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

 

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!

Season in review

Spring/Summer 2018
Infographics of the development in men’s and women’s retail bestseller S/S 2017 offered very strong, in-store visual statements, but underneath these trend concepts and top line messages, what were the real success stories driving both newness and profitability? And how will these evolve for S/S 2018?

Menswear r-t-w designers
Today, in fashion, to be modern means a multitude of things. It can be to embrace cyberspace; it can be to wear vintage iconic prints and logos; It can be to capitalize on social media, and it can be to embrace unexpected collaborations.

Womenswear colours
Stories focus on moods that are soft, stable and cocooning or, conversely, are driven by vibrant, energetic and shimmering colourful stimuli.

Womenswear inspirations
The new generation of designers is rewriting the rules to tell personal stories and turn the spotlight on the things that matter. Impressive is the depth of their investigations as well as their new malleable thinking and flexible working processes.

Womenswear key looks
Shapes and fashion looks for A/W 18/19 primarily align themselves closely to the properties and behaviour of the chosen cloth.

Womenswear fabrics
Of course, there’s black and textures, but what’s so striking about this season is the determination of manufacturers to play with colour, shine, pattern and embellishment. Accidental fashion has taken root.

Womenswear trimmings and accessories
From the playful and virtual world of the future to the treasured masterpieces of the past, that remind us of our origins and heritage, designers want to inspire with stories that project a deeper awareness, personality and emotion.

Casualwear colours and styling
Technology disrupts work and play, becoming a driving force in how we live and how we dress. New advances in fabrics and technology are breaking down the barriers between work and leisure, casual and formal, old and young, art and commerce.

Menswear orientations
For A/W 18/19, there is a clear dichotomy in terms of fabric design and experimentation, the one playing with a pensive, subtle, invisible cloak of texture and pattern, the other taking a bold and extrovert approach.

Forward view

Spring/Summer 2019
Womenswear and menswear fabric and colour forecast (6)
Here, just this once, we will not be talking about fabrics for fashion, but rather fabrics for clothes that don’t dazzle, but actually help us navigate in a world that becomes more unfathomable by the minute.

Print design forecast
The emphasis is on unabashed, powerful pattern embracing sportswear for the street, rebellious and taking no prisoners. Prints are loud and proud on functional fabrics, with a militant message. Broken pattern for a broken society – the proximity to chaos calls for defiant combinations of theme and colour.

Knit forecast
This season we prefer to ignore the date, and instead feel for cross seasonality, or a trans-seasonal code that speaks to a multi gender constituency looking not to be boxed into types or fashion ‘looks’.

Future of making
We enter a wonder-world, full of radically new aesthetics and disruptive technologies, where designers are operating at the borders between creative human gesture, machine robotics and computer algorithms to explore material, shape and function.

New Morality

There are three big problems facing the world: the rise in anti-globalisation sentiment; the growth of popular nationalism; and the unstoppable loss of blue-collar jobs. These are creating a polarised society riddled with contradictions. There seems to be no middle ground, only conflicting opinions, studies, and data about all the big issues surrounding us. Our general insecurity has only been exacerbated by the unexpected, from Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump to the emergence of ‘post-truth’ society. We live in fear of what might come next.

It’s hardly surprising that in this divided and divisive world, more and more people think it’s time to speak out and pin their colours to the mast, on issues concerning gender, women’s equality, immigration, privacy and even democracy itself. And brands are following suit as they understand that basic CRS policies are no longer enough: they need to be seen to be socially and politically engaged on a genuinely effective level.

Corporate altruism is becoming more common, as car companies create and promote green initiatives, or beauty brands promote a “natural look”. There have been many notable initiatives: Nike moving its marketing money away from huge-name celebrities into community training initiatives and races; L’Oréal announcing in March it would support the C40 Women4Climate initiative, mentoring 500 women in 10 cities who are working towards possible solutions for climate change. So how’s morality going.

The question is how this ‘new morality’ will show itself in our textile and fashion business?

City view: Seoul & Reykjavik
Beyond the rapid influx of headlining international flagships launching in Seoul, there’s a thriving home grown fashion scene to be witnessed both on and off the Korean catwalks. In bold contrast to the hyper-paced development of Seoul’s sprawling metropolis, Reykjavik offers something of a sedative by comparison.

WW Haute Couture: the new face of couture 

After a distinct spell in the doldrums, the tide has finally turned and the rarified world of haute couture is once more lighting up fashion’s starry firmament.

Season in review: Autumn/Winter 17/18

Menswear designer messages

The winter menswear shows express two divergent sides of masculinity: one that is concerned with simple ‘anti-fashion realness’ while the other indulges itself in maximalist texture and a costume like flourish.

Menswear fabric orientations 

The money is on a true casual look with its feet in authentic craft, animated with texture and laundered finishes, or a classic redux where traditional sets come in lighter, finer counts.

Forward view: Autumn/Winter 18/19

Womenswear fabric and colour forecast

Self-expression, like an artist’s composition, can take many different forms. A/W 18/19 will offer a range of highly creative and innovative textiles for designers to create their canvases. This will include textured qualities in either a sombre colour palette of charcoal on ecru or in painterly blocks of rich colours.

Menswear colours, styling and fabrics

This season, the focus is on comfort as the overriding theme as relaxed fits, added stretch and softened, supple fabric handles all come into play.

Womenswear knitwear colours, yarns and styling 248
Women’s knitwear goes in search of ‘balance ‘ realised either in something natural and honest with a deep commitment to the origin and sustainability of the product or alternatively in the precise selection of colour and proportion.

Design and lifestyle – fashion meets furniture for 2018
At the last Salone del Mobile in Milan some of the most relevant design concepts on show were modular, recycled, recyclable, transportable and, with aesthetic concerns only a part of the input algorithm, visually innovative and in some cases intangible or even virtual.

CURIOSITY

Welcome to our new-look, new-concept Textile View magazine, which we hope will help guide you through the demanding times ahead. First, we have redesigned the look of our “textile bible” to make it cleaner looking, easier to read and straightforward to navigate. Of course, we stand by the core and heart of the product, which is built round high quality analyses and forecasts of textile design and fashion directions, but we have added new sections to reflect the changes we have been witnessing and reporting on in our business.

These adjustments start with a new approach to our “City Views”, where we look more deeply into selected, up-and-coming destinations to see how reorientations in consumer lifestyle and behaviour have affected local dress codes and retail development. Our “Season in Review” section is completely new. In the trend business, it is all too easy to go from one new look to the next without stopping to see how the original idea succeeded and evolved. That is a mistake, especially as we move into seasonless fashion programmes, where trends don’t emerge to disappear and be replaced in a continuous cycle, but evolve and develop. So, in “Season in Review”, we trace the unrolling and progress of some of the stand-out colours, items and silhouettes that have emerged in recent seasons – not from a trend-book base, but from the shop floor, highlighting specific developments and sharing our view on how these will move on, in an easy-to-read, infographic format.

The growing importance of trans-seasonal thinking brings us to our third new section, “Season in Transition”, where we focus on some of the noteworthy fabrics that will bridge the months from one season to the next (in this issue, we cover summer to autumn 2018). We deliberately take a gender-neutral approach here, focusing neither on menswear nor womenswear, preferring to leave these pages open to interpretation. With longevity and versatility the watchwords of the moment, and consumers forsaking fast, throwaway fashion for longer-term investment buys, we believe that the trans-seasonal or seasonless aspect of the business can only grow.

 

CONTENTS TV 117 

Briefing

City view: we have reveamped this section to look to explore deeper in not necessarily fashion capitals but new city scapes where ideas are developing to become mainstream in the future.

 

 

Season in review: Autumn/Winter 17/18

Season in Review: our new feature where we trace, through infographics, the unrolling and progress of some of the stand out colours, items or silhouettes that have emerged in recent seasons

 

 

Menswear r-t-w designers: with the latest A/W17/18 shows, we are invited to observe the real world with all its diversity, its commonplace, its inclusivity, its openness and merging of all creative concepts.

Season in focus: Spring/Summer 2018

Womenswear inspirations, colours, styling: Summer 18 moves around two distinctive spheres of influence acting together to bring about change. Picking up on the global atmosphere of transformation and revolution, the future is looking set for a rocky ride: we identify two clear realms that reflect the mood.

 

 

 

Womenswear trimmings and accessories: accessories and trimmings concentrate on the concept of personal empowerment, as fashion continues to celebrate personality, gender and individuality as well as family heritage, origin and provenance.

 

 

Womenswear fabrics: the key to success this summer is to exceed expectations, to have an open mind about what belongs where and when, and, above all, to present the world with some astonishing combinations.

 

 

Casualwear colours and styling: as global interconnectedness facilitates communication and knowledge of new nations, planets and possibilities, some seek adventure and unpredictability abroad, while others crave simplicity, crossing borders to escape danger, destruction and information overload.

 

 

Menswear colours, styling and fabrics: an overall feeling of authenticity envelopes the season, as we observe the development of themes that focus on the re-emergence of hand-crafted, analogue processes.

 

 

 

Season in transition

Summer/Autumn 2018

Season in transition: transitional ranges and the evolution of seasonless core items, updated in relevant fabrics and styling details.

 

 

Forward view

Autumn/Winter 18/19

Womenswear and menswear fabric and colour forecast: designers are tapping into the conversations of our times so that their contribution to the world will reflect the concerns of our age. One interesting topic in discussion is how to change fashion garments into real luxury items that are everlasting rather than seasonal and touch the people, who wear them, on many levels.

 

 

Print design forecast: the trend is Individualism. It is about the rejection of conformity, normality and the ideal. We now want to live without anxiety and the autocracy of search engines. We need immunity from filters that mirror previous choices and offer only versions of things already experienced.

 

 

Out of fashion | the new fashion: Birgitta de Vos’ world journey to meet long forgotten textile makers and methods

WINTER 2016  AIR

THE SUIT UNDER PRESSURE

The demise of suits started some time ago with the dramatic fall-off in the tie business (“real men don’t wear ties”), and has been exacerbated as career and office dress codes have been radically relaxed and men no longer need to wear suits regularly.

This summer, JP Morgan and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) revised their dress codes. In a memo to staff at the start of the summer, JP Morgan said that it had decided to allow employees to wear business-casual attire on almost all occasions. PwC beat them by a few weeks, moving to a more casual dress code that allows employees to wear jeans except at client meetings.

The stereotype image of the banker (pinstriped suits and braces) created in 1987 by the combination of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities and Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, proved astonishingly durable. It is now less and less the reality. It’s no accident that in The Big Short, the Adam McKay film based on Michael Lewis’s book about the financial crisis, the bad bankers – who created the problem – wear slick suits and ties, while the outsider traders and hedge-fund managers – who realised that everything was about to come tumbling down and tried to call foul, and even fraud – are dressed in jeans, shorts, T-shirts and jackets.

As the world of tech and the power of Silicon Valley have risen to challenge Wall Street, so have dress-down uniforms. The Sun Valley/Herb Allen fleece, seen as a symbol of a no-frills approach to the world, is now associated with the private equity and financial world, as are Shinola watches, Red Wing boots and bracelets.

But the fall-off in the tailored suit market is not just about the financial world and office dress codes: it has to do with changing tastes, new lifestyles and evolving socio-economic platforms. In sum, it’s going through an identity crisis that companies are trying to resolve. On the catwalk, labels such as Balenciaga are deconstructing the suit’s silhouette by exaggerating its proportions; other brands are incorporating sportswear elements to mix and match with tailored elements for a still smart but definitely less formal approach.

Will it work or are we just writing an elegy to traditional menswear as we know it? Let’s see, but, shows or no shows, the crisis at Brioni and other heritage tailoring companies underlines the question facing everyone in the business: “What exactly does the modern man want to wear?”

 

CONTENTS

 

Capital updates

As London celebrates the 40^th anniversary of Punk, we take a look at how the landscape of the capital and the attitudes of its creatives are changing. London’s artistic communities are constantly evolving, with hubs shifting from area to area as international developers swoop in to accelerate gentrification.

 

 

SPRING/SUMMER 2017

 

Womenswear ready-to-wear designers

As the new Nobel Prize winner for Literature once famously sang, “The times they are a changing” and, indeed, change was the key message from the S/S 2017 RTW shows.

 

 

Womenswear designer fabrics, silhouettes and styling details

Overall, dressed up wins over dressed down; madcap centre stage looks are at the forefront, whilst discrete stays quietly in the wings. There’s an explosion of glamour in the air, but it wouldn’t be S/S 2017 if this wasn’t injected with a shot of street attitude.

 

 

Menswear designer messages

Clear themes are cast aside. Designers traverse boundaries and effortlessly weave together influences, picking up inspiration on their travels and cleverly synthesizing them into cool originals.

 

 

AUTUMN/WINTER 17/18

 

The latest in womenswear fabric collections

The textile and fashion industry seems to be working in two parallel universes at the same time. As we look at the last additions to the leading collections for A/W 17/18 and highlight new directions that we feel will carry on into S/S 2018, we see only dualities and a whole new set of rules coming into play.

 

 

Menswear fabric orientations

We can feel the season fragmenting, expanding out to new dimensions and contracting back to basics. New looks proliferate and ‘themes’, as such, seem to have less traction. It is like a free selection at work where you can choose a skin to live in of your own choice, free of the diktats of fashion.

 

 

SPRING/SUMMER 2018

 

Womenswear fabric & colour forecast

S/S 2018 will be a season where designers experiment like scientists to create highly interesting and unpredictable textiles. This will be achieved by combining unexpected fibres together and applying innovative finishing processes.

 

 

Menswear fabric & colour forecast

Geographical boundaries are explored this season as themes take on an eclectic, collected quality. A renewed interest in analogue material processes, and the look and feel of being touched by human hand, is carried throughout the season as textiles are explored as art.

 

 

Accessories & trimmings forecast and inspirations

The season is full of simplicity with accessories that are furiously romantic, bold with an ethnic chic, sportingly futuristic and glamorously techno and shiny.

 

 

Womenswear knitwear colours, yarns and styling

Dynamic motivators in the knitwear field are shifting their focus more and more towards developing innovative and remarkable textiles; silhouettes and construction then follow where the materiality leads them.

 

 

Menswear knitwear styling concepts

Summer is never an easy time for knitwear and S/S 2018 will be no exception, but we can, at least, detect a few areas where a new sweater could tempt the consumer to add something that isn’t a basic to their shopping bag.

 

AUTUMN/WINTER 18/19

 

Womenswear knitwear forecast

A quirky ragged vibe is mainlining the creative process with challenging results. It’s as if the idea of perfection doesn’t appeal any more and conventional ideas of ‘good taste’ are being flouted.

 

LIFESTYLE

Lifestyle: lessons form the current rise in food culture

There are lessons to be learned from the current rise in food culture that we are witnessing. Our focus on food is no longer just about nourishing our own bodies; minimising waste and feeding the entire planet are equally important concerns that influence the choices we make.

 

Textile innovations and the latest/blue-sky thinking in textiles

How to meet the needs of today’s consumers while anticipating those of tomorrow? Designers are developing forward-thinking models to spearhead a new fashion view. Driven by environmental, social and economic awareness, they analyse the industry – material production, manufacturing and sales – to innovate.