Street trends

by Janine Lopiano-Misdom

How do you find out what's in store for the youth generation before it hits the mainstream? Listen to the people who make it their business to track the trends: Janine Lopiano-Misdom and Joanne De Luca of Sputnik, an innovative market research firm that examines today's alternative youth cultures for clues to tomorrow's mainstream trends and markets. Street Trends offers an engrossing, provocative look at the hidden centers of urban street cultures, identifies important new trends emerging from the streets and predicts how they will impact the culture at large. Take veganism. It's a good bet that this hot fringe trend will negatively affect the booming meat industry. And MTV? Its glory days are numbered as more and more suburban kids, following in the footsteps of their more hard-core urban counterparts, tune in to the more thoughtful Discovery Channel. Venturing deep into the fringe subculture, Lopiano-Misdom and De Luca identify the latest trends to emerge from the street.