Meet the Mindset Team: Laura JollyYan

Our WGSN Mindset team are specialists in product and retails trends, offering a bespoke consultancy service from the world’s most trusted trend forecasters. From fashion and beauty to food and drink, our experts have often sat on your side of the table, understanding your business from the inside to deliver actionable trend recommendations at the right time for you.

Laura JollyYan, our Senior Mindset Consultant in Europe and the Middle East, has worked with the WGSN team, sitting in the London office since April 2020. We caught up with her to get to know a little more about her day to day, and what she’s looking forward to in 2021 and beyond.

You spend your working day looking into the future, is there a shift coming that you’re especially excited for?

The major shift that has been dominating both my working and personal interest is the sustainable fashion shift. Every brand is having to look closer and really examine each aspect, from their material sourcing to production and how they convey their sustainable measures to their customers.

This shift has of course been ongoing for some time, but more specifically I am excited to see the impact that bio-fabrications will have on both the fashion and interior industries. Bio-fabricated textiles are materials grown from live microorganisms, such as fungi and algae, and are really shaking how materials are generated and manufactured. It will be really interesting to see how this and more plant-based innovations progress in the future of fashion and textiles.

Does this interest in sustainable fashion inform how you shop and what you wear?

Absolutely, I have always been fascinated with fashion and lifestyle, particularly function and how consumers use and ultimately benefit from their clothing and objects around them. I tend to lean towards versatile, multiuse products that have a seasonless quality.

The relationship between people’s sartorial choices and the integration to their lifestyle and home environments has definitely been heightened during the pandemic, and I am interested to see the progression of this movement. One of the things I find most compelling about how we work at WGSN is the distinct connection between consumer behaviours and fashion and lifestyle trends.

Is there a brand in this space we should keep our eyes on for the coming year?

Especially from a storytelling narrative, Pangaia captivated 2020 for me. Its aesthetic sits within my personal taste of seasonless longevity, but how it has dominated social media and showcased its products in this rapidly changing retail landscape has caught my attention the most.

Storytelling can often be angled towards heritage brands with a rich history to tell, but the brand’s commitment to the environment and its direct-to-consumer audience engagement supplied us with the richest content I have seen from a contemporary brand. It will be interesting to see how it expands its range alongside its library of collaborations to cement itself as the go-to sustainable leisure brand.

You can meet other members of our Mindset team on the Insider blog.

Find out more about the Mindset team and how they can help your business.

To understand how consumers will think, feel and shop in the future, download our white paper Future Consumer 2022.

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