To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, designer Rachel Roy created this eco friendly spring sweater as part of her new Rachel Roy: Recycled Reused initiative, a program that creates fashion-forward products from recycled and reused materials.

Filed under Cautious Pause, Consumer Crunch, Fashion journalism, Future Classics, Looks that Last, Silhouette, Source of Influence, Trend cycles, Zeitgeist

Dramatic titles do catch a reader, but when those readers have the ability to respond in the comment section, it can get snarky while being informative. The JC Report, a professional site “Inside Global Fashion Trends” has a three part series titled The Death of Trends. After reading through the first installment and the firestorm of comments (some admittedly in the “Let me show you how I know more than you” category) including the author’s responses, perhaps a more accurate - albeit less exciting - title could have been “The Evolution of the Fashion Trend Phenomenon.” They are certainly worth a read, comments included.

(Photo note: I did a Google image search for ‘fashion trends’ and this is the first one that popped up. Given my heritage as a dyer and my delight that ombre is all over the place, I decided to go with it. I pulled it from a post on the blog My Life, My Obsession, My Things. She did a great job interpreting some of the macro-trends for Spring 08)

Part 1 introduces the topic and discusses the change from overarching seasonal directives of ‘right and wrong’ towards an increasingly more ‘post-modern’ bricolage assortment of accelerated micro-trends that consumers mix and match in their own personal way.