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#BizTrends2024: What's hot to eat, taste, wear and more in 2024
Here are a few that tickled our fancy:
1. Colour of the year: Peach Fuzz
Pantone’s colour of the year for 2024, Peach Fuzz, is a “soft, heartfelt hue [that] expresses the desire to nurture kindness, compassion and connection – while fostering a deep coziness as we seek a peaceful future”.
Quite a change from 2023’s Viva Magenta, but the Flow designers like it. It’s a warm, friendly colour, perfect for wearing on a summer’s day. It also has a cosy aspect to it, so we can see it bringing light to a cool winter’s day.
Says Pantone Color Institute executive director Leatrice Eiseman, “In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.”
2. Flavour of the year: tasty tamarind
When it comes to food, 2023 was about the sweet heat of hot honey, but it’s an African flavour – tamarind – whose fruity-sour tang will tickle 2024’s taste buds, according to American spice company McCormick and Club House for Chefs.
It’s the sticky pulp found inside a tamarind seed pod that is used as a spice that adds zestiness to dishes such as Zanzibari curries and helps pad thai pack a punch.
3. And another flavour of the year: ube
But wait … others say another flavour will be the crown king of 2024’s dinner plate. Confused? So are we, but California-based flavour-creation company T Hasegawa USA has pronounced this purple tuber, with its nutty, vanilla-like taste, its flavour of the year.
The ube is not the same as a purple sweet potato, and has been chosen “due to its growing popularity among foodies and culinary influencers on social media for providing a splash of natural color in Instagram- and TikTok-worthy dishes”.
4. The new kit on the block: Wearable AI
Some say 2023 was the most innovative tech year in decades, and those in the know say that things are set to get even more intriguing and confusing this year. We’ll have more deepfakes, and ways to try to counter them; and we’ll have innovations coming in thick and fast.
Part of the terrific rise in what artificial intelligence (AI) can do, and how it is inveigling itself into our lives, is to be seen in the trend towards eradicating the boundary between digital technology and our “in real life” lives.
Futurist Cathy Hackl told The Drum magazine: “In 2024 we will continue to see more companies unveil more hardware in a race to replace our computers and then our mobile phones. The post-smartphone future is heating up.”
Wearable AI is all part of this brave new world. Humane’s Ai Pin is a tiny computer that you can secure to your clothes and that projects onto your hand, letting you interact with AI services without using a screen.
Meta’s smart glasses come equipped with a camera, audio recording capabilities and integration with ChatGPT so that users can give the glasses tasks, such as reading only vegan items from a menu.
5. Raising the bar: Minimalism on the menu
Say goodbye to the eight-or-so-ingredient Long Island iced tea, and heaven forbid even mentioning the Commonwealth, a 71-ingredient concoction destined to give the most dedicated drinker a hangover. Cocktails are going minimalist, letting the quality of their ingredients speak for themselves.
According to the Diego Bar Academy, other taproom trends include using unconventional ingredients such as oils and butter and swinging away from sweet flavours in favour of a savoury palate.
6. Exercise craze: getting your kicks in
Have you had a wall Pilates class yet? No? How about Padel Ball? Well, it looks like there’s a new way to use physical motion to release pent-up stress – martial arts. Get back in the dojo, because the new way to be badass is by kicking and punching your way to fitness.
7. Travel trends: home swaps and coolcations
Is The Holiday your mom’s favourite Christmas movie? What is it about this 2006 festive season romance that seems to have predicted what Condé Nast's Traveler says is a new travel trend for 2024? That’s right: the home swap.
The travel magazine puts this travel trend down to the rising cost of travel. “Home swapping is an affordable alternative to splashing out on expensive hotels or Airbnbs. And while the concepts of couch surfing and house exchanges have existed for decades, several slick new platforms are redefining what home swapping looks like today.”
Along with astro-tourism – going where the stars shine brightly (Karoo, anyone?) – and eco-diving, a hot travel trend is the coolcation to places like Iceland, Finland or the Baltic states.
“It's official: 2023 is the hottest year on record. Little wonder that many travellers are thinking twice before booking literal hotspots like the South of France and Sicily, prone to heatwaves, in July or August. A survey for luxury travel network Virtuoso found that 82% of its clients are considering destinations with more moderate weather in 2024,” says the travel magazine.
9. Fashion fad: 2
Dig out your tata’s togs, there’s a new fashion trend in town: eclectic grandpa. Comfy cardigans, corduroy and quirky combos are the name of the game.
Referring to the 2024 Pinterest Predicts report, Vogue says “the trends for the next 12 months come straight from our grandfathers’ closets. The social network notes a considerable increase in searches for the following fashion terms: customised denim jacket (+355%), eclectic clothing style (+130%), Grandpa core (+65%), retro streetwear (+55%), Grandad style (+60%).”
A comforting 2024 to you!
At Flow we’re seeing trends tend towards the cosy and the uncomplicated, which is not surprising in this new world of confusion, cacophony, war and worsening climate change. We wish you everything that is good and nourishing this 2024. May our worst fears never materialise.
