Extra inspiration & information
VANITIES – the mythology of self – Fashion, Colors & Textiles - Spring/Summer 2016
Vanity is the absolute belief in one’s own magnetism and relevance. Judging by the millions of selfies produced on our planet each day we might argue that we live in the Age of the Vanities – with masses of people immortalizing themselves. We exist in a purely ocular-centric age where the power of the eye dominates the nature of all our interactions; routing is visualised, food is photographed, hotel rooms are captured, landscapes are rendered, events are videoed, the news is shared through images with little or no words. The emotion of experience is put on hold until a later date.
To like has become a formula, to unlike a tantrum. This process of narrating life has gradually become responsible for the idolisation of society, bringing back a mythological aspect to culture, drawing from ancient sources in order to understand current affairs.
Suddenly mythology is a relevant source of inspiration and at the core of this season’s forecasting study in contemporary archetypes, drawing upon muses and models and oracles to design a future of fashion with an elegant hand. Many deities are related to nature and therefore to water, air and earth; its resources play a dominant role in colours, fibres, textiles and patterns, focussing on browns, greens and blues to reverse two decades of warm colours. Yet it is a nature that is revisited by classical codes and therefore symbolised and organised in stylised movements with a decorative arts sensitivity.
Our existence is immortalised by our contemporary anthropological recordings and therefore we are allowed to feel a bit godly about ourselves;)
Enjoy!
- Lidewij Edelkoort
ACTIVEWEAR - Body & Soul – Fashions, Colors & Textiles – Spring/Summer 2016
The active sports are revisiting the Olympus for ideas on how to train and sustain the body as well as the mind...
From that first moment in the early 80’s when the body became an obsession and training became the instrument to achieve it, sports began to actively developing muscles, building the human frame to sometimes outlandish proportions. Aerobics, running, rowing, lifting and boxing were all done indoors often using monstrous excise machines. The building of the body was the purpose and an iron discipline was demanded. Sports were not much fun, more like a military drill that had to be suffered on a daily basis.
Today we see the start of another and distinctly different period where sports are meant to be fun and functional in equal portions, where mindful movement is created to enhance the body without pumping, where social gathering is an essential component and where sports will become a favourite pastime, attracting ever larger audiences. Training is performed with simple tools such as sticks, ropes and rings, after all the body is the machine that needs to be stretched, refined and embellished.
Hybrid disciplines are invented, blending dancing and excising, ballet and stretching, gym and acrobatics, yoga and walking…and this is just the beginning of that trend.
The active sports are revisiting the Olympus for ideas on how to train and sustain the body as well as the mind. Because of the merging of body and soul the active wear clothes will become more minimal and better designed with hidden details and stronger form and emphasis on the aesthetic over the functional. The products should become active and passive at the same time, allowing the body to breathe and the soul to navigate.
- Lidewij Edelkoort
LIFESTYLE - Embryonic – Lifestyle & Color trends 2016 & beyond.
The Embryo is a contemporary design icon that focusses on the substance of being; and material development is therefore becoming the number one trend for the next decade…
After years of patient, stealthy progress, humanity is entering a new phase. Notions like intuition, creativity, trust and openness are finally celebrated. A quest for wholeness, wherein opposites are envisioned as complementary entities rather than antagonisms, is taking root in our collective consciousness and opening new perspectives. It is no longer about masculine versus feminine values or the past versus the future but about incorporating differences in order to think bigger.
As a result of human evolution and the sum of our histories, the embryo is an absolute symbol of our time: a growing organism whose senses are constantly developing and expanding the realms of possibility.
Designers embrace the creation of enveloping environments that grow with their inhabitants and continuously adapt to their needs. Proposing a variety of interpretations that successfully combine past and future, organic and technological, architects move beyond established divisions to imagine a new world. A world where humankind and nature live in perfect unison and where that individual’s faith and creative potential are fed by endlessly inspiring planet.
From highly energetic settings based on the idea of movement to homes spontaneously grown out their sites, including structures emulating nature’s perfect geometry, twelve stories pointing towards a confident and stimulating lifestyle emerge...
- Lidewij Edelkoort