Trends research can be considered a ‘meta-discipline’, i.e. an activity that covers a broad range of theoretical concepts and cultural phenomena.

So it is important to abandon the common perception of trends research being a mere material practice, based on personal intuitions and established practices. Rather, it should be seen as a multidisciplinary field with characteristics that set it apart from other activities.

Trends research is becoming a field of knowledge in its own right, with its own sources that include cultural processes, styles of thought and behaviour, social relationships, religious experiences, languages and forms of communication. It is also becoming increasingly important for fashion businesses and brands to know how to use trends research as a method and tool for directing and managing their creative and communication choices.

The Trends research focus is designed to address this issue of the modern fashion industry. The ways and forms that trends research is carried out involve critical observation, analysis and understanding of cultural phenomena. This discipline develops in and around these phenomena, with the support of knowledge tools, trend development models and creative directives, which lay the foundations on which trend forecasts and predictions are built. The work carried out today by some of the main trend forecasters is the outcome of this way of understanding trends research and bears the clear hallmarks of its ‘meta-disciplinary’ nature. Similarly, even the most common end product of trends research, which appears on the market in the form of an editorial, trend book or report, is actually the result of a broader process of thought, analysis, research and reflection involving an extensive and detailed set of cultural phenomena, artistic expression and social manifestations.

Aimed at those working in creativity, marketing and communication at Italian SMEs, brand owners wanting to add trends research to their daily business, and fashion freelancers looking to add more depth to their research, the focus explores the study of trends research through a multidisciplinary examination of various sources, before working on formulating creative directives and predictions, understood as a critical summation of the cultural factors underlying the phenomena being analysed.