This Autumn Winter I am apparently supposed to be wearing futuristic, folk, shoulder pads, black, 1940s, hounds-tooth, sequins….. The list goes on. It is endless, confusing, contradictory and, when you delve into its origins, essentially contrived.

I found it absolutely fascinating to intern at Drapers – the fashion business magazine, in the wake of fashion week earlier this year where I got a unique insight into how fashion trends are communicated via magazines. I found myself sifting through the endless catwalk images and being told to make a note of images that fit with a list of around 16 trends.

I sat there and watched as the fashion desk toyed with new ways of describing trends for “shoulders” or “futuristic” because they had already hailed them as trends last season and needed to think of a fresh way of presenting what seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be the same sort of thing. I think shoulder detailing and sci-fi were what they eventually settled with. Being a beacon of the fashion industry it was hardly surprising when, in the following months, I noticed other fashion magazines talking about the sci-fi trend and even using some images I remember noting down.

The sad tale of the coral bags…

Just because a magazine puts a pretty page together hailing a style as the next big thing does not mean it is going to take off as a trend if, in reality, people simply hate it. Take coral. The colour was big news earlier this year. Drapers wrote about it, shortly followed by the fashion glossies like Grazia who put together a whole page about it. Sadly a few months later during the mid-summer end of season sales it was the coral-coloured items that were left on the shelf. Despite major print space hailing it as the hot colour people just did not want to buy it.

This can be summed-up in one image posted by fashion designer Henry Holland on Twitter. A sad graveyard of coral bags left on the shelf during sale time with the caption “Note to self never design a coral bag”.

Where trends actually come from…

The moral of the story is that contrary to what your average fashion glossy will tell you trends do not come directly from the catwalk then filter down slowly into our wardrobes via the high street. There are a number of factors that make a trend truly commercial and this is something Drapers understands since its audience is primarily those involved in buying in fashion to stores. They want to know what sells, not what is the most edgy or avant grade item this season. They want to know what is going to be flying off the shelves and, likewise, what is going to be the next coral bag.

Take British heritage brands for example. Speaking to Khabi Mirza, Drapers fashion and features editor, recently for a feature I was working on he pointed out that brands like Fred Perry, Lyle and Scott and Barbour have all been such commercial successes for a number of social reasons. These factors for success are directly related to the mentality and buying habits of men in particular, who have driven the rise of these brands. For example, they don’t like to stand out the same way women do so they like the subtlety of wearing a small logo on their chest, the styles and cuts of these items tends to be quite safe which has meant men feel comfortable wearing them, and the fit typically fits the stocky, broad-shouldered, beer-bellied frame of the average man.

The lesson to take away from this is please please don’t feel pressured into keeping up with whatever your favourite fashion magazine tells you to buy. If you don’t like it chances are nobody else really does either and better that it be rotting unloved in a bargain-bin somewhere than in your wardrobe.