipped in at the waist, to be found, next season, for your purchasing pleasure at your nearest big-brand fashion store in whatever city in the world you find yourself in, from Hamburg to Harare.

So how do you free yourself from this mad reality, where you're not actually in charge of your own fashion destiny? It's not found in following others on social media. They too are slaves to the algorithm. The solution is not necessarily in resolving to thrift for every garment you purchase from now on. The solution is also not to forego fashion entirely, that is just not green.

The solution is to be authentically you. And do whatever you want. Buy that cerulean sweater if you really love it. That is Supergreen.

Some more trend forecasting consultancies: Stylus, The Future Laboratory, Stylumia, Trendwatching, Heuritech, Future Snoops, Peclers Paris