oday the emotional added value has become an essential element in attracting consumers. The “functional” features of a product are less important than its “evocative” qualities: materials, fibers, colors, packaging, images, and the stories that evolve around it are critical to the consumer.  Designers must answer to those unformulated expectations, forecasting the unpredictable motivations of the consumer. This is what we call fashion in its broad sense.  Based on our expertise in the field of forecasting fashion phenomena, our activity is now extending to everyday utilitarian products: home, cars, food, cosmetics and electric appliances.  Designers, marketing directors and product developers are facing the need to integrate the irrational nature of fashion into the conception and development of their new product lines. To create a prospective dialogue with these groups, we launched an invaluable tool: FUTUR(S).  Crossing the analysis of major socio-cultural currents and consumer attitudes with a visionary and concrete approach of the look of products, FUTUR(S) is a new style and design instrument for creative teams as well as decision makers. By illustrating concepts with images and by evoking sensations, our ambition is to give you the keys to a tangible future.  From the first edition of FUTUR(S), the trends we present and analyze are a part of fundamental research orientations that evolve, merge, and drift within a global socio-cultural context. In 2004, the year FUTUR(S)4 was published, faced with difficult wait-and-see market conditions (some speak even of de-consumption), our goal was – and remains now more than ever – to propose positive leads and alternative solutions that energize and re-infuse meaning to consumer markets.  In  FUTUR(S)4, we created the following five areas of transversal currents.

Happy Blur
A consumer need for transparency and accountability that combines hedonism and security

Flowers, pixilated graffiti, patterned films, crystal town, textures and layers, functional jewel.
Other “expressions”: earphones by Swarovski, the Tom Dixon plastic table the Martine Sitbon boutique in Seoul and the Prada boutique in Tokyo.

Famous/Anonymous
Sophisticated anonymity emerging from the shadows

Luxe Confidential: no visible logos; casual luxury: dense lacquers, smokescreen prints; Metal armor: lightness and modernity in materials like metal and aluminum; Not-so-basic black: iron knit, added texture through multi-faceted metal, openwork, coat of mail, beveled and guilloché edges. Other “expressions”: Naomi Klein’s book No Logo

Re-Naissance
Creative hybriding provides meaning in our lives

Experimental cross-culture between East and West, exchanging and hybriding the genres of science and craft; technology with aesthetics; recycling, hybriding.

Essensuel
Harmonizing biology and technology to infuse everyday with added value and beauty

Minimal pulp: simple organic facades hide high-tech processes; “Plump” obsession: sensual.  Techno-sensual minimalism: subtle, matte, glossy, surface effects sophisticate, the pulpy, flexible and ultra smooth materials.

Lost in Fantasy
Rethink your perception of time and space

Delirium Natura: nature fantasy and obsession; Zoomorphism: animals are both a source of technical inspiration and of fantasy.

Do these transversal currents suggest a world in progress? The world is thrown into another dimension: distortion, vertigo, oscillating, vibrating, these perpetual mutations suggest new bolder, random-based life styles.

Françoise Serralta is a trend consultant with Peclers Paris, an international trend-forecasting agency.  FUTUR(S) is a trend-book developed to forecast and decipher today’s trends in fashion, color, consumer goods and products. For more information visit  www.perclersparis.com.