Your favourite fashion bible just popped through the mail slot, you pick it up excitedly and see those familiar words shouting out to you from the cover in vibrant hues, “Work the season’s hottest trends!” It’s a neat and tidy way to package the hundreds of looks as they come off the runways, and all of the major fashion magazines in some way or another promote what is current, ‘hot’ and ‘new’. The expectation is that you will want to get in on it – now.

But how is it that so many designers are doing the same thing? How did the majority choose cobalt to dominate their palette – making it ‘the’ colour of spring /summer season, again? Or who thought it was a good idea to bring back harem pants and why did everyone else follow suit?

There are a multitude of factors that contribute to trend-making, but first let’s go back in time. The idea of trends in fashion isn’t anything new. Throughout history cultures have been identified by their collective sartorial and grooming affinities, particularly in the west; this has been dated back to the 14th century by historians James Laver and Fernand Braudel. According to Braudel, society’s wealthy elite were copied by the bourgeoisie and even peasants, and it was the elite’s displeasure with this emulation that lead to the birth of quickly changing fashion. However, in those days a trend cycle was relatively long compared to today’s fast fashion – one would typically last several years.

Today, fashion moves at a staggering pace. Gone are the days when changes were naturally occurring events; there’s money to be made and not wasted on what won’t sell, hence the birth of trend forecasting. There are multiple trends happening at any one time, overlapping each other, with some morphing into new trends – that crotch on your harem pants now reaches your knees if you want to be ‘bang on trend’, for example. The fashion editors, a few forward-thinking celebrities, television, popular music and as of late, street style as documented on fashion blogs, can all be argued to be influential forces in trend making. But while direct links can be a challenge to find, there is a more academic rationale behind the aesthetic groupings that emerge each season and dictate, to a large extent, what we wear.

Bridget Fabi, a journalist who reports on trends for her blog www.trendsinc.ca, explains how certain colours become ‘hot’: “Pantone & The Color Association are at the forefront, as they are the ones who select the palettes that everyone follows. From here the colour forecasting services develop on these palettes with materials, pattern and design forecasting based upon global inspirations and influences, and the designers all fall in line.

As for how this happens Fabi says, “Most art departments, designers and product developers for any of the major players subscribe to colour and trend forecasting services who develop these forecasts for two to three years in advance.” Among these influential forecasters she lists WGSN, Jenkins, Carlin, milou ket, nelly rodi, perclers and promostyl, who provide direction to the major designers and consumer product manufacturers globally. It should be noted that an annual subscription to each of these services typically costs thousands of dollars – keeping up with the trends is serious business.

But what about the trend ‘cycle’ that in the past few decades can be relied upon like clockwork? Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune and one of the industry's most respected figures, has harsh criticism for the vacuous recycling of the trends from past eras. According to Fabsugar.com, the journalist declared she's "tired of revivals." As the website’s editor explains: “For example, she has no aesthetic problem with big shoulders — a la Balmain – but to her they're forced because they don't stand for anything like they did in the past, when women donned big shoulders to let men know that they were shoulder to shoulder with them.”

So how does creative freedom flourish in an industry that subscribes to reliable, common elements? First, we have forward thinkers who other designers emulate, such as Miuccia Prada, and those whose intention is not to appeal to the mass market but to bring change to the way we think about clothes, like avant-garde designers Rei Kawakubo and Martin Margiela, whose genuinely new ways of creating fashion also heavily influence the future collections in the industry. Hussein Chalayan is known for fusing art and fashion. And there are truly exciting innovations happening in knitwear, the highly sculptural yet wearable creations from Sweden’s Sandra Backlund being a prime example. For the true fashion devotee, this is worth following.