What do trend forecasters actually do?

Apparently they can predict the future. We asked actual trend forecasters if that’s true.

By Eilidh Duffy

Over a year ago, during the AW24 menswear shows, I noticed something really weird. That there were multiple brands releasing collections that had proposed a very specific and unusual colour combination. Rancid greens and zesty yellows matched with deep, royal purples were seemingly everywhere. It was the season Prada referenced Waluigi, Martine Rose matched butter-coloured snakeskin shoes with midnight purple leather pants, and similar tones were peppered across runways from Hermès to Doublet, Dior to Denzel Patrick. Poppy purples, yellows and greens were suddenly very in, and it was often proposed that you might wear them together. Considering I had already been working in fashion for a while, it might come as a surprise that I’d only really started noticing brands dealing out similar products and colourways half a decade in. This, as you probably know, is how fashion works, dummy. This particular seasonal colour proposition, however, felt more obvious to me, more deliberate. Like someone had gone round and told them all to do it.