Hello again, you’re at Part 3 of my series on TrendWatching, so make sure you go back and read the previous parts first:

TrendWatching Part 1: Philosophy

TrendWatching Part 2: Castlecore, Pre-Raphaelites, and Feminist Nuns

So we’ve talked a lot about the different levels of TrendWatching (in short, the deeper you go, the further ahead of a trend you can get) but there’s also deeper currents in Trendwatching that affect what’s happening on the surface level. Last post we talked a lot about the Collective Unconscious. Things will affect the Collective Unconscious of society as a whole, and that will influence trends. Fashion and Advertising keep a really close eye on these movements. Both industries rely on noticing trends early and adapting to them, but they also see the seed of a trend, then weaken it or strengthen it by following it or not. Fashion and Advertising can work with or against trends — but they’re always aware of the trends — and what’s driving them.

We’ve been talking about the philosophy of trends, and then examples of specific trends I’ve seen passing thru while I’ve been working in the field. We can sum up Trends and Trendwatching with the following rules, which lend to Trends being somewhat predictable:

1) Trends are Cyclical. 2) Trends are Reactionary. And 3) Certain Trends are Triggered by Certain Emotions or Current Events.

1 — Trends are Cyclical: as we’ve all heard before, there are no “new” ideas — there are just endless remixes of the same material under different names. As we discussed in previous posts in this series, Romanticism becomes popular when the world is scary and ominous, and we need escape. So in Fashion, you see the Art Nouveau aesthetic of the 1890s-1900s coming back under the New Age and Bohemian movement of the late 1960s. And now folks are already forecasting a return of the Gothic aesthetic, which is just a darker shade of the same Romanticism.

How does this affect our industry? Well, you can see it in SciFi/Fantasy subgenres remixing and returning over and over again under different names.

In the early 2000s to 2010s, Urban Fantasy was very very hot. And then we all collectively burned out on it. Now it’s back as “Romantasy”. Same for Steampunk coming back and being called “Gaslamp” now. A new generation is “discovering” these genres as if they were new, while savvy publishers are bringing out older books under updated covers to attract this new audience. And while people write think pieces insisting the new genre is not exactly the same as the previous incarnation, the fact is that it’s close enough to be considered a return of a similar (if not exactly the same) aesthetic.

I worked on the Soulless book series, and at the time we called it Steampunk. But now folks are insisting it actually fits into the Gaslamp genre better.

 

2 — Trends are Reactionary: Think of Trends as a pendulum. They swing one way, and then as soon as they saturate the culture they swing the other way. This happens in the Fashion and Beauty industries constantly. (After all, fashion and beauty companies have to keep selling products don’t they? They aren’t going to do that if you can keep using what you bought last season.) My example here is with body shapes: in the 80s curvy models were in, then in the 90s we had heroin chic and superthin models and celebrities. Then the Kardashians brought back curves in the 2000s. How about eyebrows? Bushy natural eyebrows were in for a while, then thin over plucked brows. Then suddenly folks are combing and gelling their brows to look bigger again. It often feels like as soon as a trend hits, it’s equal and opposite trend is the inevitable next.

Cindy Crawford’s 80s curves

Kate Moss’s 1990’s Heroin Chic

The peak of the 2000s curvy trend

We’ve already talked about how this affected the style of SFF book covers by showing how the trends for covers were pushed towards the abstract and illustrated not once but twice in reaction to the slickness and perfection of new technologies (first CGI, then AI).

3 — Trends are Triggered by Current Events/Emotions: As we’ve discussed in earlier parts, when the world is scary, we crave escapism. When a recession or depression hits, gender roles become much more conservative and rigid. When politics feel regressive and scary then we get dystopian and apocalyptic fiction. We can track the sale of red lipstick thru the decades and predict what political environment was happening at the time. Are we saying each and every person reacts in the same way to the same emotion? No, but the Collective Unconscious is feeling that emotion in general, and it starts influencing the creatives, the artists, the designers. Then that creation makes its way out into the world and that art starts to influence all kinds of people, which strengthens that emotion in society. So it starts acting as a feedback loop until something shifts in the real world and current events to change that emotion to something new.

How does this affect our field? Well, history repeats. We can look at current affairs and look at history and see when the last time the world felt similar. Then we can look to what trends occurred last time that environment happened. Chances are, that trend will repeat in a similar form again. The Medievalism/Romanticism trend breakdown from the last post is a great example of this.

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So with this understanding of the deeper currents that affect Trends you will be more likely to pick up on historical and emotional cues driving the companies that hire you, and the fans that buy from you. And you’ll be able to see where your art and the current trends intersect, and that’s where you’ll find the biggest response to your art.