Trends are a pervasive aspect of everyday life. \u201cTrend\u201d is the name we give to changing fashions, shifting attitudes, and evolving technologies; a trend shows us the direction that our consumer culture is heading. For this reason, businesses must also stay aware of trends. How a company approaches a trend can mean the difference between relevance and obscurity, profit and loss, \u201chot\u201d and \u201cnot.\u201d<\/p>\n

What this talk aims to show is that trends themselves are also a business. Rather than merely describe change, trends mediate cultural change so that it may be anticipated, managed, and manufactured. By critically examining the history and current practice of trend forecasting\u2014a hidden but influential industry that trades in cultural prediction a hidden but influential industry that trades in cultural prediction and that affects music, fashion, and a number of other cultural industries\u2014I will explore how trends evolved into powerful force in global consumer culture and a currency via which the future of culture is bought and sold.<\/p>\n

Devon Powers<\/strong> is Associate Professor of Advertising, Temple University. She is the author of Writing the Record: The Village Voice and the Birth of Rock Criticism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), and co-editor of Blowing Up the Brand: Critical Perspectives on Promotional Culture (Peter Lang, 2010).\u00a0 Her research explores historical and contemporary consumer culture and the dynamics of cultural intermediation, circulation, and promotion. Recent work has appeared in Journal of Consumer Culture, New Media & Society, and Popular Communication; she is currently at work on a book about trends.<\/p>\n

This event is sponsored by SoundStudies@UW, a Borghesi-Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshop in the Humanities, with support from the Center for the Humanities. The keynote lecture is hosted by the Communication Arts Media and Cultural Studies Colloquium.<\/p>","excerpt":"

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