Antoinette van den Berg was in Paris for the public event, Les Rives de la Beauté, and took take us for a tour of the streets of Paris to help us understand her job as a trend forecaster a little better. Together we visited concept stores such as Colette, L’Eclaireur or Merci, but also shops like Miu-Miu or even a boutique dedicated to love accessories (!). In the video, she explains the particular mindset that we would need to have to be in the shoes of a trend forecaster.

In 2007 Antoinette founded her trend-forecasting agency, FutureTouch, and specialised in forecasting trends in cosmetics. She kindly answered the following specific questions:

What are the world’s most inspiring cities when it comes to beauty? Why?
All cities have a unique identity, and I tend to find inspiration in anything that is special and unique – in fact, anything with a distinctive identity. At the same time, I look at common, ordinary things (and high-street products). Indeed, the future already starts today! Some cities I recently visited were:
* Bombay and New Delhi for their unique Indian sense of beauty, showing us that things can actually be turned around by 180 degrees. 
*Amsterdam and Berlin for their innovative approach to design.
*Paris and Milan for their classic sense of cosmetics, showing us what’s going on in the world of cosmetics.
Asian capitals like Tokyo are also very important, and there are places that are always good to go to such as New York.

How regularly do you visit those cities? Do you have a local consultant or do you travel in order to experience the ‘surprise effect’ yourself?
I travel a lot – I currently live between Italy and Holland and speak three languages every day. For the past three years, my life has consisted simply of travelling, because travelling allows you to live with other cultures. In my eyes, trying to understand people is the basis of being able to predict the future. I do all travelling myself – it’s true field work. In November, we will launch a trend forecast for the Indian market, and so I visited India twice for research purposes. 

Which trend identified by FutureTouch over the past years are you most proud of? Why?
Black nail varnish, for instance – nobody could imagine it! At the presentations that I gave to all levels, including to representatives of the French high-end market, nobody could believe what I was forecasting … but they finally listened: the results can be seen!

How do you translate a trend into a product forecast?
That’s the easiest part! Because of my design background (I studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven in Holland), it’s an automatic process. The ideas just appear in my mind. I also have a huge knowledge about raw materials, as I have been working with them for 20 years. This, of course, expands the scope of my imagination. We recently even started designing raw materials!

Thanks a lot, Antoinette, for helping us to understand your job a little better.
It sounds extremely exciting, don’t you think?