It’s so much easier to predict the past than the future! In the fickle world of entertainment, that’s even more true than it is in the serious world of politics and economics.
We all want to have a crystal ball or clairvoyant powers. Who wouldn’t want to be able to see what stocks are going to rise and which ones are going to fall? There are plenty of Wall Street gurus who claim to know what the future holds in store, but how many of them predicted the crisis we are now trying to find our way out of?
If something as critical to our future as our economy cannot be predicted with any degree of accuracy, what chance have we to predict the upcoming trends in something as frivolous as pop star fashion? Just because leather brown boots were a popular accessory with some old rockers and are now long out of fashion doesn’t mean they won’t suddenly become cool again.
Fashion trends depend on the power of the artist and that’s unpredictable. The Beatles are the perfect example of that. Before they came on the scene, no man in his right mind would have worn his hair long. It only took as long as it takes hair to grow before long hair was being worn by men everywhere after their first album reached America.
Let’s say a new pop superstar named Jean Skinny arrives on the scene. Jean has an androgynous style of clothing. She wears men’s clothing and combs her hair like a man. It’s all subtly and carefully done, though, so she doesn’t look masculine.
Another thing that makes Jean stand out is the black sport watch she always wears. When she is performing, she always takes off her jacket and rolls up her sleeves. Her men’s watch is very prominent on her tiny wrist. It looks so stunning on her that before you know it every teenage girl in America is wearing a man’s watch just like hers.
The irony of it is that the watch is the one thing that Skinny wears that was not designed to start a fashion trend. It is the watch her late father wore. He died just before she became famous, so she wears it for him and in homage to him.
She wasn’t trying to start a fashion trend. In fact, it was years before she revealed to anyone the reason why she wore it. Her manager, on the other hand, had deliberately been trying to start a trend when he got designers to give her that look she was so famous for. Nobody could have predicted the outcome. It just happened. You just can’t predict the fashion future!