Create Tomorrow, The WGSN Podcast

This week, WGSN CEO Carla Buzasi is joined by three members of the WGSN's consultancy team, Mindset, to discuss the top priorities design brands should have for 2022. Spanning North America, Asia and Europe the three Mindset experts are used to challenging briefs from diverse brands wrestling with creating better products and experiences for their consumers. All understand design brand challenges...

2022 is just around the corner. In what has been another year of ups and downs, we're now looking forward to the clean slate of a brand new year. At WGSN that means nailing down the key trends for the coming year and ensuring you're set for a super-successful 2022. So what can you expect to see trending next year? This week we talk through the team's most significant trend predictions for the comi...

We're in the midst of party season in many regions of the world whether celebrating Christmas or looking ahead to Lunar New Year. While many of us had hoped we'd be in a far better place than last year, with the arrival of the Omicron variant, festivities are again in question.  This week we discuss how things are shaping up for home entertaining, over the next few months.

With a global sense of disappointment it's even more crucial to discuss and determine how brands and creatives can design systems and products that respond to the climate emergency. This episode we are joined by Carole Collet, Professor in Design for Sustainable Futures at Central St. Martins University in London where she is director of Maison/0, the Central St. Martins LVMH platform for regenera...

As we enter what is traditionally the busiest time for retail in many regions, we felt it was time to shine a light on bricks and mortar stores and discuss what brands and retailers can do to lure consumers back. What's the future of the store and what hybrids or strategies can businesses employ to play a part in creating thriving cities again. Or is there something else entirely new around the co...

The topic of sustainability is never far from the top of our agenda at WGSN and with the publication of our new white paper "Create Better", this episode we will be talking about new practices and lessons that everyone who works in design can learn from. Against the backdrop of COP26 it also feels like the right time to challenge ourselves to do much more in this space. We are seeing huge conseque...

At WGSN we have published a number of reports recently about the shifts and strategies in selling sex on Insight, sexual wellness on Beauty and inclusive sex tech on our recently launched Consumer Tech platform.  It's always been a hot topic but what's exciting is that the sexual conversation is expanding and there's a shift towards more open, honest and diverse conversations, depictions and...

This week WGSN CEO Carla Buzasi speaks to Copenhagen Fashion Week CEO Cecilie Thorsmark who, as leader of this sustainably focussed fashion week, is on a mission to change the way the entire fashion industry thinks about its impact on the environment and the wider world around them.  Cecilie has be consulting with the wider industry around her mission to drive genuine change in both the fashi...

In July 2021 Mark Zuckerberg declared that the future of Facebook is the metaverse, but as a concept it’s not new, having first been coined in the 1992 sci-fi novel, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It now yields nearly 6m results in Google Search, though it's far from universally defined. At WGSN we introduced the concept of the metaverse in Future Innovations 2022, calling it a shared virtual spac...

This week, WGSN Executive Editorial Director Bethan Ryder speaks to author, designer and educator Carla Diana & WGSN's head of Consumer Tech Sarah Housley about the future of social robots. According to consultancy firm Frost and Sullivan the global robotics market will reach $38.3bn by 2024. What's more the global adoption rate of robotics and automation in digital supply chains is set to inc...

This week we are welcoming a new member of the WGSN team as we embark on the next chapter of the company. Having made our name forecasting trends for fashion, beauty, interiors, food & drink and consumer lifestyles, we now turn our attention to the exciting world of consumer tech. Joining Carla Buzasi, CEO of WGSN, is our Director of Consumer Tech Lisa Yong who speaks about why this rapidly ch...

The wider concept of gender identity has altered in the public conscious over the past decade, with a more positive understanding emerging that gender is fluid and not a binary thing. This has been powered by the internet and social media, which has given voice to LGBTQ+ communities and activists. Education is more accessible and as a consequence notions of masculinity are also being viewed as a s...

Over the past year as the pandemic took hold globally, consumer awareness of their own health and wellbeing, and also the food that we are putting into our bodies played a massive role in dealing with the global health crisis and propelled the plant based food industry even higher in market share. The growth rate in the US more than doubled in 2020 as sales surged 27% to $7 billion dollars accordi...

This episode explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has created a pet boom, with humankind across the globe seeking solace affection and touch from furry friends. In the US, 69% of consumers own an animal and 37% have adopted one in the last six months according the Bank of America. The Washington Post reported that by mid-July shelters, non-profit rescues, private breeders and pet stores all reported...

WGSN Creative Director Lisa White is joined by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, co-founders of Superflux, a studio that creates speculative worlds and tells future stories that help explain where civilization might be going and what we can do to influence these potential outcomes. Their byline is brilliant at explaining their mission in just seven words: Translating future uncertainty into present-day ch...

This week WGSN CEO Carla Buzasi speaks to the CEO and Founder of fashion-textile disruptor Bolt Threads, Dan Widmaier. Joining them is WGSN's Head of Materials and Textiles, Helen Palmer. The conversation focusses around Bolt Threads' revolutionary new non-leather, Mylo and explores innovation, industry change and sustainability in textiles and beyond.

This week the WGSN team discusses youth and nostalgia, two things that have often (though it seems counterintuitive) gone hand in hand. Although teens and twenty-somethings often love a bit of retro, the term is definitely on the rise as a discussion topic on social media. It's a fundamental human emotion and has been very much on people's minds during the pandemic and over the past year of lockdo...

WGSN CEO Carla Buzasi speaks to Nanushka Founder, Sandra Sandor and Peter Baldaszti the company’s co-owner and CEO. Over the years the label has made a name for itself through its ardent approach to sustainability while staying committed to its luxury roots. Over the course of this conversation they discuss  the changing consumer relationship with sustainable fashion, how Nanushka challenges...

For consumers, the climate crisis is no longer a theoretical problem that will need to be solved in the future, but rather, it is something that is urgent and happening now. Having seen the swift action from governments around the world in response to the pandemic, consumers are now expecting a similar level of drive in response to the climate crisis. All of this is driving broad shifts in consume...

The DNA of an Yves Béhar project is pushing design and technology boundaries to forge new territories often light years ahead of the mainstream. From sustainable shoe packaging for Puma, to Samsung's "The Frame" TV, his studio, fuseproject which he founded in 1999, explores the nexus between design and technology with a strong focus on sustainability and always with an optimistic, punk meets freew...

Over the past year it's felt like stalemate. In our Groundhog Day existence, rarely has fashion seemed so pragmatic. We've seen sweatpants, puffer coats, wellies and walking boots selling out across the globe, while heels, tailored workwear and dresses are gathering dust.  So what does emerging from the lockdown mean for fashion from a product perspective? How do categories from workwear and party...

WGSN CEO Carla Buzasi speaks to CEO and Co-Founder of beauty company Deciem, Nicola Kilner. Carla and Nicola discuss, the impact of seemingly endless Zoom calls on consumers' beauty decisions, the reasons behind creating a social activist manager role within the business and offering a simplified, uniform product range to a global consumer among many other things.

Retail is once more in a state of flux. The pandemic led to huge shifts in consumer behaviour in 2020 and this is set to continue into 2021. In the US alone 11,000 stores closed and 40 major retailers went bankrupt last year. Online spending also reached new heights accounting for 27.3% of global overall retail sales, growing by a third over the course of the year.  Retailers need to adapt to a fu...

At WGSN we have been discussing the growing rental markets for fashion as well as furniture and interiors for a number of years now, this has accelerated in recent years due to the increasing consumer demand for sustainable and flexible lifestyles. Henrietta Thompson co-founded Harth in 2018, and became a pioneer of the furniture rental market in the UK. In the last six months Harth has seen a 50%...

January tends to be the time of year when many of us pull our gym kit out of the back of our cupboards and generally set goals to become the best versions of ourselves. The wellness sector is worth $4.5 trillion per year and has been growing at 6.4% annually, twice the rate of global economic growth.  Petah Marian is joined by experts from across WGSN to discuss how wellness is undergoing somethin...