Fifty Words to Describe Macro Fashion Trends
When presenting macro fashion trends to a team or client, it’s not just photographs that communicate your point. Having a poignant title helps many to grasp the overall concept before components and details can be properly addressed and digested. Sometimes, however, find the right words can be time consuming, which is the exact reason why I created a cheat sheet of common words to describe fashion macro trends anyone can use.
The words conveniently fit into seven category: Time, Place, Making, Music, University, Quality and Anthropology. You’ll discover contrasts occur within each category. For example, there is the expected past versus modern under Time, but let’s take one that is not so obvious - University. University comprises of an active and causal sense, seen with such words as varsity, prep, basics and smart. Each group has more than a single experience and the words reflect this tendency.
Combining words from these distinct categories to make a title is easily, and much more fun than digging through a thesaurus. With a jump of my finger across the computer screen I can already make “Retro Hack”, “Tropical Glam” or “Digital Modern” without even trying. Have a try yourself!
I Time // Past / Retro / Heritage / Vintage / Future / Modern / Everyday / Night
II Place // Urban / Street / Beach / Surf / Nautical / Tropical / Outdoors
II Making // Craft / Tailored / Utilitarian / Industrial / Tech / Digital / Hack / Hybrid
IV Music // Grunge / Punk / Glam / Pop / Romantic / Rock
V University // Active / Sport / Varsity / Casual / Basics / Prep / Smart
VI Quality // Soft / Clean / Minimal / Luxe
VII Anthropology // Global / Folk / Androgynous / Feminine / Masculine / Nomad / Military / Biker / Tribal / Nordic
Some of us are better at words and others images to illustrate a macro fashion trend. I found after making titles like “Sport Luxe”, “Fashion Sport” and “Soft Active”, which are all relatively similar, there must be a way to make it easier on myself. When paired with the context and photographs, each then becomes more distinct. As your naming advances and you begin to feel more comfortable with your specific message, particular audience or just want to have a little fun, more intricate and specialized words can be applied. Having a starting point like this only makes it easier to get there, especially in the world of macro fashion trends.