Trend Spotting With the Cool Hunters

ByABC News via logo
June 25, 2005, 11:01 AM

June 25, 2005 — -- Many parents scratch their heads and wonder why their teenagers have to have a particular pair of jeans or a pair of Ugg boots or a trucker cap -- right now.

Who decides what's cool in the world of teenagers? And what makes a trend suddenly, like, so over?

Malcolm Gladwell, a journalist and best-selling author of the book "The Tipping Point," studies this very phenomenon -- the rise and fall of trends.

Gladwell said one trend that has been very clearly traced is "valley speak."

"It's where they engage in what's called 'up talk' -- you know, how teens talk and they end every sentence with a question?" Gladwell said.

Gladwell said up talk appears to have started among Australian surfers in the 1960s, who eventually came to California.

"And all kinds of little teeny boppers would cluster around them and try to emulate them," Gladwell said. "Eventually, it finds its way among almost every high school and mall in the country."

Trends are a virus, Gladwell says, and somewhere out there is the "patient zero" of low-rise jeans. The trick for marketers is finding her.

In the '90s, a cottage industry of "coolhunters" sprung forth, claiming to be the fortune tellers of teen taste. Some were right, most were wrong. So these days, most fashion houses go right to the source.

Sophie May is a ninth-grader who loves to shop. But unlike most ninth-graders, she rides a corporate stretch Hummer to the mall, where designers and consultants study her every move.

"Every time someone copies me, I'm flattered, but I change it," Sophie said.

Sophie is one in an army of Teen Vogue "It Girls."

"They are influencers, and the fact is that when you reach one, you reach so many other teen girls," said Gina Sanders, an editor at Teen Vogue magazine.

If the new Betsy Johnson cell phone is going to sweep the nation, for example, it will have to impress them first.

"I can walk into school and say, 'Look what I've got,' and no one could say, 'Oh yeah, me too,' " said one "It Girl."