An insider’s look at retro trends

Today at the CMG conference our keynote speaker was Dorothy Kalins and her topic was:

Falling in Love Again…An insider’s look at retro-trends: why we love what we loved before and what we’re likely to love again in the future

With wit and humor Dorothy took us on the journey of the baby boomers and the many faces their collective persona has worn and how even now forty years later they are still in love with their childhood and the things that remind them of those days and experiences.

I especially enjoyed her example of how the chocolate chip cookie regained popularity. She shared that as the boomers experiencd the stress of the working world they sought to find the same feeling of comfort they had experienced as a child. Eating home baked tollhouse cookies was one of those comforts. Thanks to Famous Amos they were able to have chocolate chip cookies without the trouble of baking them and thus could recreate those yummy feelings of their youth.

Her talk had many of us nodding and smiling as we recognized ourselves in one…or many…of her examples. What a delightful speaker!

More about Dorothy–

Dorothy Kalins was the founding editor-in-chief of Metropolitan Home , which won the National Magazine Award for general excellence in 1990. She became the first woman ever named Adweek’s Editor of the Year. In 1999, she was awarded the prestigious Matrix Award for her work in magazines.

Kalins founded Saveur in 1994, and served as editor-in-chief for both Saveur and its relaunched sister publication, Garden Design, until 2001.

She then joined Newsweek as executive editor, where she helped rethink and redesign the magazine, working on all editorial aspects of the publication. In the spring of 2006, Kalins became a contributing editor to Newsweek, writing and editing, primarily in the areas of health, food and design.