As the equestrian movement starts to hit its stride, it’s useful to remember just how much energy goes into chasing down trends, sartorial and otherwise. Helped along by some well-placed press, it’s now a full-fledged wing of the consulting industry, with its titans, its upstarts and apparently its detractors as well.

Piers Fawkes, trend-watcher and blogosphere compatriot at PSFK, has posted a 1500 word analysis of what’s wrong with the trends business, singling out offenders like WSGN and IGN’s Cassandra Report. The critique is pretty straightforward—more money, more authority, less oversight, fewer good ideas—but it’s still a young industry’s first j’accuse, and may be relevant for far longer than Fawkes imagines.

We’ve been waiting for the second coming of the cummerbund, but we didn’t think it would look like this.

This Japanese belly warmer, called a haramaki, is threatening to go mainstream. Adapted from a piece of samurai armor, the midriff scarf’s popularity is currently limited to bikers, skiers and the pregnant. While that may not seem like fertile crossover territory, it hasn’t stopped the garment from making waves online as the next big thing in layering.

We can easily picture it on a runway, but we offer the following request: Please, please restrain yourselves.

Please.

Stepping Light: Rough day? Sit back and enjoy Common Projects’ relaxing spring collection. [Common Projects]

Mr. Mom: First, she was a woman. Then, he was a man. Now, he’s pregnant and we’re dizzy. [HuffPo]

Tom Boy?: In related news, Tom Ford also plans to poop out a kid. [NYMag]

Trend Setters:Working hard to keep up to date on urbane tomboys, alternadads and all those other mythical creatures of lifestyle lore? A short peek at Radar will keep you ahead of the curve. [Radar Online]

Three Pointer: After years of sitting on the bench, Michael Jordan finally shows some game by employing Tex Winter’s famous “Triangle Offense” in Miami. [NYPost]

Chic Picks: Free music from everyone’s favorite fashion oracles. [Refinery29]

Who Wears Short Shorts?: Styledash don’t want to see none of your inner thighs. [Styledash]

Go Greyhound: Like every other used and abused streetwalker who’s seen too many hard New York nights, Fashion Week may be shuffling over to the Port Authority. [NYMag]

Go Back to Jersey: What’s wrong with Joey Pants? Try everything. [Magnificent Bastard]

Space Case: Once, we were grown men who watched football and Westerns. Then, Sci-Fi fox Tricia Helfer snared us her Tholian web of leggyness.[OhNoTheyDidn’t]

Shields Up: In related news, Spock goes down hard. [The Observer]

Picking Numbers: Cathy Horyn starts off her morning congratulating her friends at 6267 on their new post as chief designers at Gianfranco Ferre, has a glass of red wine before lunch to celebrate, gets all moist about Scorsese. [NYTimes]

Crimes and Misdemeanors: Forget Beckham, marketing guru and American Apparel founder Dov Charney knows that no one can sell more underwear than Woody Allen. Too bad he didn’t ask permission first. [Radar]

New Kid on The Block: Given the criteria, we most likely qualify as “Lad Nouveau.” Call us that on the street and… well, let’s just say you’d better have good insurance. [Times UK]

“Well-Dressed Rebels”: ACL breaks down the stars of April GQ. [A Continuous Lean]

Better Than a Card: Earnest Sewn will be offering discount tattoos for Mothers Day. How come you never see moms sporting “Son” tats? [Paper]

Part of the fashion industry has always been digging up interesting subcultures—from skaters to steampunk—and exposing them to the mainstream until they dry up into clichés. The trendhunters are always on the case…but we thought it would take them a little longer to get around to furries.

Exhibit A: The new window display at the always-new Paul Smith Union Square store. The previous display was a dose of Varvatos-y rockism, but apparently they were after something a little more underground.

Either that, or they’re trying to keep up with world opinion of Smith’s banker clientele. But we’re all mammals, aren’t we?

See the other windows here»

We’ve been pushing the lomography cause for a while, but apparently someone’s been listening.

Fresh off his furry jaunt, Sir Paul Smith has put together a lomography camera with his trademark stripes. It’s a solid accessory, and he certainly has the retail reach to pull it off in a new way. It’s quality trend-watching all around…although this may be the first time Sir Smith has lifted an idea from the White Stripes.

The Sartorialist tipped us off to the latest troubling fad among monk-shoed Italians: they’re leaving the straps dangling loose. Of course, we have nothing but love for monk shoes, but to our eyes, that loose strap is just waiting to end up in the mouth of a teething basset hound with a taste for fine leatherwork.

But of course, that doesn’t mean it’s going anywhere. Trends like this rarely follow the usual rules, and assuming the shoe fits well enough to stay on without the strap, there’s nothing to stop the Mediterranean youth from leaving their straps dangling for the better part of the decade.

Think of it as a backwards ballcap for the bespoke set.

It looks like the matching shirt and tie is catching on. We first spotted it in the Commonwealth Utilities line, and now the West Coast brand Howe is pulling the same move in their SS09 collection.

We don’t like to say it, but we told you so.

You’re never too old for a little fun and games, even if you’ve run out of good toys.

This one might be worth a look, provided your equilibrium is still in good shape. It’s called the 360, and it’s very good news for anyone looking for a replacement skateboard. It comes from an Italian designer named Francesco Sommacal, and we’re expecting (or hoping, really) that it’ll have about the same shelf life as the Razor scooter.

In other words, you’ve got a solid eighteen months to enjoy this before it gets irritating. On your marks, get set…

Our favorite thing about B store is usually the small, rounded collars that always seem like the seedlings of a full-blown trend—something you might see in the window of Banana Republic ten years from now. But they may have learned a few new tricks.

Their latest line debuted this week at London Fashion Week, and it’s boasting a lot more than collars. From gun-holster-esque suspenders, dark-wash denim shirts and a pleasant reliance on cerulean blue, these Britons are finally coming into their own.

Eight more looks from b store»

Not Actually Like a Virgin: Lindsay Lohan continues her tour of glamour girls with Madonna circa 1986. She and Sam would make a pretty good Sid & Nancy, now that you mention it. [Glamour]

Get Your Trends Here!: The spring trend report, hot off the presses. [Men.Style]

Freedom ‘09: Another set of well-worn workwear from Mr. Williams. [A Continuous Lean]

Making Waves: Patagonia’s sustainable model starts to attract some notice. The mountain-climbing part continues to be a bit niche. [PSFK]

One of the brilliant things about personal style is it can float along independent of trends.

Most designers would never let a jacket this baggy onto a runway. But while the rest of the fashion world is busy trimming the sag off their cardigans, this Parisian gentleman is off refining his own rumpled look, thanks to a baggy blazer, a few loose scarves, and a perfectly grizzled beard.

And, for the moment at least, he has a style all to himself.

If Mr. Sayler’s namecheck has you wondering what Pendleton looks like, this is a pretty good specimen.

Western shirts aren’t exactly on trend these days, but that mostly applies to the exaggerated cowboy version. Pendleton is too much of a heritage brand to focus on things like trends, or even much marketing for that matter.

As a result, this shirt isn’t that different from the ones they were churning out ten years ago—that is, the ones that started the trend in the first place.

Men.Style just posted another of their ridiculously influential trend reports. This time around it’s titled “The New Severity,” and while it’s all new enough, we’re not buying the severity part.

As usual, the slideshow tries to trace the common threads between this season’s runway shows, items, and architectural projects, but when it comes time to tie the whole thing together, they come up short. Everyone who’s looked at a stock ticker recently is feeling severe, but all the Condé crowd can come up with on the runways is that there are a few more acute angles going around, and there’s an awful lot of gray and black. But…isn’t there always?

And if this Duckie Brown jacket projects anything but Old Vegas opulence, we’re certainly missing it.

There are big changes afoot in the sneaker world, but so far, it hasn’t been clear what was going to trickle down to the Reeboks and Converses of the world. But, opinionated gentlemen that we are, we have a thought or two on the subject.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we present the canvas oxford. If it hasn’t gained serious ground in the shoe racks of the world by next summer, we’re going to be very disappointed.

We expound on the matter still further»

It’s official. Workwear has entered its baroque period…or at least Japanese workwear.

This linen blend fishing vest from the Japanese brand Mean might be the perfect example. There’s a reason we haven’t seen one before: If you tried to take it fishing, it would soak through from the tiniest splash. Linen is probably the least rugged material available, which is one of the many reasons it hasn’t found its way into workwear just yet.

In other words, someone is having some fun with us…

All is explained»

The aesthetes at Valet just debuted The Edit, a more web-integrated wing of their site. There’s a steady stream of obsession-worthy objects, a handy virtual newsstand and a digest of some of the best style blogs on the web (ahem), but what really caught our eye was a little applet called The Pulse.

Anyone who’s spent an afternoon scouring Google Trends can testify to its almost limitless appeal, but The Pulse is the first time we’ve seen it harnessed in editorial form. Above, you can see the Met Ball debacle broken down in handy graphical form, as news of Mr. Sutherland’s infamous headbutt gradually spreads through the blogosphere, and thousands of people simultaneously wonder who Jack McCollough is.

The Navajo print style just popped up again, this time in a V-Man editorial spread lensed by no less than Mr. Karl Lagerfeld. It’s not on anyone’s clothes, but the Bixby-ish football gear fits surprisingly well with the old America blanket they’re sitting on. Maybe a few ponchos are in order?

Liquor trends come and go, but the next big thing is never more than a marketing push away. The latest candidate is sherry, which just got a surprisingly tongue-in-cheek website courtesy of the Sherry Council for America. (A high point: The site’s “exclusive” enough to require a secret password to get past the front page, but the site immediately informs you that it’s just “password.”) Still, we’re more concerned with the future of the country’s bar scene.

We’ve thought sherry was underrated for quite a while, partially due to the name (the only order that sounds girlier than “appletini”) and partially by association with more common port wines. But we’re also not sure it’s due for a tequila-style revival just yet. Sherry falls in a box with wine and scotch—tasty, but hard to market. The new site gives a tip of the hat to mixology through an extensive cocktail list, but this seems like one drink that’s better straight. Which means it may be a little slow catching on.

The Wall Street Journal has been taking on the Times pretty directly lately, and it looks like the style beat is no exception. We’re sure they were both racing for the “Steve McQueen is still cool” story, but credit the WSJ for pulling it in first.

The problem, as you might have guessed, is that he never really went away. Baracuta might be having a revival, but McQueen himself has never really fallen out of style. To the extent that he had a surge, we’re already on the tail end of it. That is, around the time when the big houses stomp in and large scale trend pieces start to water things down. None of it’s wrong exactly, but it’s also hard to pinpoint anything that wouldn’t have been true five years ago…or fifteen for that matter.

White Room: Love is an ottoman, in the latest issue of Elle. [Fashionising]

Trending Downwards: A gentleman’s guide to the short-lived trends of the aughts. We’re surprised the anachronistic mustache didn’t make the cut. [NYMag]

A Few of My Favorite Things: Starting tomorrow, an all-star list of men’s style bloggers is counting down the favorite items in their closet. Is it too late to throw our Spiderman PJs into the mix? [Components of Enthusiasm]

Fam in the Biz, It Is What it Is: Shakespearean intrigue in the world of online sample-sellers. The bottom line: Amazon may be poised to out-flank Gilt Groupe. [The Fashion Beat]

This one has been building steam for a while (exhibits A and B), so we’re hesitant to call it a trend, so instead we’ll put it this way: You should think about wearing suspenders.

No, seriously.

Slip a pair on next time you doff a jacket and you might be shocked to find your pants draping a whole lot better, and avoiding the cinch-and-billow look that plagues the belted trouser. You can take off the jacket for a more adventurous look—joining the trads, the Americanists and the tie revivalists all at once—or keep it on and enjoy the benefits in relative secrecy.

It can still be hard to find a good pair, but we recommend these from Alexander Olch, which you might have seen at a shop or two recently, or trying the vintage route. One advantage of picking up the trend on the early side: you’ll have plenty to choose from.

It’s been a while, but we’re ready to call trend on a new item: the flecked sweater.

The look’s been building steam for a while, most notably in the marled sweater resurgence that popped up last fall, but between this autumn-hued jumper in APC’s latest shipment, and this Utility Coop crew neck, along with earlier entries from Our Legacy and Paul Smith, pushes it over the threshold into trendhood. Four’s a trend, right?

Naturally, we’re in favor. Sweaters can always use a bit of texture, and giving a contrast color just means more to look at. The APC jumper is the most extreme of the lot but we’d more conservative versions to keep their sheen long after they’ve stopped being hip. And in the meantime, a static-dappled crew neck should be the right kind of eye-catching.

More fuel for the flecked sweater trend: They keep popping up at the world’s cooler boutiques.

Opening Ceremony, for example, just dropped the price on this speckled knit from the Tokyo-based Sabatino. At sale prices, it’s a good deal cheaper than the APC equivalent, and if you’re moved to jump on this particular bandwagon, it’s a pretty good place to start.

An insider’s tip: when Christian Audigier starts copying your style, things may have gotten out of hand. Add in a winking style guide or two, and the recent renaissance of heritage brands and workwear starts to look dangerously close to played out—at least from a trendwatcher’s perspective.

The only problem is that workwear was always more of a movement than a trend. Which raises the question of what’s left after the trend pieces dry up.

Naturally, we’ve got a few ideas»

Sometimes it’s helpful to think of trends as a hierarchy. At the top, there’s the far-reaching sea changes that fashion empires are built on. That includes preppy, raw denim, and maybe even Americana if we play our cards right.

Below that, there’s the stuff that lasts a few years and ages gracefully (military, nautical), the stuff that lives on runways and only occasionally sneaks into the more adventurous closets (Navajo prints, drop-crotch trousers), and the stuff that nobody will ever wear outside of a showroom.

And unless it gets a whole lot rainier in the next few weeks, we’re tempted to put the scuba trend towards the latter end of the spectrum.