FASHION / THE DEMISE OF THE FASHION ORACLE

The trend forecasters of the 80s and 90s were a modern-day oracle. Trend forecasters both predicated new fashions and helped to create them. In this way, they were instrumental in shaping the zeitgeist. When Faith Popcorn proclaimed that the early 90s were about “cocooning”, she not only put a name on the desire to stay at home (rather than going out), but she initiated a cultural shift, making visible the values of introversion and solitude. This created a mega-trend that lasted for almost a decade.

The methods of the forecaster were varied, and included both quantitative and qualitative research tools, from surveys to speaking to random people at airports, supermarkets or at the bus station. What was on the minds of the ordinary person would then be curated and merged into concise and powerful messages, for lifestyle brands to buy in order to know in which direction to go.  

In 2007, the first iPhone was launched. Smartphones had already been around for some time, but the difference was that the iPhone was designed for a visual culture, made clear through the already from the beginning excellent camera. A few years later, in 2010, Instagram was launched. In real-time, people could see what happened in other continents, while they could follow cultural debates and social shifts through Facebook.

Popcorn’s methods of hitting up strangers to informally talk about everything and nothing was still relevant but became gradually overshadowed by the new technology and all its finesses. In early 2015, Lidewij Edelkoort, prominent forecaster, proclaimed the death of fashion, an unfortunate effect of the accelerated pace of both fashion production and consumption (brought on by digital technology). 

It was not the first time that fashion had been proclaimed outdated. Already in 1976, art theorist Quentin Bell had done the same, in the appendix to his book On Human Finery. Looking back, both Bell and Edelkoort were correct in their assessment. Fashion as we know it has now been fundamentally transformed into something else. Part of this transformation is that the role that Edelkoort had at the time she made the prediction no longer exists. 

In 2013, New York Times published an article by fashion critic Suzy Menkes, called “The Circus of Fashion”. Menkes was critical of the then-new (and now obsolete) phenomenon of the fashion blogger. This blogger had merged all the traditional fashion media positions into one person: Editor, journalist, photographer, stylist and assistant had been reduced to the singular blogger, who promoted herself by dressing extravagantly. In the article, Menkes was upset that attention had been moved from the fashion show’s catwalk, where the new clothes were displayed, and to the outside of the event, where bloggers posed for pictures, sometimes without even caring about the show inside. It was a clash between traditional and new media. 

Ten years later, and the still photos Menkes was upset about have turned into short and disposable clips for Tiktok and Instagram. Everything is part of an ever-ongoing now. 

The history has become obsolete, and no one cares about the future. This is in line with what German philosopher Walter Benjamin once defined as jetztzeit, or now-time: time that has been detached from the continuum of history. 

In an era without history and no future, there can be no oracles. Since Popcorn and Edelkoort and their peers have left their forecaster-positions, no one has replaced them. This signifies more than a simple shift in the trend forecasting business; it says something about how we, in the post-modern era, experience and value time, or perhaps more to the point, how we experience the lack of time. 

/Philip Warkander