Trend Truths...

A guy in a ripped white V-neck T-shirt is stretched out on the leather couch in the corner, his face lit by the pale glow from his MacBook. For an aspiring scenester like the boy in the flannel shirt, standing out from the crowd is going to be a struggle.

"Trends aren't transmitted hierarchically, as they used to be," explains Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, a trend forecasting company. "They're now transmitted laterally and collaboratively via the internet. You once had a series of gatekeepers in the adoption of a trend: the innovator, the early adopter, the late adopter, the early mainstream, the late mainstream, and finally the conservative. But now it goes straight from the innovator to the mainstream."

Read the full article about the global hipster here.