Cool Hunters

Cool-hunting is the practice of surveying advanced and innovative consumer groups for ideas about upcoming trends. Cool-hunting originates in the fashion industry where, already in the early 1970s, a number of fashion houses (most famously perhaps Fiorucci) set up research offices that were charged with the task of surveying a rapidly developing street culture and translating its stylistic and lifestyle innovations into products that could be commercialized. Employees at the Fiorucci style office were paid to keep abreast of popular culture, and enjoyed yearly paid vacations to exotic places on condition that they brought home research reports. Such isolated examples of trend research offices developed into trend research firms during the second half of the 1970s. These firms supplied books and style sheets, listing the ...