Li Edelkoort: Famous Trendspotter

Li Edelkoort has seen the future, and it's ... mushrooms. Their subtle, earthy colors. Their curvaceous, snuggly shapes. Their trippy, hallucinogenic side effects. If she could choose a soundtrack for late next year, Edelkoort says, it would be "White Rabbit," Gracie Slick's anthem to psychedelic fungi.

"I wanted to take you drugs in my valise," she says, her customarily superb command of English failing her slightly when it comes to verb choice. "But search is such a hassle at JFK, so I only bring you visual drugs."

Don't underestimate her ability to sneak dangerous ideas across international borders. The Dutch-born Edelkoort, 58, is the oracle behind Trend Union, the go-to source for trend forecasting for the fashion, beauty, retail, automotive, consumer-electronics, and interior-design industries. She counts Philips Electronics, Nissan, Virgin, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Estée Lauder, Wella, Camper, Donna Karan, Jean Patou, Lancôme, and L'Oréal among her 1,500-plus international clients. Emmanuelle Linard, who runs Edelkoort's New York office, says U.S. companies form about one-third of Trend Union's client list, though most choose to keep their relationship with the firm confidential.

The globe-trotting Edelkoort, whom Time magazine named one of the world's "25 Most Influential People in Fashion," has agents on five continents feeding trend information back to the company's mother ship in Paris. Although she's little known beyond the most elite design circles, her influence can be seen in every American mall.

"At Old Navy, we jumped on her prediction of the return of folklorica and craft, and did a lot of hand-embellishing and beading," says Ivy Ross, who was EVP of design and product development before being appointed EVP of marketing at the Gap. In earlier jobs, Ross had used Edelkoort's insight to launch a line of dolls with wash-off faces for Mattel. And while at Coach, she drew from Edelkoort's advice to explore materials beyond leather for handbags.

On this day in May, Edelkoort is on stage at Parsons the New School for Design before an army of fashionistas desperately scribbling down her predictions for the trends that will shape fall-winter 2009 - 2010. Wearing a lustrous gold-silk kimono, a flowing Ikat scarf, shiny gold sneakers, and bright red lipstick, Edelkoort looks like somebody's very hip granny -- one who might just slip a little hash into the brownies. If you see acid-flashback fashion spreads a year from now, you can trace them to this peripatetic cool hunter.

"I found the shows mind- blowing," says architect Alexander Gorlin, who saw both the fashion presentations and one on architectural trends the day before. "I consider myself an expert in architecture, and she pulled together things I had noticed but not articulated. To impress me is a tall order."

But channeling the zeitgeist is only part of Edelkoort's work. She publishes a fleet of expensive trend magazines, consults for design firms, and runs a nonprofit to help artisans market their wares. As if that wasn't enough, for 10 years she also has been head of the Design Academy Eindhoven, the premier Dutch school of design, a post she'll leave in December.

Murray Moss, whose New York design shop features the work of a number of Eindhoven grads, says Edelkoort's keen eye is her students' secret weapon. Saying she does trend forecasting doesn't really do her justice, Moss says. "She's a visionary. She can take a set of facts, like a good cook would take ingredients, and turn them into something far greater: an articulate commentary on where she thinks we're going. And she shares that information with students, so they emerge from Eindhoven, year after year, confident enough to show us something very bold."

Edelkoort is slightly more modest about her gift. Over a bottle of wine in Paris a few years ago, she told the Gap's Ross: "People think I am some mystic or gypsy. But what I really do is pay attention. Then I have the nerve to say what I believe."

Does she ever. Between presentations at Parsons, Edelkoort laid out her ideas -- some extremely insightful, some frankly baffling -- about how we'll work, live, and eat in the years to come.

I was struck by how optimistic you are. That's a pretty radical departure from the national mood here in the United States.