Haeni adds that prints and colour are two things that can really translate into spiralling sales—and you can certainly see this in the year's best-selling products. From Réalisation Par leopard-print slip skirt to ASOS's green floral tea dress, most of the things on our cult buys list for 2018 were in bold, Instagrammable-prints.
You might not know at the design stage which pieces will go viral, but there are ways you can cleverly amplify interest as soon as sales start spiking. The high street seems to be adopting the strategy contemporary brands like Rouje, Rixo, Ganni and Staud use to build hype: Design distinctive statement pieces and use limited production runs.
One of the reasons Henrietta Rix and Orlagh McCloskey's vintage-inspired label Rixo gained such a frenzy around it so quickly is that the dresses were hard to actually buy, as initially the designers made only one to 50 units of each item. "When we first started Rixo, we noticed that a lot of contemporary brands were very minimalist," adds Rix and McCloskey. "Mainly black and white, and now there are a lot more colour and prints."