Geraldine Wharry

Geraldine Wharry is a fashion futurist and educator with 20 years of experience working across a host of roles within the fashion industry including 10 years as a fashion designer. Previously roles also include writer for Dazed Beauty and a forecaster at WGSN. She now runs her own freelancing business, which works towards three program pillars, research, education and creation. Her main focus is on macro trends often developing them for either 10 or 30 years in advance.

 

Session objectives…

 
 

The main objective for her talk was to:

  • Highlight three current trends she sees progressing over the next 10 years

  • Advise how to identify trends across a range of industries

  • Show skills into how to research to find inspiration and projects which support your claims

  • Teach us how to identify how shifts in a range of industries can affect one another

 

3 main trends…

The first trend she explored with us is how we will define innovation in the future, as we begin to reevaluate relationships with resources and value exchange. One key point she made was that innovation does not always mean taking on the next big technological change, but instead looking at other forms of innovation and selecting what suits your brand or project more appropriately. This is due to the fact that something can only be innovative if it actually improves something.

3 elements to this trend include:

Community

  • Fashion is a social act

  • Short term thinking for short term profit no longer works

  • Unlearning of colonialist mindset

Global Dialog

  • We are social animals

  • Demonetisation of knowledge

  • Impact social media has had on collaboration

Decentralisation

  • Usage of open-sourcing on the increase

  • Redefining of intellectual property

  • Rise of sustainable and second-hand clothing

For technology to be seen as innovated, it has to have an improvement on our lives rather than just a short loved gimmic.

trend description

Skills and knowledge needed…

Wharry believes one skill everyone will need in the future is resilience. It is predicted by 2030 humans will no longer be able to keep up with technological advancements, so being able to adapt to change quickly and learn new skills as needed will be vital to stay relevant in an ever-changing future which may lead to people having multiple careers in one lifetime. We will need to completely change our mindsets and think in different ways about how society currently views a person’s timeline.

Future of the industry

Covid has had a huge effect on how people are reacting towards saving the planet meaning that there is a current demand for trend forecasters to highlight more sustainable developments across all industries, however, covid also highlighted how little we know of the future, Wharry called it ‘The politics of uncertainty’. Wharrys hope is that one day the industry will no longer will be needed as people will understand how vital it is to continue to be curious of things and will develop a want to always be discovering and learning therefore not needed anyone to do it for them.