Amy Leverton, Indigo Girl

Amy Leverton
Photo Credit: John Turner

Trend forecaster, author and consultant Amy Leverton is a fixture at Kingpins. Her company, Denim Dudes, is the brains behind the seasonal Kingpins Trend forecast and garment installation. We think she’s brilliant – and we’re not the only ones. The standing-room-only crowds at her Kingpins trend presentations and her impressive list of clients (Levi’s, Lee and Wrangler, anyone?) speak for themselves.

We caught up with Amy to talk about what she looks for when she’s hunting for trends, why the youth are spending money on virtual clothes and who are the cool kids giving her (and her forecasts) life.

So, you’re starting a denim forecast. You’ve got a fresh cup of tea. Where do you start? Go!

I would say, obviously, that there are always overarching themes and bigger macro patterns happening. For instance – the progression of customization and personalization and how that’s now linking with new technology. Because maybe 5-10 years ago trend was more about watching street style and how people styled themselves and now consumers are getting more involved in the actual design process through customization.

Technology is a really big driver at the moment. Now there is the technology to make custom product on a large scale. We’re also looking at companies like Carlings that sell virtual garments online, so they don’t ever make a physical product. For thirty dollars they sell you an image of yourself in a crazy top.

WHAT?!

You send them a photo of yourself – preferably posed looking like a badass. And they will digitally render a liquid metallic top onto you. There are different collections each season. It’s really interesting. Money is changing hands and kids are buying something and they’re showing off about it online and tagging the brand – but no garment was ever made. Things like that are really inspiring and make us think about how technology is going to be different and make fashion different in the future.

So, clearly you’re not going down a denim wormhole for denim trend.

Nooooo. We look at all sort of things. These days, we pay a lot of attention to how people are showing off on the Internet! Health and lifestyle are becoming more and more prominent and [the fixation on] mental / physical / spiritual health – all of these different factors that make up a person – is giving rise to more purpose-driven influencers. These guys are telling people how to go vegan, how to live a greener life, how to recycle and how to offset their carbon footprint. So these are the sorts of things we look at – not so much denim-related, but they are definitely going to map out how the future is going to look and how people are going to consume, design and interact with each other. All of these things definitely feed into the way we build our trend each season.

Leverton Recommends: Instagrams to Watch

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