• by Henrik Vejlgaard , December 31, 2007

Sometimes trends might seem to come out of nowhere, but they don’t

Could modern consumers’ obsession with trends be a trend in itself? It may be fun to think so, but no. Actually, it’s a major social change predicted decades ago by the late Abraham Maslow, a psychologist best known for his theory of the Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s core idea is that people have essential needs — the bottom of the hierarchy — that must be fulfilled before we can think about satisfying the needs at the top of the hierarchy. In other words, people need to eat and have shelter before they can start thinking about cashmere sweaters, duvet covers and two-carat diamond earrings.

But Maslow recognized humans’ needs are more nuanced than simply having sustenance and shelter before they can realize self-actualization. Consumers at the top of the hierarchy are more concerned with style and taste than those at the bottom. And this preoccupation with the latest designer handbag is not likely to change unless the economy or the political system changes radically. If the economy continues to evolve the way it has, with more and more people moving up the Hierarchy of Needs, the desire to have the “It” bag will only grow stronger.

With the thirst for the finest and most stylish becoming more unquenchable, it makes sense for us to want to know how to spot new trends. One key element in recognizing a trend is to look for signs that some aspect of human behavior is changing. The signs may not be very obvious, but they are there. Of course, spotting the trend doesn’t mean reacting to the information right away. For instance, if you are representing a big company with a satisfactory market, you may want to be very sure of the trend before you start changing strategies. However, if you are a small business or an entrepreneur, you may want to react right away and take on the new market that is emerging.

The one sure thing is that style and taste change from time to time. Sometimes the explanation for a new change will be obvious, sometimes it will be complex, and often there are many reasons why a change takes place. But in all cases the change occurs because of human behavior. So to the extent that we can understand and explain human behavior, we can also understand and explain trends.

Trends are not mysterious, inexplicable phenomena. Trends are actually predictable because they are a result of human behavior and human beings are pretty predictable, when you come right down to it.

Freaks and Geeks

Poet and singer Patti Smith was one of the pioneers of punk, and also played an important role in the creation of the punk look. In the 1960s she began tearing her T-shirts and jeans and pretty soon others started doing the same, some piecing their clothes with safety pins. Patti Smith was among the first to play punk rock, doing so even before the term was used to define the then-emerging sound, but she was not the trend creator. In music, she was a trendsetter. “It was a real reaction against disco music and the glitter-rock thing. Our lyrics were much more sophisticated, and we weren’t into artifice at all,” she said later of this period in the mid-1970s.

If we go back a little further than the 1960s, one of the first characteristics of the emerging teenage culture after World War II was a different way of dressing. Before the war, there were clothes for children and clothes for adults. But after the war, the apparel industry began manufacturing clothes just for teenagers, and designers and (in many cases) non-designers like Patti Smith created new styles. 

Before World War II, most young people entered the labor force when they were in their teens. They typically started working with a lot of grown-ups and mostly emulated them. But as more technology came into use, there was a need for a better-educated workforce. From the 1950s on, therefore, more and more people went to college. For the first time in history (outside of the army), many young people became part of communities that included only other people in their own age bracket.

In his autobiography Hell’s Angel, biker Ralph “Sonny” Barger writes: “I organized a small street corner club in 1954 when I was still at [high school and was 13 years old]. We wore our jackets with the collars up and had ‘Earth Angels’ embroidered on the back. The Earth Angels never did anything special. We didn’t stand for anything. It was just something to belong to. . . .  It was all about belonging to a group of people just like you.” At that time, the biker culture, with black leather jackets, blue jeans and engineer’s boots, had already been created. Young Ralph Barger was a trendsetter in the process of spreading the biker look. That was the same year that Marlon Brando sported the biker look in the hit movie On the Waterfront, and one year before James Dean wore a leather jacket in Rebel without a Cause.

In his book Vietnam: The War at Home, the historian Thomas Powers writes that in the beginning of the 1960s, students at the big U.S. universities began to dress in the beat style, with blue jeans, long hair and beards. However, the male hippies were not the first to let their hair grow. The long-haired style for men can be traced back to the 1950s bikers. Barger describes this in his autobiography when he writes about his friend Terry the Tramp: “Looking back, he was a trendsetter. Between the beatniks and the hippies, Tramp grew his hair real long [and] wore a full beard.” From San Francisco, the long-haired hippie style spread to the rest of the Western world — and became a highly vocal and visible movement in many countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the original Hells Angels bikers from the San Francisco Bay area sported tattoos, and this became a trend decades later.

Ghetto Superstars

From the 1950s on, it was often young people who needed to differentiate themselves from grown-ups, and by doing so they created new styles. Often young people’s way of dressing inspired the fashion designers in their work. This was certainly the case in the 1990s, when hip-hop became a global style influencing music, language and clothing.

The roots of hip-hop go back to the 1970s, to the poor African American boys and men in large U.S. cities. At that time, many of those cities had developed ghettos that were characterized by decay. This was particularly the case in the African American neighborhoods of New York City. Violence and crime were rampant, and many gang members inevitably were jailed. The men who were doing time influenced other young people in their community in terms of their way of dressing. For instance, in jail you are not allowed to wear a belt for safety reasons. This inspired friends and family of the jailed men to also wear trousers without a belt, with the trousers often hanging low on the hips.

Musically, it was a DJ from Jamaica who went by the name DJ Kool Herc who played an important role in the emerging hip-hop culture. In the mid-1970s he started organizing street parties in the South Bronx. The Jamaican DJ noticed that the dancing teenagers especially liked certain musical passages. He introduced the “merry-go-round”: he put two copies of the same record on two parallel turntables playing at the same time, so he could prolong the most popular music rhythm breaks. Another Bronx DJ called Grandmaster Flash is credited with inventing scratching, which led to the creation of a whole new staccato sound, which in turn inspired a whole new way of dancing, with acrobatic and staccato movements — a style that we know today as break dancing. Break dancing was done in the streets, and soon break dancing competitions emerged. The break dancers’ clothing was inspired by their physical activities: they wore functional activewear and sneakers.

When DJ Kool Herc was busy being deejaying, he needed another person — a sort of toastmaster — who could urge on the dancers and party guests. He was inspired by the Jamaican toasters, who had incited the audience when reggae music was first invented in Jamaica. With the introduction of toasters, yet another musical style emerged: rap music. Rapping (speaking in verse with music) also turned into a competition and a way to show off how good you were at improvising with words. Until 1979, rapping was exclusively a live musical genre. It was not until Sylvia Robinson, an independent record company owner, put three rappers together in a studio and named them the Sugarhill Gang that the first rap record was made. The group’s single “Rapper’s Delight” was a big hit, selling more than 2 million copies worldwide in the next few years.

In 1983, one of the first superstar rap groups Run DMC, released the single “It’s Like That.” Three years later they scored a megahit with the single “My Adidas,” which more or less canonized Adidas sneakers among hip-hoppers — and later among many other young people. Over the next decade rap became an established music genre and a global influence, performed in French, Japanese, Danish and many other languages.

The term hip-hop was coined by Afrika Bambaataa, the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation, now the world’s oldest and largest grassroots hip-hop organization. The word originated as a way to describe a whole lifestyle, including music, clothing and language, as well as events and gatherings. Together with activewear training suits, luxury-brand clothing became an important ingredient in the hip-hop style. At the same time, the hip-hoppers did not deny their roots. Many African Americans have traditionally worn gold jewelry and bright colors. This style is about looking sharper and richer than you actually are. So hip-hop style became a mix of activewear, luxury brands and oversized gold jewelry.

As hip-hoppers aspired to look like rich people, they took a keen interest in the preppy clothes that were very fashionable in the 1980s. This had a huge influence on a relatively new brand called Tommy Hilfiger, a brand with a style similar to that of Ralph Lauren, but less expensive. As the African American hip-hoppers became more and more visible, becoming the idols of Caucasian middle-class teenagers, Tommy Hilfiger became one of the popular brands of the 1990s, first among hip-hoppers and later among young people outside of the African American neighborhoods, increasing the brand’s sales volume inside and outside of the United States.

In Japan, Tokyo has one of the world’s most visually expressive youth cultures. This is why many fashion designers in the 1980s started traveling to Tokyo for inspiration. For many years Tokyo’s youth culture scene has revolved around the Harajuku train station, which has given its name to the phenomenon “Harajuku girls.” These teenage girls (and sometimes boys) make a point of dressing in colorful and kitschy clothing styles. The Harajuku girl style has inspired singer Gwen Stefani in her video imagery and styling and her Harajuku Lovers Tour in 2005.

It is not often that we can identify who first thought of a new style. And unless it is a matter of copyright, it does not matter who gets the credit officially. But if a style is inspired by the street or very visible at a music festival, there is a chance that it will be noticed by multiple trendsetters — giving it a better chance of becoming a trend. A product, design or style that can be observed by numerous people at the same time is more likely to spread and become a trend.

Excerpted from Anatomy of a Trend by Henrik Vejlgaard (McGraw-Hill, $21.95).