ARE WE REALLY CHANGING?

The environmental impact of production and consumption systems is central to any contemporary conversation about fashion and design. After more than 25 years of debate, suspicion and indecision, companies are slowly rising to the challenge of creating sustainable products. The question is: why did it take so long to arrive at this point and can the industry really get it to work right through the textile platform?

The reason behind this change of heart lies in the combination of a top-down approach by governments across the world, enforcing an environmental agenda embracing everything from plastic drinking straws to air and water pollution, with a groundswell of public opinion demanding and taking action on everything from fracking to fur. The anvil of consumer pressure is reflected not just in demands for transparency but also in the rise of veganism, company boycotts, interest in ethical indexes and, most significantly, in the past few months, decelerated consumption, the reasons for which go far beyond questions of austerity and economy.

And this pressure will only grow as Generation Z joins the ranks of the Millennials in the push for ‘responsible’ living. Their heroes are not high-street multiples or status-laden brands but change leaders such as Stella McCartney, who have placed ‘guilt-free’ principles at the heart of their brands. But, McCartney is not alone. More and more companies are seeing that sustainability and environmental awareness make sense not only morally but also economically. That’s not just because of possible savings in energy, water and processing costs, but also because sustainability is an asset to long-term corporate image and market value.

SUMMER 2018: PRONOUNCED

Luxury Street

The most talked-about collaboration of the moment is the appointment of Virgil Abloh, the founder of streetwear sensation Off-White, as men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton. This encapsulates the massive change taking place in fashion at the moment and shows how luxury brands are looking to the cultural energy and business model of streetwear to stay relevant.

The question everyone is asking is whether all this truly heralds a new age of luxury streetwear, permanently changing our understanding of clothes. Certainly a ‘Millennial mindset’ is taking hold across the luxury market. Generations Y and Z are now the main growth engine of that market, driving 85% of luxury expansion last year, according to Bain & Company. By 2025, they are expected to account for 45% of total luxury goods spending. Each generation has its cultural touchstones and Millennials are clearly more in tune with hip hop than red-carpet glamour. They want brands that reflect what they consider more authentic cultural associations.

What’s more, these generations were brought up on the internet; they live a socially networked life which streetwear, with its graphic visual approach and irony, can so much better reflect than formal fashion. We are also living in the age of drop marketing, with its constant flow of new product releases: street and athleisure are much better at providing a stream of novelty at Instagram speed than traditional luxury fashion. Most important of all, streetwear exists within a culture of collaboration, and collaboration models are one of the biggest factors driving innovation at the moment.

City view
We look at Lisbon, which has undergone somewhat of a cultural emergence over recent years, with international visitor numbers having risen by 12% year on year and creatives citing the city as ‘the new Berlin’. Updates, as ever, on London, Paris and NY.

Season in review
Autumn/Winter 18/19

Womenswear designer colours 

The designer colour choice for A/W18/19 delivered strong amplified messages with vivid colour reinforcing a powerful “Don’t-Mess-With-Me” attitude.

Menswear designer messages 

When a designer steps off the wheel and bravely presents a focused collection that is relevant and stands apart from the masses, we welcome it with open arms.  

Season in focus

Spring/Summer 2019

The latest additions to womenswear fabric collections 

Manufacturers have been working hard to combine the two talking points of the season – sustainability and relevance. In a way, they are polarised objectives, but by using new technology to find natural solutions, the results are surprisingly good!

Menswear fabric orientations 

The summer fabric mood took two directions: the sporting life – an active leisure or athletic style with tech performance at its heart or a more subtle game of smooth refinement in gentler colourations for fluid, sensual satins and filament silky looks.

Forward view

Autumn/Winter 19/20

Womenswear fabric and colour forecast 

As the feminist climate intensifies, the merging of men’s and womenswear collections escalates. Textiles will range from classic, non-gender specific designs to ultra-feminine florals.

Menswear colours, styling and fabrics 

A/W 19/20 remains colour intense from the deepest tinted darks, through warmly filtered reds and ochres, updated flat primaries to hyper-fantastical pastels.

Accessories & trimmings forecast

This season offers eclectic inspiration, turning around accepted codes and blurring still further different market segments.

Womenswear knitwear colours, yarns and styling 

The intertwining of radical technical advancements and the natural order of things points the way forward.

Menswear knitwear styling concepts 

Now we see what we have done to our planet, we are reflecting on our mistakes and, seeking redemption; we look for action aided by technology and natural resources.

Knit forecast

For S/S 2020, materials break boundaries and combine to create new tensions where an eco smart sustainable edge is at its invisible heart.

Design and lifestyle – fashion meets furniture 

In a year overshadowed by the #metoo discussion, data protection issues and political distress, designers and brands appear to be avoiding moral, social and political issues focusing instead on pollution, future cities and new branding opportunities.

PARTICULAR

We have crossed the frontier. 2018 will see major growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence as a tool to re-shape the fashion business with major AI innovations to be expected in predictive forecasting, capacity planning, merchandising, automated production and delivery. However, the possibilities with AI go much further than that as developments move its potential way beyond the mechanical into the creative. For example, Amazon is on the verge of creating the first AI designer, with the development of an algorithm that designs clothes by analysing images, copying popular styles and using them to build completely new designs. Meanwhile, enriched data will allow for new opportunities in customer relationship management, improving customer insights and, last but not least, much more reliable demand projection thereby reducing forecasting errors. Twenty percent of executives who took part in the Business of Fashion-McKinsey Global Fashion Survey believe that the use of AI to “reinvent design, merchandising and marketing” will be an important trend. However, there is still a significant number who remain dubious about AI’s lack of flexibility and intuition for it to be a major player in fashion’s deep creative process. This division of thinking is at the forefront of our A/W 19/20 forecasts where we ask the question: “Should the fashion industry be led by algorithms?” and make a strong case for accidental fashion. Above all, we look at fabrics as tools serving fashion as a whole, enabling designers as well as users to mash up looks, to create their own interpretation of garments.

City view A/W 17/18

Our city of the moment is Vancouver. This city, associated with an outdoor lifestyle and the launch of athleisure-wear the world over, is undergoing somewhat of a luxury boom.

Womenswear inspirations: Spring/Summer 2019

The season sees a strengthening of the movement towards responsible design, marking out a transparent production trail and asking ethical questions along the way.

Womenswear colours: Spring/Summer 2019

Our new summer colours continue to echo the mood of change in fashion and offer a palette that can explore different aesthetics and is adaptable and fluid enough to meet differing needs.

Womenswear Key Looks: Spring/Summer 2019

There remains an atmosphere of change and the fashion industry needs to be watchful of peripheral influences. Our attention for S/S 19 is drawn to both high and low stimuli at opposite ends of the design spectrum.

Casualwear colours and styling: Spring/Summer 2019

How do you feel? Really. How do your emotions affect your daily interactions, your choices, your life?

Menswear styling, colours and fabrics: Spring/Summer 2019

We explore themes that range from the melancholy and sensual, the nostalgic and child-like to untold tales found in historic interior references. We end with a vibrant and joyful theme that is indicative of hope.

Womenswear and menswear fabric and colour forecast: Autumn/Winter 19/20

Should the fashion industry be led by algorithms? We make a strong case for accidental design, wherein a designer wishes his or her work to achieve a specific goal, but ends up achieving another.

Print design forecast: Autumn/Winter 19/20

Design is the essence of fashion. Colour is the expression�of “Sein”. The capital of beauty should not be scraped o the floor of social media, but whole heartedly embraced and invested in. Felt, smelt, touched and heard…

Knitwear forecast: Autumn/Winter 19/20

Forms follow structures and natural shapes emerge from an interplay of ribs, and multi textured stripings re-delineate classics.

They called Rei Kawakubo’s exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of New York “The Art of the In-Between” and that’s exactly where we are in fashion and textiles at the moment. Of course, fashion is always in a state of flux otherwise it wouldn’t be fashion, but the changes we are looking at, now, are far more radical and convulsive than anything seen before.Technical innovation, digitalization, individualisation and democratisation are coming together for the ‘perfect storm’ that will tear down all the existing structures around which we plan, time and create textiles. We are stepping into a new moment of fashion freedom built around the unexpected and accidental.What’s interesting is that it is the haute couture, once the bastion of convention par excellence, that is pointing the way. There, we have already seen a breaking down of barriers, not only in who attends the couture shows but in the way France’s Chambre Syndicale has invited a roster of new names onto the official schedule in a bid to inject a more global viewpoint into the exalted world of haute couture. We also saw a breaking down of barriers in the clothes shown on the runways, with denim and sportswear, even recycled effects, popping up alongside the exquisite handcrafted gowns and luxe furs, which are the hallmark of the traditional couture ateliers.

The doors are truly opening onto a brave new world!

Publisher’s view

In the fashion business, we are pretty confident that AI could never replace us, especially on the design and marketing front – but could that confidence be misplaced?

Fibres & fabrics

At all the fairs this season, the issue on everyone’s lips was ‘sustainability’. Fabric producers are eager to show what they are doing to improve production in sustainable ways

City View

Updates on London, Paris and New York, with an in-depth look at Melbourne, Australia,  no stranger to being voted amongst the top five, most liveable cities in the world, and boasting quite the cornucopia of style, culture and creative hubs.

Talking points

We need to learn from the bravery of today’s design graduates. They embrace collaboration, they dabble, roam and explore, they work with scientists, or consult older masters, they are multidisciplinary and they push through walls.

Womenswear designer colours

The S/S 2018 catwalks mirrored the mood of the moment, confirming the desire for revolution and change through a series of feel-good trends that coloured everything from the season’s disco-diva, sports-themed silhouettes to razzle-dazzle fabrics.

Womenswear designer fabrics, silhouettes and styling details

The S/S 2018 catwalks convey messages that are, at first sight, complex and confusing. It is becoming increasing more difficult to pull out clear directions and this, of course, is a direct reflection of the disorder around us all.

Menswear designer messages

Expansive thinking is called for in a fashion world that has jettisoned segments and where deliberately disorderly assemblies of influences are adopted for the mainstream market.  

Womenswear fabrics: the last additions

We are all into sustainability and the importance of the circular economy, but we are also into embellishment and fantasy. Yes, there are plenty of muted mid-tones, neutrals and re-cycled hues, but there is also a lot of brilliant, playful colour.

Womenswear fabric and colour forecast

Lightness, fresh colours and flowers usually come to mind when one thinks of spring, but fashion collections are becoming both non-seasonal and non-gender specific so we look to antique Botanical drawings of unusual foliage and flowers as inspiration for S/S 2019.

Menswear colours, styling and fabrics

Evolving lifestyles, in hand with the athleisure movement, are encouraging a transition towards enhanced comfort. For S/S 2019, this comes through in the form of lighter, more fluid and supple fabrications.

Accessories & trimmings forecast and inspirations

Accessories wake up classics, conceptualise the future, make a digression on folk and ultimately transform the mundane into desirable objects. Thanks to accessories freedom of expression has never been so wide.

Womenswear knitwear colours, yarns and styling

Sustainability issues are increasingly embedded into the design process and S/S 2019 looks for ways to increase positive environmental benefits through informed fibre choices as well as intelligent material investigations.

Menswear knitwear styling concepts

Our themes are based around some very typical menswear values and looks. We open with a homage to mid-west, American pattern and a core of new basic colours: these are followed by more rustic and functional, muted neutral stories.

Design and lifestyle Foto 8

Intelligence + empathy + foresight = real innovation