When it comes to trends, harmony as we know it is out, dissonance is in. The new looks for Autumn and Winter 2016-17 will channel untypical mixes and mash-ups, a creative Big Bang of sorts, where balance is born everywhere.
In a trend seminar on the opening day of Texworld USA in New York Tuesday, art directors Louis Gérin and Grégory Lamaud presented Prelude, their take on tomorrow’s top textile trends.
The idea, they said, is that everything is possible in color and concepts, and the commonplace has been reinvented.
“Each thing has rid itself of its too simplistic definition,” Lamaud said. “The dissonances of the old world have become the waltzes of the present.”
Even the traditional trend cycle has rid itself of its rigid ways.
“Trends are no longer developing in six months due to the mutation of the market toward fast fashion,” Gérin said. “I can show you the trends today and tomorrow somebody can start developing it.”
In the first of its four trends, Elementary Tessutura, reality is redrawn and the world looks as if it’s dipped into a Dali painting. The trend here draws on the passage of light, the patterns and movements of paper and natural crystallization.
Colors mimic the elements with Arctic Wax, a near-glacial blue, Invaluable Fossil, a soft, but slightly warm grey and Watered Echo, a naturalized mauve.
Fabrics will feature fractal transparency and precise irregularity, with silky effects, polished surfaces and sandy coatings.
Prints and patterns will imitate natural marble and copy the coldness of ice and rock formations.
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“The idea is really to observe, to take in the hand the physical aspect and to redistribute them in a new way. To upgrade them,” Gérin explained. “The physical structure is giving inspiration for the pattern. Transparency and opacity are very important and you’ll see a lot of play with marble. Really a play with natural forces, wind, air, fire, playing together in a sweet symphony.”
Artificial Fugue, the directors’ second trend, channels a re-imagined reality, one where—according to Lamaud—“unicorns run alongside asphalt.” The concept manifests through the designer that inspired the trend, Jump from Paper, a Taiwan-based accessory brand that makes bags that appear drawn, like cartoons.
Colors are girly and fairytale-like with rich pinks like Saturated Enchantment, a fanciful forest green called Mechanical Lichen and a deep salmon dubbed Fateful sweet.
Fabrics and prints will drawn on sharp diversions and organic elements like water and grass.
“It plays a lot with organic and scary at the same time,” Gérin said. “It’s the explosion of idea, a bright explosion balanced by bright darkness. Contrast will be an important element.”
Heretical Chords, the third trend, is all about the marriage of old world and present day.
One artist who inspired the trend, Marco Battaglini, paints classical art scenes with graffiti backdrops. Another, Léo Caillard, has taken to dressing stone-carved sculptures of gods and goddesses in hipster clothing.
“It’s really the meeting between the classic heart and the urban heart,” Gérin said.
Colors are vibrant and traditional, just as those used in the art inspiring the movement, with a cool pear called Outdated Valleys, Atavistic Rosy Pink, a regal almost-red with purple undertones and a saturated teal named Secular Ink.
Prints and patterns will pull from jewels and the gold of Baroque furniture. Fabrics will feature mineral touches, subtle cracks, Spartan lacing and play up original fibers.
The final of the four trends, Rhapsodic Transgression, reflects a reality without rules. Looks will be rough and imperfect, and less fixed on social standard.
Hannah Altman, an artist and one inspiration behind the trend, presented a collection of photographs with glitter in the place of human fluids: as tears, on cuts on the knee, on the gums.
“It’s about breaking the rules and breaking the sad vision of what is nice and what is not,” Gérin said.
Colors are close to human elements, a lip-colored rose called Bulbous Tablet, Wrinkled Cap, a flesh-tone peach, and a muted charcoal called Fleshy Onyx.
Fabrics and materials will reflect architectural elements, frantic undulation, tubes and piping, with stringy looks, pearly finishes and scaled textures.