In 2016, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort appeared at the first edition of BoF VOICES to present her “Anti-Fashion Manifesto,” a provocative take on the key issues plaguing the industry at the time. A decade later, Edelkoort returned to the VOICES stage to share her view on how fashion has changed since then — and where it’s going next.

Fashion becomes conventional, traditional, ancestral.

Edelkoort cited Virgil Abloh’s death as a turning point for the industry, ushering out the era of casual streetwear and bringing back more old-fashioned formality. T-shirts and sneakers were abandoned for button-downs and loafers. Cleaner silhouettes replaced slouchy ones.

“Suddenly fashion has been conventional and pulled together, coinciding with politics moving in the same direction,” she said. “It is obvious that in time, these proper clothes will demand a disruption.”

The shift has also brought new attention to local and regional clothes, putting an international spotlight on traditional items such as the hanbok, the sari and the kimono.

Fashion becomes magical and female.

Edelkoort chastised the industry’s “discarding” of female designers and praised those who have broken through, naming Rei Kawakubo, Louise Trotter, Emily Bode and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as examples of the “avant garde of our times,” who are showing “how fashion can be designed differently.”

“They not only design garments, but they also design ways of doing business,” she said. “They are able to read women’s minds, contrary to male designers.”

There’s also more attention being paid to aesthetics and styles that women are currently favouring, from clothes inspired by witchy aesthetics — black lace-up boots, an affinity for black — to more girlish items like babydoll dresses or even bloomers for men.

Fashion becomes childish, prodigious, outsider and animated.

Children are paying closer attention to fashion while adults are embracing more child-like looks, Edelkoort said. At the same time, fashion is also taking more notice of cultures and societies outside of the Western world, particularly in the global South, as “tribal trends take centre stage” and celebrate traditional craft from around the world. That broadened perspective, in turn, is inspiring more colour, soul and simple joy in fashion.

“For too long, products have been made for marketing, and no longer from insight and intuition,” she said. “When a designer takes a bit more time to understand the volume and the finish, that makes a small difference. Making clothes alive as companions, as the friends we need.”

Fashion becomes focused, collective and spiritual.

Fashion today is cluttered, Edelkoort said, with endless stores to shop, garments to buy and references inspiring creation. She anticipates that a correction is due, making the industry more focused, refined and uniform. That could then create more of a sense of belonging among consumers, who are compelled to think more about the collective and less about the individual — which could help ease the pain points that will come with the mass adoption of AI.

Brands have their own part to play in this transition, she said: they need to understand what intrinsically connects them to their shoppers and what they stand for.

“In the future, fashion will possibly need less variation,” she added. “Against all odds, fashion will be organised with less narratives, and that the general idea is to resemble each other and correlate taste, leaving the ego behind.”

Fashion becomes illuminated, robotic and arts and crafts.

As artificial intelligence and robots increasingly become a part of our day-to-day lives, the industry will evolve. Particularly as they play a role in producing the clothes we wear, “production becomes entertainment, opening a totally new category of amusement,” she said. “Visiting a brand becomes like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ the process becomes the message.”

In the future, fashion — and all of humanity — can look to the arts and crafts movement as a roadmap for how to live, as “human instinct finds new ways of learning and earning,” she added. The hope, she said, is that in the end, people will feel more satisfied.

“It’s a new road I call the business of happiness.”