soft rebel – f/w 2014 menswear

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Soft Rebel is largely inspired by late 1950’s and early 1960’s menswear trends. Key trends include spread collars, higher waisted pants, knit tops, and cropped tops.

Key items will include camp shirts and gas station jackets.

The color pallete will be made up largely of “muddied” brights; saturated tones that have been dulled down by the addition of green or brown. For the first time in several seasons, we will also begin to see green reemerge as a dominant color. Salmon and chartreuse will be used as accent colors, mostly in prints.

Knit and double knit fabrics will be seen throughout looks for the season, and will add texture and thickness in tops.  Ethnic inspired prints will continue to have relevance, however the influences for these prints will now be coming from new locales. Expect tiki and South East Asian prints and motifs to dominate.

s/s 2014 details – floating color

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More from this forecast:

s/s 2014 color concept: floating color

s/s 2014 silhouettes – floating color

s/s 2014: key directions in design

floating color- cultural moodboard

floating color- influencers

 

s/s 2014 silhouettes – floating color

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In translating this forecast into silhouettes, the trend is expressed less through construction and more so by how color is used to optically manipulate form.

More from this forecast:

s/s 2014 color concept: floating color

s/s 2014 details – floating color

s/s 2014: key directions in design

floating color- cultural moodboard

floating color- influencers

floating color- cultural moodboard

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Artists, designers, and cultural innovators are finding unexpected way to utilize color as a means of changing the world around them.

-Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude create large scale installations that blanket the world, both urban and rural, in startling color (top right and bottom left). Their most famous work, The Gates, injected bright orange fabric into a snow covered Central park.

-Yarn bombing is a new form of graffiti in which yarn is knit around objects as a way of reclaiming and personalizing sterile or cold public places. At center right is an excellent example of the practice in which a yarn bomber has made a hostile, dark, industrial object feel bright and cozy. The practice of yarn bombing has quickly become a cultural meme.

-Jessi Arrington (upper left) is a blogger, graphic artist, event organizer, and speaker who has made it a personal mission to use color to change the world. One of her best known projects is The Rainbow Parade, the largest of which brought together 179 people. Anyone who wishes to take part is invited. Participants wear monochromatic outfits and arrange themselves in rainbow order. They march through urban areas and spread joy to unsuspecting passerby.

While the creative platforms above may not at first seem to have direct implications for apparel design, the underlying cultural mood inspiring them  is having a similar influence on fashion.

More from this forecast:

s/s 2014 color concept: floating color

s/s 2014 silhouettes – floating color

s/s 2014 details – floating color

s/s 2014: key directions in design

floating color- influencers

s/s 2014 color concept: floating color

click image to enlarge

More from this forecast:

s/s 2014 silhouettes – floating color

s/s 2014 details – floating color

s/s 2014: key directions in design

floating color- cultural moodboard

floating color- influencers

floating color- additional influencers

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To further reinforce the ideas behind Floating Color, the strongest directional trend mentioned in my previous post, I am including here additional inspirations I discovered in my research. Most of all, I am inspired by the story behind the image of a favela pictured at bottom center.

Favelas are urban Brazilian shanty towns. They are populated by former rural citizens who migrated to urban centers for work, but found that they were not able to afford to live in better conditions. About 6% of Brazilian citizens live in these villages.

In 2010, Dutch artists Haas and Hahn began a project called “Favela Painting“. The goal of the project is to revitalize these shanty towns through the power of color; inspiring the citizens and bringing joy to these communities. The project also provides work and wages to the residents of these Favelas.

From the project’s Facebook page:

‘Favela painting’ affects the aesthetic order of how favelas are perceived from within and outside its natural embryonic growth. Colour brings hope. It brings a different understanding of space and its people, inviting others to co-create and co-represent much more constructively and positively life here. It appeals to our senses in a way that we do not reject but embrace these places and the potential for better life. It articulates a different discourse of social change; of engagement, contributing to improve life for favela dwellers.

This powerful description shows how meaningful the use of color can be in re-imagining our world.

More from this forecast:

s/s 2014 color concept: floating color

s/s 2014 silhouettes – floating color

s/s 2014 details – floating color

s/s 2014: key directions in design

floating color- cultural moodboard

 

s/s 2014: key directions in design

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For several years, contemporary architecture has largely been grounded in two polar directions: finding ways to re-imagine manmade forms as an organic part of their natural surroundings, AND creating sleek/serious industrial monoliths. Though the potential creative implications of both are meaningful, it can hardly be said that either inspires a visceral sense of joy. A movement towards playful and unexpected use of color taps into consumer’s desire for an uplifting escape from reality.

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Gentrification has been a cultural hot button topic for several years now. In a culture built around the idea of constant movement forward, how do we nurture the need for revitalization without compromising the current infrastructure needed to sustain us? Innovators on both large and small scales are discovering ways to recreate existing forms by encasing them in novel exteriors.

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Many modern designers are exploring the intersection of the natural and industrial worlds and finding that, surprisingly, these forms can be combined to create a singular aesthetic. When paired with wood, the subtle visual inconsistencies of concrete seem to morph into natural growth patterns. Conversely, the wooden elements become more rigid and solid seeming, as though they emerged from the earth as pre-fabricated parts.

TWO MORE AFTER THE JUMP…..

fall 2014 trend forecast: tactile craft

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The tactile and vibrant qualities of traditional Moroccan textiles and American folk art embroidery are permeating emerging cultural aesthetics.  Seemingly in reaction to the current digital overload many are feeling, people are being drawn to the hand crafted individualistic feel of these garments.  This traditional art form may at first seem to indicate more conservative designs, but the opposite is actually true. The nostalgia for craft arts inspiring the reemergence of these details is being run through an entirely modern filter. Expect unusual color combinations, manic pattern clashing, and surreal imagery.

inspiration: new blue and white

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Left: Ah Xian, China China- Bust 35, 1999. (porcelain)

Center: Caroline Cheng, Prosperity, 2010. (burlap fabric, porcelain)

Right: Annabeth Rosen, Wave, 2012. (glazed ceramic, steel frame, baling wire)

Surrounding: Richard Saja, Behold: ELECTRICITY!, 2012. (cotton floss on printed cotton toile)

On display through July 14th, 2013, the MFA exhibit, New Blue and White, brings together contemporary artists from around the globe under a common theme. Each artist re-imagines a medium that has become ubiquitous within several disparate global cultures; the traditional use of cobalt and white pigments on porcelain. These inspirations come from Middle Eastern ceramics, Chinese Ming vases, Dutch delftware, or Blue Willow china from Britain and are a reminder that a global aesthetic zeitgeist is not a modern invention. In recent history the internet may have amplified our global connectivity, but as long as there has been a commodity aspect to art, there have been those who have profited from its global dissemination. As described in a recent Boston Globe article:

“More than 1,000 years ago, cobalt traveled from the Middle East to Asia, where it was used to make pigment applied to white clay. Eventually, Europeans visiting the East brought the pottery home, and Westerners began to replicate the process and make it their own. From there, they disseminated it to parts of the world they had colonized.”

The historically wide spread of this medium has created a ripple effect through cultures, and it serves as a deeply rooted origin of inspiration for contemporary artists throughout the world. In New Blue and White, these artists juxtapose this pervasive traditional form with modern craft. While some of the artists represented chose to carry these traditional colors over into entirely new forms (as the Rodarte sisters did with a dress in the exhibit), most instead remain within the ceramic tradition but inject it with an urgent post-modernity.

This exhibit is a reminder that no form of expression exists within a vacuum. Each new direction builds on steps taken previously and our art creates a map of our shared history. The meaning created by tapping into these monolithic and pervasive aesthetic memories is a powerful tool, the implications of which will be explored in upcoming posts.  

New Blue and White will be at the MFA through July 14th, 2013. 

spring 2014 trend forecast: fake plastic trees

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Consumers, growing tired of the over saturation of social technology and the requisite personal branding associated with it, are moving away from overtly industrial trends and looking for ways to return to nature. However, Gen Y has been conditioned to be in control of their surroundings. By owning their space, they distort reality; creating artificial environments. This is nature, but it is candy coated in the colors of the future.