trend forecast

Summer is traditionally the season for bold and bright colors. The autumn/winter season gravitates towards more somber tones season after season, giving us grays, blacks, and browns. And indeed Première Vision has predicted a color palette that has many darker inclinations such as deep earthy greens (algae, mud) and rich browns (truffle, root), but it is the intensity of its subversive and grating brights (mauve, atoll, fertilizer), the incandescents (gum, bilberry), and the volcanic blazes (toxic violet, lava) splashed across the color board that caught our attention. Première Vision's Fashion Team told us these palette was meant to "revive a combative confidence and creative boldness while fearlessly experimenting."

One hopes that "seizing on color as a power source" will in fact prove a powerful enabler to the consumer in these increasingly difficult times. The weavers and textile factories have already prepared bold offerings for the market in the hope that this tactic is just what the consumer will desire. These colors evince a clear predilection for risk taking, showing that the fashion industry believes cannot maintain a low profile.

The trouble with predicting the 2009/2010 season is that there really is little collective understanding of just how far down our economic climate will tumble as we stand on the precipice of what could be the worst recession in decades. In this sense, the rhetoric used by the fashion team of "putting aside consensus" makes a certain amount of sense. Shifting aesthetic boundaries may help us to move the market and these bold colors may do just the trick.

However, designers can hedge their bets with the selection of warm and lightened neutrals on display (ginger, amanita, oyster) and the tone on tone tinted sauves (cat's tongue, chemical cloud, North Sea, lichen) that are still decidedly brighter than an average while maintaining a kind of calm.

Première Vision always lives up to its name as the first look at a new season. The famed textile tradeshow that occurs in Paris twice a year hosts a smaller fabric show in New York each January and July as a Preview. This trend concentrate as they call it, is our favorite fashion geek out.

Anyone who is serious about the business of fashion makes it a point to attend Première Vision. The textiles showcased are not for cost cutters (though we did follow a Forever 21 designer for ten minutes to see what she shopped) as each weaver must pass a rigorous Selection Committee which examines the creativity of their products, their ability to present regularly updated collections, their service qualities, and their financial stability. In other words, this is for serious sourcing only. And we saw many serious faces from designers at big firms like Coach to Calvin Klein to individual designers like Alexander Wang and Erin Fetherston (who was in the registration line ahead of us).

While the list of vendors at this Preview is impressive, and we certainly got our kicks by playing with worsted wool, technical stretch jersey, and lace (we met a certain celebrity twin with a fashion line at one of the specialty lace vendors), the real reason to attend the Preview is to prepare oneself for the coming year by perusing the offerings of attend one of the Première Vision's Fashion Team.

The fashion team prepares not only a color wall to help designers focus their color stories but a veritable bazaar of fabrics organized by theme (such as high tension, sweet and sour chic or uniform and couture) in the vendors room. This incredible centerpiece allows you to see first hand the offers of the weavers in a quick and accessible format. The sheer visual impact of is a reminder of the power that Première Vision has in shaping a season.
The fashion team's attention to detail is astounding, their rhetoric is coyly humorous even as it packs an informational punch, and their curation of fabrics quite simply forms a cohesive vision of a season that is both emotionally inspiring and practically actionable.

But our favorite element of Première Vision is hands down The Trend Tasting Seminars presented by the inimitable Sabine Le Chatelier. An hour long presentation includes a twenty minute film using music, images, and words to show the Fashion Team's major influences for the coming season and a three part organization schema to highlight key themes that are then broken down into color harmonies and fabrics for womenswear, menswear and sportswear.

Throughout the day we will present you with what we learned at Première Vision. We certainly hope you will check back!

Today we were thinking about whether we should start postulating on what trends will come of the Spring 09 shows. One of the first things we thought of, when we tried to imagine what new trends will erupt come September, was Sonia Rykiel's yellow head wrap that turned up in the first exit of her Spring 08 show, and many a magazine editorial thereafter. We know, from watching the Fall shows, that hats are back in a big way and we also know, thanks to Rykiel, what can be done with a hat trend when it's ninety degrees outside. Are people ready for it? We think so. We can't count the number of young women in New York that are prancing around, right this minute, in feathered headbands and bow clips, with generous lengths of fabric tied around their foreheads. When this happens, when the hair accessories reach these exaggerated proportions, we know that women are ready for something of a turban. Even if they weren't back when the turban thing was actually happening. What they're ready for, or will be come next summer, is a headwrap like Rykiel's. Time will tell whether more of these accessories will crop up in the shows, and if they should, we will thank the lovely Sonia.