Breaking It Down: Trends Are Not Fads

There’s a common misconception about the difference between a trend and what is trending. Many people assume that a popular and globally recognized item automatically qualifies as a trend, often labeling it as such without understanding the principles behind trends. For example, oversized or Relaxed Suits have been a favorite among Gen Z fashion enthusiasts from 2023 to 2025, paired with popular styles like Workcore, Dark Academia, and Minimalism. However, calling Relaxed Suits a trend is incorrect—they're a most-favored item, not a trend.

The problem is people confuse the definition of a trend, what is trending and trend prediction. To clarify correctly, Inflow breaks down what defines a trend, how to identify trending items, and how to predict what's going to be trendy in fashion. The question seems simple, but to understand it properly, it’s not.

Understanding trends plays a pivotal role in your fashion success in today's fashion industry. With advanced tools and technology, future forecasting has become a game-changer. Holding these innovative keys to future forecasting is the biggest dominance for your business. Let’s dig into this article to see how trends work and learn to spot them effectively.

Trends and Trending: Where do they come from?

Traditionally, a trend is simply what people feel, see, and adopt crowdedly. The bubble skirt became a trend in 2024 when Kylie Jenner, a renowned US-UK business celebrity, wore and posed with it on her yacht, sparking global interest. This led people worldwide to buy and embrace bubble skirts as a trend in 2024. Fashion brands around the globe benefited significantly, continuously releasing bold and unconventional designs inspired by Kylie’s skirt.

Actually, trends are not fleeting moments that come and go quickly; they are not fads. Fads rise and fade rapidly after widespread adoption, without causing cultural shifts. In contrast, trends represent gradual changes in cultural values and lifestyles, influencing attitudes, daily activities, and the way people work and live. Trends drive deeper, lasting transformations and are much more profound than mere changes that appeal to individual preferences or desires.

Trends are influenced by various forces, both intangible and tangible. Sometimes, creating a trend involves gradual transformation and long-term movement in everyday life. Trends can also emerge from unexpected events that prompt us to rethink our way of living. For instance, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, catastrophically changed the way people live and protect themselves. Before Covid-19, wearing masks in public or at work was uncommon, but it became a daily habit, both out of necessity and choice. This shift even inspired creative fashion combinations featuring protective masks.

Noticeably, 2024 is a bigger and clearer change in how people work and learn things by technology and people can predict that it's humanity's future. Since so many benefits of a technology provide to human life, its role is pivotal and indispensable. For instance, a trend forecasting platform is now the strongest secret weapon of every business in general and in the fashion industry including.

Are there still relevant trends for your business?

Unlike before, today trend forecasting is a complex process which requires rigorous observation and a keen instinct to track the signals of the moving change. Predicting a trend is no longer based solely on fixed factors like seasons, special occasions, or weather conditions. In an era where people have countless fashion choices at their fingertips and can even customize themselves what they want to wear daily, forecasting has become more challenging. Trend forecasting provides businesses with precise data and insights into each piece of clothing, offering focused, agile, and accurate information about pricing and purchasing power.

Therefore, you will never see the old tradition of fashion production, in which fashion brands just produce and customers have to buy what they are selling without personal preferences and flexible fashion styles. To know what customers really want and what is going to be the top seller next, fashion businesses today cannot thrive without the innovation of AI tools, trend prediction tools in particular.

Inflow’s Smart Trending Fashion Solutions

What does a trend forecasting tool offer to a brand? And what can they do for your fashion product development? What AI-generated tools will help you out of just predicting a trend? Inflow’s AI trend forecasting platform for fashion production, based in Vietnam, is improving itself to go beyond the limit. At first, it was just a stage of tracking and monitoring the manufacturing stages, and now it is one of the well-known AI fashion forecasting platforms, which has helped renowned fashion giants around the world with mind-blowing collections.

Unlock the future of fashion with Inflow! Explore how trend forecasting and advanced AI manufacturing revolutionize every step—from on-demand ordering and tracking to sourcing, reviewing, demand planning, access to 1000+ fashion catalogs, customization, and virtual try-ons.

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