For companies like WGSN, the world's leading trend forecasting service, the gravitational pull of pronouncements is no mere pastime. For its fashion, design and retail subscribers, it attempts to extrapolate concrete proof of commercial viability by performing a constant sift through thousands of street style and runway photos, entertainment and news events, social and shopping analytics into reports resembling insight on present and, more importantly, future trends. They basically triangulate the potential influence of a cultural product (be it the Broadway show Hamilton, a hit zombie show or a museum retrospective) on shaping what will become actual product, the eventual stuff that columnists will be tracing back and explaining at the end of the year.
For example, in the wake of a documentary and hit dramatic feature both titled Northern Soul, the British-born 1970s dance craze of the same name has taken off again, and with it, the style that defined it. Topman has already worked elements of the subculture's distinct Bruce Lee-inspired kit into its upcoming spring menswear assortment: ultra wide-legged and pleated trousers, suspenders and slim jersey tank tops worn with duffels festooned in embroidered badges, haphazardly sewn on. A dramatic new menswear silhouette not quite here yet, but already explained!
In hindsight, clothing can be a cultural decoder ring – the academic study branch is called material culture – but fashion foresight isn't 20/20. Yet the urge to gaze into a crystal ball is only slightly less irresistible than the impulse that precedes it, namely to catalogue, rank and classify into lists. Only 12 months' time from now will tell but it seems to work less and less.
Already for 2016, there's the prediction that box office-busting The Force Awakens' unisex flightsuits, pleats and organic sand-tone costumes will be big (when they already are); while in another corner, a mood board of Pee-Wee's Playhouse and recent furniture auction catalogues try to justify the almost inexplicable, but cyclically inevitable, revival of Memphis, the 1980s Italian design collective, and its playful Lego, off-kilter Bauhaus and mostly ugly mashup aesthetic. (I remain unconvinced.)
The Pantone Color Institute is usually more persuasive – the company, with much fanfare, unleashes a single annual chip pick as a pre-emptive forecast to year-end lists. At Pantone, trend forecasting isn't just paint, it's a state of mind – like a global colour horoscope. After last year's canny choice of red-brown Marsala, I consider 2016 a setback. Possibly, the company got stroppy from the success of their marketing juggernaut because they now dare to bet on a pair of colours: pale pink and soft blue. As Pantone indecisively put it, they "demonstrate an inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace." The decidedly retro choice is like hospital gift shop It's a Girl!/Boy! cigars circa 1952 and the gendered nursery decor schemes of exhausted fertility seekers who unexpectedly get twins. The traditional binary also contradicts one of last year's most dominant stories – Caitlyn Jenner's transition and the conversation around it – and what baby name sites like Nameberry are predicting will be a related rise in popularity of post-gender and gender-fluid baby names (welcome to the world, Max Zuckerberg).
Of Benjamin Moore's 3,500-colour palette, the household paint purveyor chose as its colour of the year OC-117, also known as Simply White, for its nuance and adaptability, apparently. Considering its spectrum offers more than 250 shades of white, this could be a limb (a stark, minimalist Gustavian limb) to have climbed out on, though the colour still sounds a lot like choosing nothing at all.
In more predictable results, the American College of Science and Medicine's forecast is its year-end journal of fitness trends. Wearable technology, the trackers that make you feel like you're doing more exercise than you are, continue to be in the lead. Were I part of that brain trust, I would venture that an unlikely new craze to replace Zumba and aerial yoga will come from the recent re-issue of Philippe Halsman's Jump Book of 1959. The photographer coaxed his portrait subjects like Audrey Hepburn, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Richard Nixon to make leaps in the air. The exercise combines the passion for selfies with fitness and, don't laugh, it's already all over Instagram.
Hey, forecasting isn't that hard. Maybe I'll try a few more. The upcoming Rio Olympics will make daywear all about designer tracksuits! (Possibly, we'll even see a velour Juicy Couture resurrection.) And for all the derision directed at Angelina Jolie-Pitt's throwback drama By the Sea, her elegant on-screen character's bottomless trousseau of frothy peignoirs and slinky dressing gowns will be felt on Valentine's Day. And cats. Cats will be huge again in fashion this year.
It's like predictive technology that if not accurate, certainly passes the time. And with Google's auto-complete search, we know how entertainingly that works. What is it that's said about monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare? We get the predictions we deserve.
Nathalie Atkinson