From Fashion Forecasting to Coolhunting: Prevision Models in Fashion and in Cultural Production

Abstract

The transition from haute couture to prêt-à-porter in the 1960s created a great revolution in terms of both production and consumption for the fashion industry. One of the most relevant aspects of this process was the emergent demand for predicting future trends, in order to acquire a higher level of competitiveness compared to rivals. This time is considered the birth of a structured activity known as fashion forecasting, managed by the bureaux de style and embodied in trendbooks. In recent times this activity is often referred to as ‘coolhunting,’ a striking term that implies an idea of research as intuitive ‘hunt’ for incipient signals in fashion and reflected in consumers’ lifestyles. This chapter considers coolhunting, a developing professional activity, as an emblematic place of symbolic mechanism, which is crucial to explaining not only the fashion system but also many cultural processes of production and consumption of material goods rich in immaterial contents. While coolhunting is historically rooted in fashion forecasting, it is also characterised by a relevant set of novelties, above all the shifting of research from a monolithic interest in fashion fads to socio-cultural trends that involve the whole symbolic imagination of the customer. A second important point is how the fashion forecasting model has extended to many branches of cultural production that are increasingly involved in a trend-oriented logic. This chapter critically examines coolhunting. It asks: what impact does such a practice have on the geography of trends? And how does it contribute to the social construction of authenticity and taste barriers between the mainstream and alternative niches? Coolhunters emerge as ‘messengers of distinction,’ the matching point between the consumers’ need of distinction and the producers’ attempt at creating distinctive goods.

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