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What will you eat, drink, buy and read about in 2012? SCB Partners has identified 15 lifestyle trends for 2012. From the latest ways to shop to new travel destinations, here are the things you’ll be talking about in the year ahead. Dining Out: Chef-Swap: While leading restaurants continue to develop and market their chefs, in 2012…
What will you eat, drink, buy and read about in 2012? SCB Partners has identified 15 lifestyle trends for 2012. From the latest ways to shop to new travel destinations, here are the things you’ll be talking about in the year ahead.
Dining Out
1. Chef-Swap: While leading restaurants continue to develop and market their chefs, in 2012 chefs will increase their influence and name domestically and internationally through visiting chef programmes. Ikarus in Sao Paolo has led this trend, inviting an international chef each month. Their 2012 guest chef programme will include Nuno Mendes of Viajante (London), Ryan Clift of Tippling Club (Singapore) and Daniel Patterson of Coi (San Francisco). In the UK, Northcote Manor’s Obsession Festival features a different European chef each night for 10 nights running in late January. Their 2012 festival will feature Claude Bosi of Hibiscus (London), Bryn Williams of Odette’s (London) and Antonin Bonnett of The Greenhouse (London) to name a few. Expect to see more of the same from leading chefs across London, New York and Paris – and other cities globally.
2. Fancy Dress Drinking & Dining: Immersive drinking and dining experience, often fronted by top chefs and leading establishments, are requiring guests to dress in themed or period clothing to fully participate in the experience. From St. John’s Secret Restaurant, requiring diners to don 1920s regalia, to The Stew Club where guests are invited to put on their best in true traditional dandy style. Speakeasy bar Barts has its own costume trunk and 80’s Chelsea hotspot Maggie’s, both staff and blue blood clientele including Princess Beatrice can be seen flashing fluorescent accessories.
3. The Deli Boom: Expect to find yourself noshing on hot pastrami on rye before long. Mishkin’s is the latest venture from the owners of Polpo and Polpeto, while hipsters flock to certified kosher restaurant Deli West One, which makes its own salt beef and grinds chopped liver in-house. The Wolseley is serving deli staples such as matjes herrings with pumpernickel, salt beef sandwiches and chicken soup with dumplings. At the same time, New York’s Jeffrey Chodorow helped open Kutsher’s Tribeca with a menu that includes wild halibut gefilte fish.
Art & Culture
4. Affordable Online Art: Affordable art from the big names will be available to all! S[edition] is offering digital limited edition art by YBAs including Tracey Emin and Damian Hirst for prices as low as £7.50, while Counter and Eyestorm are offering names such as Maurizio Cattelan and Mat Colishow for under £500, and more people will buy art from sites like YellowKorner, which custom-print high quality photographs. With galleries and auction-houses augmenting their online offerings for lower price art, more young collectors will get in the game.
5. Fashion Museums: Celebrated fashion houses are stepping into the world of art and setting up their own museums, archival collections and art foundations. Gucci recently celebrated its 90 year anniversary with a celebrity-filled launch of The Gucci Museo in Florence, while Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli’s collection of modern and contemporary art is displayed The Prada Foundation’s exquisite home, an 18th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice. And Valentino has just launched his online museum The Valentino Garavani virtual museum showcasing five decades of fashion history. Following last year’s record-breaking Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Met in New York, fashionistas are also looking forward this year’s Azzedine Alaia exhibit at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands.
Travel
6. Ancestral Travel: Travel is no longer just about where is hot or where to relax – in 2012, people will take up new opportunities to travel to discover their legacy and family roots – wherever those might be. Popular with couples and families, travellers will be visiting Russia, China, Korea and the Baltics, as well as Lebanon and West Africa.
7. Remote/Native/Luxury: Travellers are looking for exploration experiences in the most remote and untouched corners of the globe. Xishuangbanna, at the foot of the Himalayas in China’s southern Yunnan province, that still lives by age-old customs – a luxurious new Anantara resort means roughing it is not required. Corumbau in Brazil’s southern Bahia was originally named by its inhabitants “far from everything” – it takes an off the beaten track four-hour drive from the nearest airport to get there. Travellers are rewarded however with deserted beaches, the freshest seafood and absolute isolation.
8. Sign-Up for Space: Virgin Galactic will be accepting reservations in 2012. For a mere $20,000, you can reserve a spot on a $200K trip to outer space, likely in 2013, when Spaceport America, the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, opens for business in New Mexico.
Shopping
9. Gloss’e’ Commerce: While fashion retail sites like Net-A-Porter and Moda Operandi expand their editorial content by leading fashion editors and writers, magazines are going the reverse, offering clothes and accessories for sale. Expect Vogue.com, GQ.com and other magazines to offer cutting edge fashion for sale, straight off the magazine’s website.
10. Clothing Clubs: BeachMint, a so-called ‘social commerce company’ has kicked off the trend in the US last year with the Olsen Twins’ StyleMint monthly t-shirt subscription service, which followed JewelMint, a monthly jewellery subscription with styles by Kate Bosworth and celebrity stylist Cher Coulter. (Rachel Bilson and Steve Madden launched in November 2011.) Expect shoe companies, handbag companies, and other products to launch clothing clubs offering an item every month to suit your style – at a monthly subscription price of £30-£45.
11. Mobile Shopping Trucks: The last 2 years saw the rise of food trucks – and 2012 will see the advent of the shopping truck. Trucks featuring curated offerings will be travelling around London, presenting a capsule collection of fashion and lifestyle items. The success of Boxpark’s pop-up shopping container mall this holiday seasons means more retailers or micro-boutique concepts will make the rounds in London.
Technology
12. Life Caching: With the advent of applications such as Instagram, PicPlz and Path, instant blogging will shift from text to pictures. We are collecting, storing and sharing our lives with friends, family and increasingly the public. Ordinary rituals such as morning coffee have become glorified and enhanced as photos are tweaked with effects.
13. Mobile Wallets: Virtual wallets will truly make their way into our pockets as mobile phone manufacturers partner with payment companies for use in online and physical environments. Google, PayPal and MasterCard will all be actively rolling out their cashless payment systems linked to mobiles. Many will use NFC (Near Field Technology), enabling devices in close proximity to each other to share data- you need only wave your phone at the till. FYI, PayPal reported six-fold (516%) increase in global mobile payment volume on Black Friday 2011 compared to the previous year.
14. Techno Health Monitoring: Health-conscious consumers will have a slew of new cool devices to monitor health. Jawbone’s UP is a bracelet/iPhone App combo that tracks the user’s movements all day and calculates distance, calories burned and other metrics throughout the day. When you are sitting around too long, the bracelet vibrates to remind you to move around. Zeo’s Sleep Manager enables you to calculate how much sleep you get a night, and find out how deep your sleep is, providing night-to-night statistics. FYI, Apple now offers over 9,000 health-related Apps.
15. Info/Ideas on Demand: Finally, after much ado, brands, packaging, magazines and everyone will finally be adopting new Apps, augmented reality, QR codes and other ways of giving us information, style ideas, opportunities to win things, and the rest of it anytime we interact with their products. Google Goggles will enable scanning of any object or image and identify it. Amazon Flow will enable you to take a picture of an item and find it on Amazon for purchase. SoundHound is partnering with Spotify to identify music on the go (think: Shazam), while – scary – Google’s newest property PittPatt can take any photo and identify who is in it.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales. She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
