For the coming Spring/Summer 2020 season, fashion trends will come steeped in sustainability and circularity.
In what’s become the most attended session of the Lenzing Seminar Series at Texworld USA, Texworld art directors Louis Gérin and Grégory Lamaud presented four trend stories that speaks to the season’s theme: Source.
“We have to drink from the source, but we have to try to not dry it,” Gérin said addressing the overarching trend story. “The Golden Age is not behind us, it is up ahead at the front door, at the source.”
Here are four key trends set to shape textiles and apparel for SS20.
Precursory Remnant
The Precursory Remnant trend story will be a junction between past and present, Gérin said. It’s about embracing the world’s present tumult and destruction and reinterpreting it positively.
“We will have in the fabrics and in the aspect and in the texture, a lot of very rough, very handcrafted texture, but rough and handcrafted that turns into very beautiful,” he explained.
Colors: Colors in the story reflect a “strong and soft” feeling, Gérin said. From beige tones like Precious Alabaster, Sandy Plaster and Oily Cement, to neutral brown-based tones like Crepuscular Dune and an earthy red called Savage Land, the palette is grounded and earthy. Dark Veil serves as the story’s black and Bright Blue gives life to the set.
Fabrics: Fabrics in the story will reflect things like delicate recomposition, metallic reflection, and angular volume, with gold plaiting and spun ore.
“Perhaps we will have to learn to see beauty elsewhere. In the details. In the remains that we took to be waste. Perhaps we will have to redefine the beautiful and the useful,” the inspiration book for the trend story notes.
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Reincarnated Relic
For Reincarnated Relic, turning waste into wearables will be the key theme.
“The story will speak about all the monsters that we have created, all this waste we have to live with…all this plastic that we have overconsumed, all this stuff we have to deal with right now,” Gérin said. “We don’t have to overconsume. We have think about this rare resource that we don’t need to waste anymore.”
Colors: The color range for the story expresses a “diversity of element,” according to Gérin. Blues, like Artificial Cobalt and Plasticized Ink contrast with greens like an almost Kelly Green Light and a deeper, richer Residual Scale. Urban Zest is a more green-based yellow, and Washed-out Gum, Saturated Grenadine and a bright coral City Cliff warm up the palette.
Fabrics: Fabrics in the story will reflect things like forged plastic, pigmented tether, random fringe, printed circuits, expanded mosaics, rope effects and diaphanous embedding.
“As we had to invent the tool thousands of years ago, we will have to reinvent plastic, oil, nuclear power, garbage and rubbish of all sorts. It will take time,” Gérin said. “Tolerance is absolute in this field of global experimentation.”
Flickering Oasis
The most important element of Flickering Oasis is that there’s no planet B, no second chance for the world to get it right when it comes to resources.
“This vision is really related to nature,” Gérin said. “The lines, the curve, the wave, this movement of nature that surrounds us…we are only one community, one world, we are all alive together.”
Colors: The color range in this story is almost entirely cool, grounded in blues like Serene Horizon, Night Essence and Threatening Storm, plus greens like Opalescent Lagoon, Uncertain Stream and Translucent Water. One rusty red, Unstable Oxide, serves to balance out the palette.
Fabrics: Fabrics in the story will reflect things like repetitive edges, twisted iridescence, primal calm, manufactured scraps, rough transparency, robotic binding, unexpected clouds and elements of sculpture.
“Nothing should be hidden away. Never again. So, we simply model. A curve. A line. A color. So that the useless become useful and can also become beautiful,” Gérin said.
Passionate Gateway
Lending a little more optimism than other trend stories for the season, Passionate Gateway is about imagining a more “brilliant” future, according to Gérin.
“It’s really projecting us into this path of optimistic feeling…we have to show, with a lot of proudness, our colors,” he said. “We accept the bad things of the past, we accept our mistakes and we embrace the consequence of our mistakes into the future.”
Colors: The color range is really a sort of “faded rainbow” as Gérin put it. Universal Fusion serves as the palette’s rich red, sitting beside a bright Bitter Orange on the spectrum. A No Gender Blue sits squarely between true blue and green. A cool light purple called Spectral Dawn is balanced by a more royal Violent Purple and a deeper Pulpy Velvet. “We return to this purple color, this very mindful color that we haven’t seen from some seasons before,” Gérin said.
Fabrics: Fabrics in the story will reflect things like bombing patterns, wired labyrinth, ancestral weaving, static chevron, arc-shaped suspension and segmented extrusion.
“The dreamers’ time has come. Those whose vision carries the world a little farther. Towards a horizon never imagined. Utopia is no longer forbidden since we are no longer moving towards the abyss,” Gérin said.