Anatomy of a Trend

This is a short book about how things become trends. Some of the ideas are really interesting, such as late v. early adopters and who tends to be in which group. But overall, I found the book poorly organized, with a concept being explained very abstractly, alternating with examples without demonstrating how the example fit the concept, rather than really using examples to illustrate the concept.

I also found that the book didn't age well, in part because Vejlgaard was really concrete in some parts. For instance, he names the people who tend to be trendsetters: e.g. artists, gay men, rather than why some groups are trendsetters. But also, I suspect Vejlgaard is himself a late adopter: despite a heavy focus in the book on social networks and media to spread trends, the internet isn't mentioned until the epilogue, on page 200, and even then Vejlgaard says “the speed of media has changed [from newspapers and magazines], but the type of media has not.” Even in 2006, this was abundantly untrue and in 2018, it's laughable to think about discussing trends without invoking social media.