THE TREND IS WHAT'S NOT THERE

On the paradoxes of trend forecasting

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We recently started putting together new thoughts on how to forecast fashion for the coming political era. They are still a work in progress, but the idea is essentially that if you can find the right way to sum up the political moment, you can then translate it into a social trend, and then go from there into a dominant style trend. Contrary to some trend forecasting practices, some of the questions we find ourselves asking are how to take the long view, what will endure in the bigger picture, what needs to change, and what’s a “real” trend compared to a random blip in “trend chop” (more on this later).

Here is a short version of the notes we shared:

To state the already obvious: it’s clearly an extremely reactionary moment, rejecting positivity and “tolerance,” openly rejecting “diversity,” exchanging vice-signaling for for virtue-signaling

The tariffs are definitely going to affect fashion consumption

And the attitude of the times will be expressed through fashion as a social language

So what can we forecast for the fashion implications of the coming era?

Neoliberalism → *cultural scenario known as Mass Indie in which the mainstream was made up of niches and any subcultural expression was “allowed” and superficially “celebrated” within the mainstream → normcore was an attempt to reconcile mass indie’s paradoxes through style (norm is mass, core is indie)

“[This Political Moment]” → leads to what [________] cultural scenario? → which can be summed up in what [________] dominant style?

• Is it just going to be more awkward suits in performance fabrics and skinny legs, like what the menswear guy is always warning us about?

• Is it going to be “Sporty and Rich” faux-preppy mood board basic?

• Is it going to be St. John, Mytheresa, subdued and matronly “modest”?

• Is it going to be Handmaid’s Tale x Staud millennial trad cottagecore modest?

• Will the reintroduction of open violence against certain identities bringing back “punk” visual expression? Or are we too far gone for that?

• Does body fascism in the form of the hardbody skinny white girl even still work in the age of Ozempic?

Theoretically something should “swing back” or be different than what it was before. One future step will be to try to apply Mcluhan square to this topic.

There are quite a few people discussing this at the moment. Edmond called it the “dark mode shift”. Our new friend Eugene has declared in a recent video that shame is being rejected and that the 80s are back. And while the cultural shift is undeniable, the aesthetic implications aren’t a given. Neofascist bag culture bears some similarity to 80s greed-is-good, but the style ramifications will play out in a way that is unique (and perhaps, uniquely cursed).

As we pondered this topic, we came across another interesting piece: Regressive Nostalgia, from WHAT’S ANU by Anu Lingala. She makes the argument that “Regressive Nostalgia clings to the fallacy that we can somehow rewind to a time when these [social] issues simply did not exist; a time when, for instance, America seemed great.” (Read her post for more.)

We happen to think this name is very close, but no cigar, “transgressive nostalgia” being a more accurate label for the larger social, cultural and aesthetic trend.

First of all, nobody would call their own thing “regressive” – it bakes in an external, judgmental viewpoint, which dampens it. (Just because you think someone’s behavior is backwards doesn’t mean they do. They almost definitely think it will make things better in some way, just by tearing things down or “shaking things up”.) By contrast, transgression is something more associated with a style (like punk, or trolls), and speaks more to the true energy of the trend being described — its erotic and emotional charge, which is the essential ingredient.

Even though at Nemesis HQ we fall cleanly on the more progressive side of things, it’s easy to understand the desire to rip down the patronizing hippie firmament, ripe with its contradictions. We may be librarycels ourselves, but when Blackbird Spyplane (who we like) rhapsodizes about how special it is to return a used library book, we too roll our eyes. Lovers of slow fashion, authentic media, and social openness have a tendency to lay it on thick. Which is where you can start to imagine Transgressive Nostalgia as a counter-trend in fashion and media, too.

(From Nemesis friend Maria Tsylke)

Transgressive Nostalgia also fits the bill as a proper contradiction, which is essential for stickiness in marketing. Transgressive nostalgia is contradictory because we think of nostalgia as innocent and sweet, and we think of transgression as violent and harsh. Even though nostalgia and reactionary politics are linked, they are not interchangeable. Longing for the past and insisting on a return to an earlier state are two very different things. Our understanding of the significance of contradiction in branding is informed by Rem Koolhaas, via Michael Rock, who famously cautioned us to “reduce everything to its most brutal contradiction”. It’s also related to the concept of “paradessence,” from the book the Savage Girl by Alex Shakar.

(From The Pinocchio Theory)

This is all a very long preamble to what we see as the most interesting and provocative part of Anu’s post, which is less about the nostalgia trend itself, and more contextual. She’s talking about the bias among trend forecasters toward more positive or optimistic or liberal-coded content, which in the case of “tradwives,” led to the omission of an obviously important trend.

“Most people (at least those I know) enter these fields because they are optimistic about the idea of contributing towards a better future. If I ignore the existence of a signal like tradwives, which I know clearly has bigger cultural implications beyond social media content, then I am technically not doing my job properly. But this ignorance is somewhat of an unspoken consensus in the trend forecasting and brand strategy worlds. WGSN is one of the biggest trend agencies in the world, with tens of thousands of reports on its website, and a cursory search of their database delivers (3) minor results for the term tradwife/tradwives. I searched this share drive of 200+ trend reports for 2025 and found exactly (2) minor mentions. Minor like, ‘tradwife’ floating within a word map graphic with no further context. Nobody is talking **about it, and that’s purposeful — nobody wants to be identifiable as the reason why a brand promotes something they consider problematic.” (What’s Anu)

This speaks to something extremely important, which is that the trend, the real trend, is always what’s not there. And by this we mean that if a trend is already well described in multiple instances, if a trend is in commercial trend reports, trend databases, the New York Times, and other major outlets, it is probably not a fresh or emerging trend. And moreover, it is probably warped in some way by its description.

It is one of the paradoxes of trend forecasting: if you have tons of super clear examples to provide alongside a trend (and especially if those are secondary sources) the trend is either not worth paying much attention to, or is in a very different part of its lifecycle than it appears in the examples. Which means the “real” forecasting would probably be something about how this trend might have a second coming that refines it, or a backlash, or a distortion, or suggest something new coming down the pike. Which in more conventional or corporate contexts can be difficult, because they have to actually believe you (apart from the “examples”). This is where trend forecasting is much more an art than a science.

To put it another way, tradwives are obviously a trend. The omission of certain information about cultural change or attitudes is also a trend. The halo of the omission of the tradwives in these sources speaks to its reality as a trend; the disconnect between the obviousness and gravity of the trend and its lack of representation in conventional sources is part of the texture of the trend. The trend (forgive us) is in the negative space. And the future of this trend is at least partially unspoken, which is why we are trying, and perhaps still failing, to name it with “transgressive nostalgia” or “the 80s are coming back”.

This also reminds us of a recent X thread from Nemesis friend Mat Dryhurst, which brings it back to another favorite topic at the moment, AI and how it affects trend and strategy work (stay tuned for more information about our Autonomous Strategy workshop, which is coming up).

Mat was speaking to the weird distorting effects of having new AI models trained on mass media reports of culture, without controlling for the way PR distorts description, or the way that cultural movements are just generally not well captured. If you’ve ever been a part of something that gets covered in the press, you probably have experienced this.

The compounding effects of this distortion when they fuel the results of AI models are very interesting and strange to contemplate, as is the future of trend forecasting in this context. Some common questions cross the two domains. What is the information we need to triangulate the future? What are we using as our stepping stones for intellectual speculation? Where do we need to point to the world, and where do we need to leap? To what degree is this distortion itself actually creating and feeding trends (via algos, mass media, and increasingly LLMs)?

As algorithms amplify anything that’s emerging, trends get named, scrambled around, then peak and die, often prematurely. As “trend chop” increases, it becomes harder and harder for “real” organic trends to brew and scale up. Which brings us back to the beginning, asking ourselves how to name the now, how to understand what’s coming, and what it will all mean tomorrow.

Thank you for reading and for your support, it means the world to us! You can learn more about our new workshop Autonomous Strategy and sign up here.