Lidewij Edelkoort, often called Li, is one of the world’s most famous trend forecasters.As an intuitive thinker who travels the world studying the evolution of socio-cultural trends before sharing this information with her clients in industries as diverse as fashion, textiles, interiors, cars, cosmetics, retail and food. Edelkoort began her career as a fashion coordinator at the Amsterdam department store De Bijenkorf. After finishing her degree at ArtEZ, in 1975 she relocated to France, where she set up as an independent trend consultancy. She soon created the consultancy ‘Trend Union’, a trend forecasting service based in Paris. Trend Union provides bi-annual trend forecasting books for the fashion and design community with colour and lifestyle information.[5] She then founded Studio Edelkoort, a consultancy bureau, and opened two offices in New York City (Edelkoort Inc) and Tokyo (Edelkoort East). She has helped to shape products for international brands, advising on product identity and development strategy, and er clients have included Coca-Cola, Nissan, Camper, Siemens, Moooi, and Douwe Egberts. In the beauty industry, Studio Edelkoort’s has developed concepts and beauty products for Estée Lauder, Lancôme, L’Oréal, Shiseido, Dim, and Gucci. Her expertise has also influenced brands across retail stores, textile industry, banks, real eastate and many more. Edelkoort was recognized as important to Dutch interior design with the Woonbeurs prize in 2001. In 2003, TIME Magazine named her as one of the world’s 25 Most Influential People in Fashion, while in the following year she was named as one of the 40 Most Influential People in Design by Icon magazine, amongst others.