The New and the Trend

There is nothing wrong with trends. They play an important role: they reveal cultural, aesthetic, and behavioral movements that are beginning to gain momentum in society. They are like maps of the present, revealing desires, interests, and changes already underway. Observing these movements makes sense. Following them without question is another matter.

Creating something new requires a different attitude. It is like having coffee with Time and the Future. At a certain point, Time asks a question: “What do you expect of the future?” Perhaps the only possible answer is: “That one day it will become the present.” The answer seems simple, but it changes how we think about creation. The future is not a place where we find ready-made answers. It is a possibility that only becomes reality when someone has the courage to bring it into the present. It is in this space that authorship emerges.

A trend appears when many people begin to share behaviors, languages, values, and forms of expression. But it does not create a movement. It merely shows that one already exists. Its very nature depends on imitation and repetition. If no one repeats a gesture, a language, or an idea, it does not become a cultural phenomenon. Herein lies perhaps the greatest paradox of trends. Every trend begins with an act of authorship, but ceases to be authorship when others begin to repeat it. We do not perceive a trend at the moment it is born. First, someone notices something that has not yet been seen. Then they create a language. Others begin to reproduce it. Only then do we identify a pattern and give it a name.

We call that pattern a trend. In other words, we only recognize a trend after the creative act. This is why the market often makes a mistake when talking about innovation: believing that keeping up with trends helps predict the future. But a trend does not show what is yet to come. It records the moment when an innovation begins to stop being an exception and becomes a reference point. By the time the market finally gives a name to what has been created, its creator is already seeking another answer.

The problem, then, is not trends themselves. It begins when they stop being something to observe and become a method of creation. That is when something more troubling than the repetition of styles emerges: a slow weakening of culture. When we look for answers only in trends, we stop investigating what makes each place unique. Memory loses ground to novelty. Culture gives way to a repertoire of references. Listening is traded for market approval. Instead of asking “What does this place have to say?”, we begin to ask “What is working?” It seems like a small change, but it completely transforms the creative process.

Every culture is born of its own way of interpreting the world. It is made of memory, emotional ties, conflicts, landscapes, accents, ways of life, and shared stories. A project based solely on observing trends may appear current, but it runs the risk of not truly belonging anywhere. It may lose its roots, its history, and its ability to create meaning. There is an almost invisible line between trends and mass homogenization. When we cross that line, authorship is no longer at the heart of creation. What was once discovery becomes a formula. What was once a language becomes a repertoire. What once involved risk now offers security.

Formulas become efficient precisely because they can be repeated. But what can be reproduced endlessly rarely creates a new cultural language. This is not about rejecting references. They broaden our repertoire, and every act of creation is in dialogue with what came before. The problem arises when that repertoire stops inspiring and takes the place of thought. Culture advances through interpretation; repetition merely expands what has already been accepted. Perhaps this is the main difference between following trends and producing culture. Trends tend to make things uniform. Culture tends to highlight what is unique. The new does not emerge when we repeat something that has already received collective approval. It appears when someone finds a voice capable of interpreting an era, a territory, and a memory in an unprecedented way.

Ultimately, every trend began with the quiet gesture of someone who decided not to follow another trend. Trends can point the way. But only authorship can transform a place into a language, a language into culture, and, finally, culture into the future.