AI Is Helping Pick What You’ll Wear in Two Years

There’s a group of people who could have told you that 2023 was going to be the year of Barbie pink before anyone else. And those “quiet luxury” fashions everyone was clamoring for with the end of Succession? They saw it coming from a mile away. These are the trend forecasters, people whose job is to distill the public’s mood and identify demand before the rest of us even know what we’re going to want. They hold their secrets close to the vest and for a hefty fee share insights into the future with their clients. The more accurately retailers and brands call trends, the more money they’ll make—and in the US, retail is already a $540 billion a year industry. It’s a tricky endeavor, and technology such as artificial intelligence and social media is changing how forecasting behemoths like NellyRodi and WGSN do their business.

For decades, trend forecasting was in the hands of a few people in the fashion industry. Editors at the likes of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue dictated styles from their pages—just think back to the ode to Diana Vreeland in Funny Face or the Anna Wintour character in The Devil Wears Prada. Marketing men on Madison Avenue controlled the advertising messages. Then came the smartphone, social media, bloggers, livestreaming and other tech that made fashion more visible—and calling trends more volatile. Today computers do a lot of the work.