How Fashion is Forecasted with WGSN Head of Consumer Forecasting

If everything's AI-driven, the human becomes the luxury, right? The human experience becomes so much more valuable because half of your time you're spent talking to a robot and you want that human interaction. So luxury, I think, is really well positioned. Hello, and welcome back to "Astin Founders of Podcast." My name is Victoria Smith, and this week I'm joined by Cassandra, the head of Consumer Forecasting at WGSN. If you're unfamiliar with WGSN, it is the world's leading consumer trend for a pastor offering insights into what the future looks like using a proprietary framework. And we get an inside look into what to expect for 2029. WGSN is wrapped up the report for 2029, and I do want to preface that because it hasn't been released yet. She couldn't give us all the details, but she does give us an overview, which I am very grateful for. Cassandra has worked at WGSN for over 10 years and talked about how she got into trend forecasting to begin with. I think this is a role that a lot of people are very interested in, but honestly, no little about. So there is great insight here. She's also an adjunct professor at FIT, which asks to her unique lens because she's actively engaging with the future of the industry who are students. From future proof in your business to your career, we cover a lot in this episode. Cassandra is also the host of the WGSN podcast, "Create Tomorrow," and I was a guest on her show after he recorded this. So if you want to dive deeper into some of the topics we covered, and hear a little bit more from me, this is the first podcast I've actually done where I'm being interviewed, so it's a little bit different, and it was really fun for me. So definitely go check that out. Trend forecasting is so fascinating to me, so I'll let Cassandra take it from here. And if you're able to leave a podcast or rating or review and follow or subscribe to the show, wherever you listen, it really helps the podcast grow and continue to get incredible guests like Cassandra. Hi Cassandra. Hi. We met at Fashionology Summit just a couple of weeks ago, and I feel like just instantly clicked and had so many interesting conversations we wanted to continue. So thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. And can I share that I'm going to be on your podcast tomorrow, "Create Tomorrow." Yeah, so you'll be a guest on mine and I'm coming to you. So more to come. Yeah, definitely. But I'd love to get started on your start in Trend Forecasting. You've been at WGSN for 10 years. How did you land in this role? Yeah, so WGSN is traditionally known as a fashion forecaster. I went to FIT. That was a well-known thing at the time. And I had interned at WGSN when I was in college. I studied abroad in London. We visited the office. I was enamored. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I didn't know that job existed, despite going to fashion school. It wasn't necessarily something that you were encouraged to pursue is more sort of like buying and planning and, you know, those traditional paths and fashion from a business perspective. I interned in New York in my senior year and I was doing street style. So and sort of like runway reporting. So it would basically go, this is like when the show is for a downtown. And I would go and sort of chase celebrities and interesting looking people and take photos of them for our street style capture. And I did that for about six months through the end of my senior year. And then I left. I went to Kondynast for about a year and a half. I worked a bunch of like odd jobs there and magazines as one does. Fashion closets at Teen Vogue Vogue. I did a bit of writing. And then in a position opened at WGSN came back. But largely did not know what trend forecasting was still. Like largely had no experience pretty much. So I was an assistant editor. And then interestingly, a couple months in, we launched something called insight, which is the product that I work on now. So yes, we're known as a fashion forecaster. But over the years, particularly the last 10 to 12 years, we've been launching different products. So there's of interiors forecasting vertical consumer tech, sport and outdoor fashion of course, beauty, food and drink. I've named all of them. And yeah, and then we have city by city, which is our travel sector. And then insight and insight really sits at the top. And I was lucky enough to be on the launch team and I'm still here 10 years on. And that looks at things like how consumers think, feel, behave, how they shop, how they experience the world, how they relate to each other. What does marketing look like as you try to reach this group? How do you sell to this group? The retail experiences, lifestyle and increasingly foresight as well. So that is the vertical I work on, which covers a lot of basically every single industry and every consumer group as you can imagine. It's quite a bit, but it's really fun. And now you're the head of consumer forecasting. Yeah, so really gone up. Yeah, I've had like every job and just then jobs that don't even exist anymore. But yeah, I spent a large portion of my career at WJSN working on marketing. So looking at internet culture, youth culture, how young people exist in the internet and how sort of the internet is shaping their identity is in their way of moving through the physical world as well. I was very involved in like when the whole metaverse conversation emerged, you know, that dreadful word, exploring how physical digital kind of intersect and what that looks like at marketing and within marketing rather and at retail. Then last year or two years ago, actually, I launched events and culture, which is our latest offering at WJSN. It's within the insight offering, but it looks at things like the big holidays. So I think Christmas, you know, Hanukkah, Eid, Halloween, Valentine's Day, all the sort of religious, but also traditional holidays and celebrations, but also cultural moments like the MacGala and the World Cup and the different tennis events of the world. We look at all the cultural art focused events and sporting events, music events, festivals and understand what's happening there, what will a brand have to do to integrate into that space effectively? Because obviously that's more challenging now than ever before. How can you sell to them in that space? So I did that for about a year and then I've just come back to consumer this year. And that looks at all things, Gen Z, Millennials, Alphas, etc., Boomers, Gen X, Beta's, the latest, and then some of the macro long-term forecasting as well. Well, I think this space is so fascinating. Actually, one of my professors, when I studied in London as well in fashion, worked part-time at WGSN and we would really look into it. And a concept we talked about a lot was future-proofing. That is essentially what WGSN can help companies do. It's the leading trend forecaster out there. What does that look like in practice? You have a proprietary framework and it's very different. I kind of want to define it as well for people. How it's different from like a TikTok, social media trend forecasting or report. Can you explain that? You'll do it better than I can. Yeah, so WGSN looks at trends through a framework called Steppic. So if anyone has gone to business school, they might know it as PESL or PESST. I teach at a university level. I often teach about PESST. PESST is just the framework of politics, economic, society, and technology. And so you sort of filter your trends through that lens, right? But we use something called Steppic, which is our own. And it's similar to PESST in the sense where politics, the East and Sphere environment for us, you know, society and technology are still there. But the eye in the sea and Steppic stands for industry and culture and creativity. And that sea is really what makes us different. It's looking at cultural analysis, cultural intelligence, and trying to understand how different sub-cultures or movements play into those wider trends. You were asking about sort of future-proofing and long-term trends, which are more macro trends. So we forecast about two and a half years out. We look at the future consumer, future emotions, and the big ideas. So I've just wrapped up 2029, actually. So I feel like oftentimes people will be like, if I'm being asked questions about trend forecasting, they'll be like, what's going on in what's trending right now? And it's like, what year are we in? I don't know. Because we're jumping around years so often. But we wrapped up 2029. And there are occasions where we go further out. You know, I've done pieces on what consumers will look like in 2035. So some of the consumer tech goes even to 2040 and beyond. Our foresight offering goes way beyond that. They're looking all the way through 2050 in some cases. And so there's different frameworks for foresight and trend forecasting. But from a trend perspective, from a consumer lens, what I do, we look at Stepbick. So we filter our trends through that lens. We've got people all over the world, 250 people on the ground in different markets who help provide that sort of deep regional analysis. Because I'm physically in New York. I can't necessarily be physically in London and physically in South Palo, Shanghai, et cetera. So we have people all over the world for that. And the difference-- you sort of had a two-part question. There's the difference between long-term forecasting and more closer to season, the stuff you see on TikTok, which is equally valid, right? A lot of that is more geared towards marketing. It's really hard for, I think, the biggest challenge for brands right now is to sort of latch on to a trend, a micro trend that has happened on TikTok that's everywhere. If their offering doesn't align with that aesthetic, particularly from a fashion perspective, because you would have to produce it, it takes time. By the time you get it to market, it could kind of be over, right? So that's sort of what we provide. We have tools to help brands navigate social media and things like that, social media trends. But the difference between long-term forecasting and sort of closer to season forecasting, it's different, but they're equally important. I think TikTok trends and the trend cycle on TikTok has absolutely accelerated things. It's everything's trending all at once simultaneously. It makes you question if trends are actually trending at all, because there was this famous article a couple of years ago that was like, "Trends are dead." I ask all my students, "I don't think trends are dead." I think trends have evolved, but when everything is trending, all at the same time simultaneously it does get difficult to navigate it. So I think some of this stuff on TikTok is more right now sort of viral fodder and some of it has deeper roots and kind of you can track that emerging from different trends that have merged in the past and you can kind of see where it's going next. But I think there's purpose and value to social media trend forecasting coming from a person that covered the internet for eight years. Totally agree and I think like you said it's almost more real time than this is a major shift that will happen. Yeah. Four years from now what can you tell us about 2029? Yeah so I don't want to give too much away. But 2029 looks if you think about the world that we're in now it's very fractured from a macro lens right. So I like to say pretend you're having a sort of bird's eye view on the world as it's happening. There's a lot of tension there's a lot of polarity. We call them trend tensions two things can be true at the same time right people can love AI but they can also question it. We can think the internet is a really great tool for connection and camaraderie and collective effort for lessons but we can think that the internet also brings about comparison culture and a lot of negativity and a lot of bullying and a lot of poor content that's that's not necessarily it's more slop and you know it doesn't add a lot of value. So two things can be true at the same time. I think if you look at the future especially just two and a half years from now it's again this is a sort of trend tension because when you think about like things like COVID you couldn't predict that in 2019 we didn't necessarily know that that was going to happen and that changed everything. So there are events like that that kind of change things drastically from fashion to work to food to everything but largely trends don't drastically change year over year from a macro lens and so you can kind of see what's happening now and we're just building on that for for 2029. I think a great way to think about that is like the lens of AI so for 2026 we had forecasted something called human texanbiosis which was like we're going to be working in tandem with AI. AI is not necessarily going to replace us right it's going to be our tool for support. I'm sure you use AI for this podcast probably to help you navigate you know and help you plan or whatever it is and your personal life to plan a trip to do whatever it is like AI is a tool to support you it's not necessarily replacing the human we had forecast that that for 2026 and that's very much true for 2028 we built on that we said that AI would become ordinary a sort of normal occurrence in our lives and you can kind of see how that's going to evolve it's not necessarily so shocking anymore when you see a brand that has integrated AI into their offering because it's sort of just in the background the way the internet is right it's just there it's another tool and then for 2029 we build on that even further and then from an emotional perspective we talked about suspicious optimism being the defining emotion in the context of AI and technology because I don't know how you feel about AI I'm very suspicious and skeptical towards it myself but I use it all the time right so there's this tension and then if you zoom out and you look regionally parts of the world are very very optimistic towards AI they see it as a great tool you know that there's nuance of course but largely certain regions are a little bit more accepting of AI and integrating into their lives where parts of in here in the US for example were a little bit more of a skeptical society there's broken trust there's a fracture of trust so all this is sort of macro analysis and it can kind of help you envision what 2029 will look like because of what we're building on does that make sense totally and when you say symbiosis I immediately thought of Claude coworking just the name itself of yeah we're coworking yeah we just went a little bit into the future I kind of want to go back into the past are there things you can point to the WGSN forecasted that we're currently experiencing like you mentioned obviously the symbiosis one yeah but maybe in fashion and food in travel something like that yeah I think synthetic creativity going just continuing on the AI we talked about strategic imagination and synthetic creativity is really attached to strategic imagination the importance of dreaming you know worlds and products and you know futures that you actually want to be a part of you look around now every single fashion brand has integrated AI into their creative offering right there's beautiful ads that are generated with AI that you might not know and again that's controversial right people get upset if it's not labeled properly and we're sort of at this like infancy this starting point where we're still sort of figuring out brands don't have all the answers and that's okay but we forecasted that maybe like 2021 2022 something like that for 2025 and 2026 so it's here it's it's everywhere and I think that was something that built off of the metaverse conversations actually I think we've we were talking about the metaverse years I think in 2016 or 2017 we had forecasted that we didn't necessarily call it the metaverse right but what we were talking about these sort of omnipresent worlds where you could bounce between reality and fantasy and come back to your physical self this idea of like integrating AR and VR into shopping experiences all that was forecasted years ago for us and then in 2020 2021 and and onwards now it absolutely hit so things like that from a macro lens and from a creativity lens I think are are really interesting do you ever feel like you're like I have a little crystal ball yeah in a way I feel it's funny because I think more so my teaching side of things helps me get a window into young people it's funny because I'm a millennial but I'm no longer like millennials I'm so sorry for it whoever is listening like you're no longer young like you are not the youth anymore and increasingly Gen Z is not either what's really interesting to me is talking to like teenagers gen alpha on the precipice of like gen alpha and Gen Z we call them zalphas sort of like the fringe micro generation in between and those are largely who's in school right now a college level and talking to them gives me a window into the world I think and gives me a window into the future that is so valuable for me as a forecaster who spends most of my time thinking about how young people think feel and behave because it gives you real time it's like a focus group of my fingertips basically just talking to them I'm Gen Z and I think a moment where I was like oh I'm no longer like the young one is like the six seven trend I'm like what's going well yeah well that's the thing every generation goes through it but I think I think when Gen Z came up online I'm a zalennial or zalennial depending on who you're talking to there's different names so I kind of understand Gen Z but I kind of understand millennials I'm just somewhere perched between so we have our own sort of unique identity but when Gen Z came online like 2016 and like 2015 2016 Kylie lip kit era that was like the peak Gen Z was emerging online and I remember thinking like I don't know what they're saying you know like they had their own vernacular and it's funny to see like six seven or skip a U toilet or all these other sort of like meme type style vernacular that gen alpha has adopted that Gen Z is looking at them like they have like 12 heads like what does what are you saying right now so it's funny to kind of see the cycle again 10 years ago I know he had like kicked off the young person part yeah nobody cares anymore definitely and then it's on to the next speaking of Gen Z I think the biggest trend I have noticed and I would really love your take on this is we I guess are obsessed with Nostal job there's just this always looking backwards I think what does that do for the future of brands if this generation's like always looking back and thinking what was was better yeah nostalgia has been has always sort of been around right nostalgia cycles were longer at one point what I find really interesting about Nostal job is that it's largely driven by escapism for Gen Z because the world around them is so chaotic we often throw this word around it's a heavy word but it's a poly crisis era meaning multiple crises happening simultaneously there's an environmental crisis we still have a pandemic at our hands there's multiple pandemics right or multiple you know health crises around the world there's a cost crises this is all happening as Gen Z is not even 30 at largely so it has obviously impacted their psyche there meaning like your age groups psyche and so it's a difficult thing to navigate we've never really saw that and you add the additional layer of the internet feeding you this information constantly it's a constant stream of sort of doom and gloom often on the internet as you're scrolling every day and it becomes a lot to kind of handle escapism has has been for years now for Gen Z there's sort of like path to cope with the world around them so it makes sense that nostalgia and this idea of like romanticizing the past there's this concept of like anamoia which is a nostalgia or a longing for a time before you even were born so it's like Gen Z romanticizing the 90s or maybe that's a little early but like the 80s or the 70s or 60s or whatever it is but this idea that you know that's not new I think what's kind of getting a bit tiring now from from somebody who covers this is like the constant barrage of nostalgic references that sort of or just it doesn't necessarily feel like it's grounded in anything and there's not really cultural intelligence backed by it I think what's interesting is like when you deliver nostalgia to a person to actually live through it and then sort of what we saw with the oasis tour I don't know if you were aware of that but oasis went on tour last year oasis was a band for the Gen Xers right so British band in like the 90s they went on tour last year and what we saw was that like oasis style resurfaced with Gen Z on TikTok and so you could see that and it was because Gen Z was maybe learning about this band maybe their parents because Gen Z are largely parented by Gen X. Maybe their parents introduced them to this. Maybe they enjoyed the concert together. And it became this sort of cross-generational experience for them. And there was strong fashion ties. There was like bloke core and lots of references to how the band, the people of the band dressed and, you know, young people were dressing like that. And so there was this like cross-generational tie. And I thought that was really interesting. Another element of nostalgia, I think, is interesting is kiddolting. So these are adults that shop and and sort of act to like kids in their free time. So they might you ever see like news headlines recently that were like toy sales or through the roof. And it's actually not kids who are buying the toys. It's adults. Sounds crazy. But like Legos and, you know, American Girl Doll now has a cafe where you can kind of get a boozy brunch. And like there's all these things that are trying to court, you know, older populations and make them revert back to their childhood because it acts as a sort of like comforting warm hug to them. There was like a famous article in the New York Times that had Serena Caraghan. And she was at like a boozy brunch at the American Girlbastor. And like there was, she was with another influencer and they had like American Girlbast at the table. And it was like, this is what I grew up loving. And now I get to do it as an adult and it's this experience. And that's nostalgia in its own right. But it's sort of like you have to tie nostalgia back to the communities that you're trying to court. And it needs to have strong references that makes sense. And, you know, nostalgia in itself is in a strategy. It has to sort of be the storytelling attached to it that really moves the community that you're trying to target. I noticed, I mean, we're all experiencing it probably on social media that everyone was like 2026 is the new 2016. And then Coachella happened and people have been pointing to LA more as like the cultural hub replacing New York. And I've heard people say kind of ping pongs back and forth. And then as well with love story, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's style, like it just went through the roof for a short amount of time. So I like hearing the perspective of how do you can brands respond to this intentionally and not just react to a trend on TikTok. You guys really help people find and develop the right product at the right time. What does that look like in practice for brands who are going to go on there and read a report or be a part of your services if they're trying to develop something at the right time? Yeah, I think that is kind of going back to the beginning. What I was saying about being on TikTok, there's so much to kind of sift through today. If you are a fashion brand right now and you are trying to determine where do you go? If you're trying to reach young, Gen Z women, right? They like sports. This is a hot commodity right now. There's gaming culture. There's world cup. Then there's the nicks and there's like so much going on at all times. It's really difficult to figure out where it is that you are, where your brand naturally and organically fits. I think at WGSN, our job is to highlight how do you hit the right markets at the right time with the right products and how we do that is through a lot of that is through insight and our product verticals subsequently. I can speak to it from an insight perspective. So my job is to introduce what is happening within a consumer perspective. I've envisioned consumer as four things. It's who the consumer is meeting age. So demographic, which has always been the defining factor on how you segment your consumer groups. Right? So that's Gen Z. You are a young woman in New York and you are 20-something years old. And that's who you are, right? But increasingly now, that is only one aspect of understanding who you're actually targeting and segmenting. So life stage is also important. Life style is also important. And emotion is also important. So how do consumers feel? What is the defining emotion of Gen Z right now? If they're filled with rage, what do you do about that? How do you create experiences and offerings that either allow them to express their rage? I can't remember the brand. It was a Spanish brand. They had a rage room in New York where you could go and break things. That really spoke to the Gen Z rage at the time. This was maybe a year or two ago. Gen Z has certain values. What are those values? And how do they feel about those values? Right? But from a life stage perspective, increasingly, Gen Z is not the only people that are, you know, maybe single and living in the city. That also might be millennials. That might be boomers. You might have Gen Z that are married. And some of the elder millennials are getting married at the same time. So different life stages that are uniting them. Right? Life style, they might be really driven by love Island or they might be obsessed with the World Cup or they might, you know, they might be reality TV buffs or they might be sports-affishing autos. You know, who is your target customer? And beyond age, what else is uniting them? You know, could you actually speak to more consumer groups at the same time? There's also that added layer of the fringe generations that I was talking about earlier. So increasingly 15 year spans for a generation. I don't know how old you are, but you're in your 20s. So somebody born in 1999 and somebody born in 2010, which are technically in the same generation. Different. vastly different experiences. So I'm born in like 2002. I'm like, yeah. So that's a great, that's a thing. Right? So you might have actually more connection rather to somebody born in 93, like me, rather than somebody born in 19 or 2010, despite we're in a different generation. You know? So it's vastly different. So that's another added element that we look at is that fringe generation. So I think segmenting the future is really the biggest challenge for brands. Who are you targeting? Who are you going after? And is age the best way to do that anymore? Because life stage and lifestyle and emotion are such, like big components of understanding who you're actually targeting. Your community that you're trying to target, whether that's love Island fans, right? Love islands to draw my mind right now because I've been watching love Island season. But if you and I love love Island and also a 35 year old and also a 45 year old, that is a way to speak to multiple generations at the same time. So I think like looking at just age is a little antiquated and having that holistic view from a segmentation perspective helps you understand who it is you're targeting, what community you actually want to activate in and then how to figure out if you are a natural fit for that through cultural intelligence, cultural analysis. And whether it makes sense for your brand because I think the worst thing is a brand feeling like they need to be everywhere. And I can totally sympathize with that because as a trend forecaster, I feel like my eyes need to be everywhere because there's so much going on. But it's really about less is more and more refined approach and really targeting and building strong community. And you do that not by being everything to everyone, but by being super niche and targeted. I can go back to your initial question. What we got right, Nisha's the new norm we forecasted like five years ago. It's totally true. Everyone's for your page looks different. You might have very niche interests that are very different than mine or that are very different than your best friend, right? And we all have our own version of cool. There's not a monoculture anymore. It's not just Britney Spears and you know, Christina Aguilera. It's a wide array of options and much more niche options to these days because of social media. So gosh, there's so many topics I want to deep dive with you as you talk, but I'm like, that's why you have your own podcast. And I'm like, I want to talk about marriage and like, wife and like kids and all of that. And I keep it to fashion. And I think the ping ponging like you mentioned of it was Barbie Summer and then it was Brat Summer and it was clean girl and then it was party girls. Yeah. Like you can't respond to everything. And I think you gave some really good tips on like, clarify who you are for and and stick to that. Are there certain trends you're seeing happen? Maybe trends in the right word. I think it's just like behavioral shift in our society across the board of multiple industries and globally as well because you mentioned you have boots on the ground all across the world are different countries responding to maybe we'll keep it focused on fashion like different trends different buying different design. Then like the US, the like you're up like all these different spaces. Yeah. So what you described is actually a macro trend. So anything that hits multiple industries and multiple regions is actually something that we look at from a macro lens. I think this idea of like hyper local is really interesting. We've had our APAC team writing about that for many years now about how global brands that want to reach different regions are entering to new markets have to kind of localize and make sure it makes sense. Sounds obvious, but it's so important. There's been a ton of brands that have done that well and a ton of brands that have not done that well from a fashion and sort of beauty wellness lens. And so getting it right I think is again looking at who is your customer, what do they want, how do they feel? It's really at their core understanding the consumer is the defining element for fashion brands or any brand really, but for the sake of today fashion will be our focus. But if you don't understand who your consumer is, what they like, dislike what their values are, who they are in the world, how they see the world, how they move through the world, the nuances within that consumer group because consumers are not one size fits all, right? Gen Z as a population, there's tons of tension, there's tons of nuance, they don't all agree on one thing. You look at regionally, there's nuance, there's tension. Think about suspicious optimism as the emotion for technology. I mentioned at the start of this podcast, like some people think AI is great and optimistic about it and are for integrating it. Some people are not. Largely that's a regional difference, but here in the US might be some tension. I think the first step of like kind of forecasting the future is really understanding that nuance, intention and polarity exist and you have to kind of get comfortable with that because it's never going to be sort of universal across the board. So yeah, I would say forecasting global trends, you can do that if you're one person. You need people on the ground. That's why WJSN has such value because we have this large presence across the globe because if I was forecasting global trends, that would be my vision of the world, my perspective as, you know, who I am in New York City, right? Whereas I'm never going to understand the nuance on the ground in Brazil or the nuance on the ground in Europe because I'm out there, right? So that's why you have people that, you know, our methodologies that we all come together and we look at the trends that we are talking about, whatever that is. And we globally have a shared perspective and we, you know, debate internally and it's, you know, a long process and to land on a final trend because that's gone through so much debate and, you know, back and forth and to make sure that it really is representative of the world that we live in and that we inhabit collectively. An example that comes to mind is, I know in China, live shopping has been huge for a while. It's just kind of now trickling into mainstream in the US. Is that something that your boots on the ground over there is like, oh, it's coming? Yeah, we've been forecasting live shopping for a while. It has much stronger weight, it holds a greater weight in the east. In the west, it's been a little bit slower to adopt, I think, it's interesting now. I think one of the biggest trends and interesting topics to talk about is that tension and polarity between people who want to remain online and people who want to not go online. And if you look at Gen Z, a lot of the data says we're actually headed back to stores, right? Gen Z wants to censor real touch things like this couch is very, you know, nice to touch. And if you were in a store, you know, people who are watching this, they're not going to be able to touch this fabric. And that's if you wanted to buy this, if I was selling this right now, like I could describe it, but it's not necessarily a sensorial experience. You're not going to feel it. And there's a lot of data out there that says that like that tactility, touch, smell, scent, all the things, all the senses in store actually converts a little bit better. And so I think we're dealing with that on one hand. So Gen Z wanting to go back to stores, malls kind of reviving the mall rat coming back, which is very exciting as a former mall rat myself, like the fact that young people want to go back to stores and go back to mall spaces. But that's one side of things. I think another side is that I don't know if the infrastructure was there for a while with live shopping. We have great, you know, lots of new tools that have emerged in recent years. But I think it is also something that we sort of, you know, like QVC was a thing, you know, maybe like your parents generation or my parents generation interacted with, they perhaps still do, right? Does Gen Z want to buy things online in a way that is the way that it's done on live shopping? Maybe some of them, but not all of them. And so there's that sort of tension there. We're not necessarily as advanced as a technological society as parts of China very much are. So I think slower adoption problem, but also the fact that people are wanting to, you know, experience the senses and go back to physical stores. Also the fact that people want to turn off their phones, right? We have tools now like the brick where you pop your phone in it to get some peace, right? Digital hiatus is where like a fringe thing that you would do if you were going on, you know, a vacation or you're going offline for the weekend or whatever. People want to just go offline now. That's a real thing. And that's largely driven by parenting. They don't want their kids to grow up on the internet. And so we're lying down it. And also from a Gen Z perspective or a young person's perspective is just all become a little much, right? Like being online chronically that doom scrolling, seeing the constant branch of probably bad news or sad news or just kind of just news in general, it's, it's a lot. And so to kind of turn it off is a welcome escape, I think, for some people, which was a fringe movement and it's growing. And that's something I'm thinking is probably going, I'm for eye forecasting that this is going to grow. And that that tension between the chronically online and the chronically offline will continue to exist in the years ahead. I think we're going to see like phone rehab. There is things like that already. Yeah. I think the shift back to in store shopping is really interesting, given that COVID was not so long ago and that forced everyone to go e-commerce, bunch of brink and mortar shut down. There's really big chains like sacks or rubes and spiling for bankruptcy. Like they've been struggling. Is there something you can point to for people listening of innovation that we might see in store? Because I think a lot of the fashion tech conversation is like, I have an app or like, A.I. is going to make it faster to do this and find things. And we've already kind of like hit everything there. I think in stores where actually we're going to see more and like you already pointed out. So what can we expect? Yeah. And I think, look, agente.ai, agente.comers is coming. There's no escaping that. And there's a role for that. But having an in store experience is like no other. If you go into a beautiful shop and you get to touch beautiful clothing and try it on and there's beautiful sense there. And it makes the experience really valuable and pleasurable. There's human interaction. I think that's another element that we haven't really touched on yet. If everything's AI-driven, the human becomes the luxury. So luxury, I think, is really well positioned for the in store experience to become a very human, beautiful, if you can make service even more important for the VIPs and the clientele of that caliber. It becomes something that they'll want to come back to. But for the everyday shopper, walking into a store and having the activations in store. And there's wellness experiences in the mall and you can take a yoga class or a Pilates class. And maybe if you're belonging to X, Y, and Z membership here for a wellness experience, you get a discount over here. There's a lot of that happening. The subscription oriented trade-offs that get people back into the store. We see watch parties being a really big trend right now. Yeah, exactly. The next for us, New Yorkers. But I interviewed a guy in LA who runs the football boutique and it's a store dedicated to what we in America call soccer. The football boutique is basically having watch parties for the world cup right now and there's lots of instant activations. And in the back, there was a place you could actually play soccer and you could rent the space. And there's all these exciting elements to the retail store because you want people to spend time there. That is the new third space. We talk about the fact that young people are lonely, but it's really people across the board. There's lots of data that Gen X is actually quite lonely too. Loneliness is an epidemic and how do you fix loneliness? You get people to come together and to experience something called collective effervescence, which is like the harmony you feel in a shared space with others, right? So at the next, if the next scored on Saturday night, like when the crowd erupts, that's collective effervescence. You get like sort of chills when you experience something. You can have it at a music festival. How does a brand replicate that at a smaller scale in their store space to get people to spend time there to treat it as a third space? This is not something we came up with ourselves, but there's this concept that I think of Venn Bright coined, which is called fourth spaces. And that's the idea that you're bringing small communities online into a physical space. So you bring them offline, right? There's a lot of that happening run clubs, a great example. How do you get the run club on the internet to get outside and then come into your store for refreshments after, right? There's this sort of idea that the store space could become a social experience. And I think that is probably the most interesting thing in retail right now for me is that you want people to spend time because social connection, because ideas happen there. Look at like some of the laundry kind of cool laundry shops that are emerging around the city. Laundry mats rather. We had Laundered on last year on the podcast and they have, they've done New York Fashion Week stuff in their laundry mat, right? We've got a cafe, people work there, meetings take place there, it becomes a third space. And that's what I think retail is really well positioned for at the moment. That's exciting. I like that. I feel like sometimes I'm all for like the tech advancements as obviously that's a huge part of the podcast, but there's nothing like meeting somebody in person. I have been thinking about again, like the founders startups. I've had conversations with people in the past where like I have this idea, but I don't think the world is ready. And like I feel like I'm seeing something that we will need or might be in norm in five, 10 years. Like I'm so excited about this topic, but the market isn't there right now. You mentioned you live so much in the future in a way in your mind. How can we close that gap? Be prepared for the future and something we see coming. But how do we make that actionable? That's a hard question. How do you make the future actionable? That's sort of what I'm trying to solve every day actually. I think it's about diversifying the media that you're consuming, understanding shifting perspectives, understanding tension and nuance. You know, I have my own view of the world, right? As naturally any person does, but I have to remain unbiased as I do forecasting because it can't be again my vision of the future that I'm forecasting. It has to be a sort of collective representation based on lots of different opinions. So I think diversifying the media, diet, and not just viewing media that you agree with, but also understanding media perspectives that maybe are a little different from your own. I think that's an interesting way to understand how people think. There's a lot of competition for our eyeballs right now. Like attention is the ultimate commodity. It's what's for sale. It's what's at stake as you create content on the internet. There's so many podcasts. Everyone's got a podcast. How do people choose yours and not somebody else's? What every brand is thinking about? How do they choose my product and not my competitors product? It's about understanding again who the consumer is, understanding the cultural moments and initiatives that kind of move them and shape them. them. And about integrating into these spaces, bringing people together, community, it's about cultural intelligence. I think it's about AI and H.I., which is human intelligence, too. I don't know who coined this term, but we've been kind of tossing around for years at W.J.S.N., which is called AQ, and it's adaptability quotient. So brands that are founders, rather small brands or large brands that want to move through this world and want to capture attention and ultimately the consumer spend need to be able to adapt to whatever comes their way because there's a lot of uncertainty. Uncertainty is the only certainty that we have in this world right now. Unfortunately, that's basically the default. There's a lot of broken trust. Distrust is the default, as the Edelman-Brometer of Trust always says every year. So if you have fractured trust and you have this fragmented identity within consumer culture, you need to be able to adapt to whatever comes your way. I think a great example was the tariffs. Brands that can navigate uncertainty and they can plan for uncertainty. These moments won't be so shocking to them because they will have planned for it. And it's a very difficult thing to plan for uncertainty. Obviously, it's easier said than done. And that's kind of what W.J.S.N. that is what W.J.S.N. does is help you understand what's happening, but also help you plan for the uncertainty that's around us so that you can make better decisions, deliver the right product at the right time. We talked about founders. I want to touch on career. What do you see the future of work to be? Oh, that's another lofty question. We've done a lot of work on the future of work. I think flexibility is really important. I wrote about the she session and the she covering, which doesn't come from me. I really wish I remembered who it came from. I think it was from the female quotient. I want to fact check me on that. But it was a term in the pandemic that talked about the labor that women do that's unpaid after they do their nine to five. They're working all day and then largely, particularly, Gen X women and mothers of young children. They've got to take care of their aging parents. They've got to take care of kids. They do the housework. It's all the chores, etc. It worked out to be something like 111 hours of work a week for these women. And then we talked about the she covering because people were going back to work and there was more flexibility. If you look at the data now, particularly in the US, a lot of women are having to leave the workplace, especially young mothers because child care is so expensive. How do we ensure that women continue to have opportunity? That flexibility is built into systems so that child care isn't the thing that makes them leave the workforce. So I think flexibility is crucial for the future of work. I think we're seeing with young people, they want to work in flexible environments, whether that's different locations, going and living a digital nomad life is another interesting conversation to have, which we could go on for hours and hours there. A lot of independent work. So the creator, Konmi, represents a huge opportunity for many people on the internet who've grown up online, who know how to exist online. And they know maybe they've cultivated an audience online already. And that becomes an opportunity. I think you're a great example. You've got a podcast. It was built when you were young. It's now a larger kind of entity and that is your career. There's a lot of independent freelance work in terms of creativity. So to me, that is the future of work. But from a data perspective, I think that more interesting conversation for me is women. And how do you keep women in the workplace? And how do you empower them to kind of grow in their careers at the same time as they're growing their families and growing their personal lives? It's interesting the flexibility point because I think obviously I was speaking as a Gen Z, but like millennials, it was the gig economy and it was seen as like, oh my god, they're not being paid enough and they have to have these other jobs. But it's almost being reframed. I don't know if this is like corporate culture trying to tell us this is good or like Gen Z is trying to find freelance work and they desire that flexibility so much that it's seeing as empowering instead. Now I know so many people who work for themselves and maybe it's the circles I've created, but I think people take pride in having more than one job because it's them showing up for their passions. Yeah. That hobby-maxing idea, turning that into a actual proper career, I think crafting is super interesting too. I think what's interesting about the future of work is like the things that people can do with their hands, like making things physically, human aspect. I think that is going to be such an important skill in the grand scheme of things because of how sort of automated everything else has become. So craft and art and making things with your tactile things with your hands becomes really important. We've started to see some sort of like apprenticeships and I think that there's a watch brand. I can't think of the brand that they just launched a school in Texas, I believe, to teach you how to build the watches is very intricate process. So they're sort of teaching the next generation. I think Bauté Gavinetta a couple of years ago did something where they were doing an apprenticeship to teach Italian craft to the next gen. We see a lot of that. The Big Conglomerates carrying LVMHF programs that teach next gen talent, the skills like that. But I think making is going to be a very important thing. If you have, look, they call it sort of like grandma hobbies or grandma core, but knitting and those sorts of things can turn into sort of-- - Yeah, exactly. I have a friend that does that, but side hustles. Turning into the transformation of side hustles into full-time careers, I think is a very big opportunity in the age of the Creator Economy. The Creator Economy shows no sense of slowing down. I think there's room for a lot of people. Is there room for everyone to become an Alex Earl? No. But they sort of talk about the middle class of creators. How do you allow for more opportunity, more people to make livelihoods in the middle class of creators and create opportunities for them there, I think is a big opportunity for young people in particular who are natural born content creators. They've grown up on the-- specifically looking at Gen Alpha. Is there a role within companies you can see becoming a norm? I think some companies like, see that creative and they're like, you're the chief storyteller. They're like, that's not the traditional CEO role. I think companies like to stay adaptable. And I've seen it too, where there's one influencer I'm thinking of, Kate Bartlett. She got her MBA. And I think she's mentioned that she wants to go back and work in a fashion house. And she's probably been a creator for, I don't know, six years now or something. To want to go back into the workplace, but craft your own role in a way, I can see being another thing that Gen Z in particular, talking on flexibility would want. Are there any roles you see kind of emerging? There's two elements there. So the one that I find really fascinating is Gap Hyre, their chief entertainment officer, the first of its kind. And I think that just points to the fact that every brand has to be an entertainment brand now. It sort of used to be that every brand had to be an experience brand in the age of like, one millennials were young, right? Well, the experience economy was what was driving millennials at the time. I think entertainment is what drives the next gen, right? So how do you create entertainment experiences? Gap does a really good job of like, think about their cats I add and, you know, at their dance ads, which are infamous, they've brought them back. They're absolutely soaring and integrating, you know, cool young people that have sort of a large following and fandom attached to them makes perfect sense. So to have a chief entertainment officer, brilliant idea, I think does every brand need to have a chief entertainment officer? No, probably not, but entertainment needs to be top of mind for more than just the marketing team. How do you create products that speak to the fandoms? I think another element, which I've talked a lot about on my podcast is having sustainability experts woven throughout different departments, not just having like a sustainability person over here. And this is like your sustainability person. And, you know, the marketing team is over here. I think the person that talks about the climate and climate science needs to be integrated into the marketing teams because how are you supposed to tell stories that are factual in a world that is obsessed with, you know, there's a there's a fractured trust happening with young people. Greenwashing is an epidemic. So how do you prevent greenwashing? You hire sustainability, comms people that are scientists that know how to communicate some of the sort of backend things that your company is doing in a way that's interesting and can, you know, be built around a story from a marketing perspective. I think we're going to start to see a lot more sustainability experts woven throughout departments, particularly marketing. And then third, I think the creator becomes part of the board largely. So I think that the brands of the future could very well be creator brands. They could be challenging a lot of the Fortune 500 companies. Look at the, I've mentioned her a couple times. Look at what Alex Earl has done with her, her her active said, it's called it's like real real real active something like that. But she's, you know, she sold millions of dollars in, you know, an hour or 10 minutes or whatever it was. And why is that? It's because there's community attached, right? So if you can integrate, whether that's, you know, one off collaborations probably aren't enough anymore. You need to have long-term collaborations. But if you had, you know, if you invited creators into your company to help make decisions, that could win their, their communities respectively over. Another element of, this isn't a fourth actually. I thought I only had three. But once I get going, I can't stop. So gen alpha, young people in general, I think you need to hire shadowboards. That was the concept we were talking about with Gen Z when they were super young. But having a board of gen alphas within your organization that you can kind of bounce things off of, that's how you're going to court the next gen. I think gen alpha is rising. Their, the eldest is 16. This year. If you think about the Zalphas, which again are that group that blend between or that bridge the divide between Gen Z and Alpha, they're into their 20s already. These are people with jobs, they have money to spend. You can win them over now. And if you haven't thought about Gen Alpha already, you're sort of like already late to the party because this is your future consumer. And they are here. They are coming. They're established. They're discerning. They're so intelligent. They know so much because they've grown up with the internet and brands at their fingertips. Think about the young kids obsessed with retinal routines at age 10 or whatever. It's controversial. And there's a lot you could say. It's a whole other podcast. But there is, they are very intelligent and discerning shoppers. And if you aren't integrating their perspectives into your decision-making, how are you going to reach them? If you were a tween brand, if you don't have tweens telling you what they like and maybe even letting them co-create with you, helping them, you know, letting them co-design things that they are eventually going to buy, I don't see how you're going to win them over these days because they can just read through any marketing fodder. They're very, very intelligent as a consumer group. So, Beauty would have to be a whole different. So, I just happened to that. And I love hearing the potential increase or hopefully an inevitable increase in sustainability people in companies, I have an environmental science minor. Wow. I'm like, we're a scene. Yeah. Okay, I want to get into some speed round questions to wrap things up. They're kind of more fun and playful. Is there a trend you want to see come back? You mentioned this early on and you were like 2016 as trending again. And that was sort of like Indie Sleeves era like 2014 to 20, you know, maybe 2012 to like 2016. I was in college in my early 2010s to mid 2010s and I wore those Jeffrey Campbell Lolita boots like those really thick ones. I would love to see them come back. I'm a girl. I'm in sneakers right now, but I love a heel. And I remember I just wore them all the time and that is like nostalgia to me. Sprapped up in a nice bow. Is there a travel location? You think we're going to see pop off. I feel like there's always like an it travel spot. It travel spot. I think something we're seeing a lot of that I'm tracking is like heritage travel. So going to the place where your family is from and kind of exploring your roots. That's a big trend right now. Travel is there's a lot of controversy emerging with like travel right now, going to places that are maybe overcrowded and over tourism is a big problem. But I think the heritage tourism thing is really interesting and I as somebody who's planning to do that myself, I think, you know, we'll see a lot more of that. And it's special. You're not following a trend. Yeah. It's sort of very personal experience and trying to understand where your family is from and where you come from. Is there a trend that you think has been overrated? Overrated. Like not good, bad. I'm kind of thinking of like mob life of like, oh my gosh, everyone talked about this for two weeks and then we didn't hear about it again. Well, I think some of the TikTok core trends are like that. And I think some maybe sometimes people, I don't think this is overrated. I think sometimes people give a bad rap to some of the TikTok trends. But I do think that they actually stem from larger cultural conversations and maybe they seem trivial to some people, but they actually don't understand the wider picture. And I think the people that are quitting these trends on the internet are really brilliant. And it's interesting to see such an interest in understanding where things come from and where things are going from a trend perspective because we didn't necessarily have that trend forecasting was always sort of hidden in the background. And I think TikTok in a way has kind of given it a spotlight. I think there's a difference between trend tracking as we've talked about before versus trend forecasting, which is a little bit more of like a framework attached to it. But both are equally value and I see value in both. So I think when people maybe what I think is overrated was when people think the internet isn't as important from a trend perspective as it is as somebody who's covered it. Yeah. You know, memes have such value and they really sway things. You know, they sway vernacular and how people talk, but they could impact slogans on t-shirts. They could impact if you know, you know, communities and they allow, you know, it's a whole thing and there's there's a ripple effect to to meme. So I think the internet is maybe people think it's overrated, but I think the internet is the epicenter of what's cool. TikTok is the epicenter of culture. And if you're not necessarily truting it as such, I don't think you're going to understand consumer culture at all. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Something I almost wish I brought up sooner is like the symbols that occur in fashion of like the millennial mustache. Oh my god. That was epic. Bo's really sent from like Sandy Lang the designer and they were everywhere to the point of why is there a bow on everything and now too much and I hate Bo. Now there's co-cat everything. Yes. And then I've been thinking about so much like why they're fish everywhere. There's like a return to nautical style and there's fish symbols everywhere. There's fish necklaces. Yeah. That thing's dairy boy has adopted fish. Oh really? Where is that stemming from in the steppeck? Like I don't know. I would have to now I'm going to have to explore that a little bit because I haven't thought about that. But yeah, we'll follow up. We'll follow up on that. And then do you have any upcoming announcements anything you can share with people? Just to please follow Crate Tomorrow. We have two podcasts said W. Just send there's one called Lives of Tomorrow, which is run by Carla Buzashi our CEO and it's about it takes more of a macro approach to conversations and it's large questions that lots of different parts of the business will want answered and really looks at consumers. And then the Crate Tomorrow is hosted by me and it is focused on design. So we we like to say that we interpret how trends are translated into aesthetics and product design. So if you're interested in your designer or a marketer or a creative innovator of any sort, that's the podcast for you. Amazing. I was going to ask about resources, but I feel like that's a great one to point people. Yes. Please come and check us out. We also have lots of content across LinkedIn, Instagram, on WGS that for WGS and that is in front of the paywall. We do lots of LinkedIn lives and stuff. So definitely just follow us there at WGS and and you'll be able to kind of follow along if you don't have a subscription. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me so fun. I have like a million more questions. I want to know about this and that. So we'll have to follow up on the next. I know. I don't know. You know, thank you so much. Yeah.