For Creatives Seeking Emergent and Regenerative Future Foresight
Thought this week
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
- Unknown
Hello there!
A lot to unpack in today's Futuring dispatch:
Is the micro trend hamster wheel finally slowing down? - Insights
Nature is Positive - Report
Pioneers share their vision for 2025 - Forecast
Design Tomorrow: Is Speculative Design the key to Fashion retail's future? - Free event
Before we dive in, this is urgent: two-thirds of Accra's Kantamanto Market - West Africa's largest secondhand clothing market and crucial circular economy hub - have been devastated by fire, impacting thousands of livelihoods and families. Community leader Yayra Agbofah, founder of THE REVIVAL and AfroDistrict, has organised a GoFundMe campaign.
Phase 1 has been a success: providing essential aid (food, water, shelter, materials) to traders, Kayayei (female head porters), and migrant workers.
Phase 2 is where support is needed: Rebuilding lives and creating lasting community resilience. This phase is about more than reconstructing the market; restoring hope, ensuring safety, and building a stronger future for Kantamanto.
Is the microtrend hamster wheel finally slowing down?
I shared my insights on this [much needed] cultural shift in The Business of Fashion's latest deep-dive by Joan Kennedy, featuring "Hypercycle", my handbook with Gung Ho. The Decline and Fall of the Viral Microtrend seeks to make sense of the fashion trend landscape, what I've referred to as "trendcasting" in Hypercycle:
When trend forecasting becomes more focused on riding viral moments with audiences than deep cultural analysis.
Business of Fashion
Some key insights / explorations from the piece:
The microtrend hamster wheel is finally slowing down due to economic and cultural exhaustion.
We're seeing a pivot to more evergreen fashion choices, and perhaps more identity-led choices?
What's going to happen to microtrends with TikTok's uncertain future in the USA?
Are brands and consumers shifting to strategically investing in rather than mindlessly chasing?
Brands and retailers need an authentic and creative way of participating in dynamic cultural conversations.
The conversation on the state of fashion trends also surfaced this week when Amy Leverton, also known as @denimdudes on IG, posted Is this the end of trends as we know them?
Sadly, many people in fashion foresight feel like the thing they love has been completely co-opted. The mainstream approach to trends doesn’t reflect the professionalism and methodology of many serious trend forecasters out there.
But it may also be a time of reckoning for parts of the fashion trend forecasting industry who very willingly participated in this mess. The Hypercycle, the obsession with audience capture, confusing fashion with media hot takes .... And at the cost of what? Integrity, let alone our planet. For many today, the word TREND is associated with ephemeral hype, overconsumption and has a negative connotation. Fashion trend forecasting has developed a reputation problem.
What I don't understand in the mainstream conversation is the use of language indicating trends are to blame. As if trends happened to us. I find this strange. Trends aren't bad, it’s the current fashion system that has become toxic and lost its way. Trends are a phenomenon in society where patterns emerge, a mirror of own own behaviour and choices, indicative of new shared myths and codes.
When I exchanged with Amy Leverton on IG, I shared what I've said before:
It's time to get back to our roots and reclaim the positivity of fashion, and the positive trends we used to create. I truly believe we can reverse this with a more mindful approach to trends as they emerge, learning to decipher what has deeper cultural capital vs what’s just air.
What shifts are you noticing in trend cycles within your industry? Would love to hear your thoughts!
This is a ground breaking report on leveraging Nature’s ecosystem performance, recommended by my Biomimicry mentor Jess Berliner. The report is a collaboration between Biomimicry 3.8 and EcoMetrix Solutions Group. It shares how we can evaluate the performance of solutions against Nature’s proven benchmarks and is part of Project Positive.
You’ll find introductory guidance to this science-based, data-driven, and universally applicable approach:
Why Nature’s performance is the right benchmark.
Steps for leveraging nature’s performance benchmarks in your own goal-setting, decision-making, design, and implementation processes.
Case studies of companies implementing this
Existing methodologies and tools that leverage and learn from Nature’s benchmarks to drive nature positive outcomes.
For my Spur Column Tomorrow I've asked a group of design, innovation and sustainability pioneers to share their insights and visions for 2025 in a 2-part series. In part 1, we delve into Regeneration through ethical practices, supply chain transformations, circularity, nature-first technologies, fashion education, activism, and the strategic role of colour and care in supporting our living world. Next month in part 2, we will focus on digital transformation.
Thank you to the following voices who shared their 2025 insights:
Regeneration as the ethical social side of fashion by Jo Maiden - Founder and CEO of SOKO Kenya
On reinventing the fashion paradigm by Saher Sidhom - FRSA, Founder + CEO of Hackmasters
On circularity, bio-engineering, inclusivity and a nature first approach by Paul Foulkes-Arellano - Founder of Circuthon and co-author of “Materials & Sustainability
On Fashion Education’s turning point by Alice Wilby - Lecturer, Activist and Consultant, working in sustainable fashion and climate justice.
On healing the living world, colour and care as a business imperative by Laura Perryman - Trend, CMF & Colour Consultant, Founder of Colour of Saying, Author of The Colour Bible
Design Tomorrow: Is Speculative Design the key to Fashion retail's future?
Ready to revolutionise how we think about fashion's retail future? Join me at Source Fashion in London from 13:30 - 14:30 on February 19th.
This year, Source is introducing the Debates Stage as a chance to interact in some of the industry's most thought-provoking and important questions, versus a traditional keynote format.
Speculative Design as a powerful approach used by leading organizations and governments to anticipate big impact future scenarios – is I believe vital for fashion retail's transformation and an industry in crisis. As the fashion industry faces unprecedented systemic changes, businesses must develop new ways of forecasting and preparing for possible futures. Through engaging dialogue and group exploration, we will learn how speculative thinking can help organisations envision possible futures, anticipating disruption and opportunities for meaningful change. I hope to see you there and that you'll gain fresh perspectives on:
Reshaping how you think about tomorrow's fashion landscape.
Preparing your business for the future of fashion retail in an evolving industry.
It's been a rough start to 2025 with the devastation caused by the LA and Kantamanto fires, the breakdown of Democracy in America, after what has been a tough few years with terrible wars around the world spreading pain, hate and injustice. Let alone the massive backslide in sustainability and DEIA commitments. I'm sickened by this. Yet hope isn't a choice—it's a necessity, especially for those far less fortunate than I am. So I choose to remain hopeful. This darkness isn't inherent to human nature; it's not how we're born.
The media has devolved into a fragmenting, sensationalist distortion machine that has failed us and become vampiric, draining our collective lifeblood. The last two decades have seen a war for our attention, rewarding our basest behaviours. Power (and the chase of it) distorts our brain functions and makes us dumber — there's scientific evidence for this, and we're watching it play out. Behind that social media company, that rocket propelling company (to name a few) are power-thirsty individuals who have become more dumb, more miserable. The 2006 movie Idiocracy got things strikingly right about the future. Have you watched it?
Twice a month I share future insights, resources, news and cultural theory at the intersection of disruptive cultural patterns, societal shifts, sustainable innovation, futures thinking and systems change.
