I’ve Spent 20 Years Predicting What People Will Buy. Here’s What I’ve Learned.

What 20 Years in Fashion Taught Me About Human Behavior

For most of my career, there were no algorithms. No TikTok trend reports. No AI-generated forecasts. No dashboards tracking every click, save, and search.

When I began my career in fashion, forecasting was part art, part science, and part intuition. We studied runway shows, street style, magazines, cultural shifts, film, music, travel, and emerging designers. We walked stores. We listened. We observed. Long before influencers existed, Fashion Directors were some of the original influencers.

Our job was to identify what mattered before everyone else did. At Saks Fifth Avenue and later at Macy’s, I learned that successful merchandising wasn’t simply about product. It was about understanding people. Why they were drawn to certain silhouettes, colors, brands, and ideas. Why some trends captured the public imagination while others quietly disappeared.

The best merchants I’ve known were equal parts analyst, psychologist, storyteller, and strategist. Then everything changed. The rise of e-commerce, social media, mobile shopping, and digital marketing transformed the industry. Suddenly, we had access to more information than ever before. Search trends, click-through rates, conversion metrics, social engagement, customer journeys, heat maps, predictive analytics. For some, data felt like the enemy of intuition.

I saw it differently.

I became fascinated by the data.

Not because it replaced instinct, but because it gave us another lens through which to understand consumers. The strongest decisions came when intuition and information worked together. Data could tell us what was happening. Experience helped explain why.

Throughout my career, I’ve had the privilege of helping shape assortments, influence marketing strategies, and identify emerging opportunities across businesses representing billions of dollars in annual sales. I’ve worked with merchants, designers, marketers, planners, technologists, founders, and executives across luxury, contemporary, and mass-market retail.

One lesson has remained remarkably consistent:

People buy products, but they are really purchasing identity, aspiration, belonging, confidence, and emotion.

That was true before the internet.

It’s true in the age of AI.

And it will remain true long after the next technological revolution arrives.

Today, we’re entering another period of transformation. Artificial intelligence is changing how products are designed, marketed, and discovered. Retail is evolving faster than ever. New brands emerge overnight. Consumer behavior shifts constantly. Traditional career paths are being rewritten in real time.

I’ve spent the last two decades helping brands navigate change, and increasingly, I’ve found myself navigating my own.

This newsletter is where I’ll share what I’m seeing from the inside.

We’ll talk about fashion and retail, of course. But also consumer behavior, brand strategy, culture, technology, AI, entrepreneurship, career reinvention, and the forces shaping what comes next.

Sometimes we’ll discuss what people are buying.

More often, we’ll explore why.

Because trends come and go.

Human behavior is what endures.

Welcome.

— Abbey