Many of the fashions people are wearing today were predetermined more than a year ago.

Many students from Iowa State in fashion and design study in London for a semester. At the program in London, a class is offered to teach students about the profession of forecasting fashion and trends.

Gretchen Thacker, junior in apparel merchandising, design and production, spent this semester in London. She says to open her fashion senses, she went to High Street in London and looked at the clothes in each store.

Thacker says everyone and everything affect decisions made in fashion. People from all over the world are watching one another and incorporating different aspects into fashion, she says. All aspects of life affect fashion, even architecture and the news.

“Everything is inspiring someone else,” Thacker says.

“It’s a circle. Ideas are developing and changing.”

Thacker says fashion forecasting has an important position in society because it decides what is coming out next.

A director in the fashion industry says fashion forecaster isn’t an actual position, however.

“It’s not a job title,” says Britt Bivenf, director of Promostyl, an international styling and trend forecasting agency. “It’s more that some people are creative directors. It’s not like you get into it, you evolve into it.”

Cassandra Whitney, junior in apparel merchandising, design and production, says fashion forecasters do a lot of retail research. They have to research everything from fabrics to all the intricate details that deal with the fashion industry.

The fashion forecasting class in London discussed Promostyl and looked at several of the agency’s TrendBooks throughout the semester.

“It was interesting how much they were on,” Whitney says. “For the most part, they did a good job of predicting the colors and fabrics for this season.”

The TrendBooks provide information about several themes for each season, a color range and fabric selections. According to Promostyl’s Web site, the TrendBook analyzes the major socio-cultural currents that will influence fashion, design and marketing strategies for the future.

Promostyl has forecasted many trends that have eventually come into fashion.

“The easiest to recognize is yoga and meditation,” Bivenf says. “We started talking about that a long time ago.”

Bivenf says a lot of the people working in the field of fashion forecasting studied anthropology and sociology and are mainly looking at people.

“We’re not necessarily reporting fashion, but reporting what’s going on in society,” she says.