i-D: Cambridge Analytica’s fashion trend forecaster

…Now, let us return to Kim Kardashian’s trendy shades, which help to illuminate something about how Chris Wylie, a high-school dropout turned data nerd, was able to so effectively destabilise the wheels of western democracy for Steve Bannon and the alt-right. One-upping Kanye on the fashion tips front, Wylie actually studied for a PhD in fashion trend forecasting. It enabled him to explain to Steve Bannon that, “Trump is like a pair of Uggs, or Crocs, basically.” Wylie’s key question was, “So how do you get from people thinking ‘Ugh. Totally ugly’, to the moment when everyone is wearing them?” Or, to paraphrase, how do you change people’s minds about an odious, multi-bankrupt, self-confessed sexual assaulter like Trump? How do you get them to make him President? “That was the inflection point [Bannon] was looking for,” Wylie says.

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