A thought provoking name for a fashion trend seminar by one of the leading trend forecaster in the industry, Lidewij Edelkoort. Li foresees the return of quality, love for textile and the pride of craftsmanship in producing fashion.
One of my personal objectives with this blog was to set focus on fashion, style and creativity in my daily life. A push in this direction was to participate at the seminar hold by one of the most reputed trend forecaster in the fashion industry. Mrs Edelkoort is living in France and travels around the world gathering inspiration as to what are signs of the nouvautees and up-coming trends.
For me, the sheer participation is enough to get me going but this time she named the seminar ‘Anti Fashion’ which in itself is a contradiction, a trend seminar for fashion to be named Anti Fashion. I was so intrigued by the whole thing…
I got the impression that she over the last couple of years had made a number of observations and made conclusions that would have great impact for the industry. Without claiming to be at all exhaustive in me retelling her thoughts here is what I brought with me as ideas:
– The fashion industry has been pushing to far in producing cheap quality clothes sold for nothing. It’s not sustainable to sell eg a T-shirt for 1 euro and produce clothes to be worn once or twice. No one can take pride in selling a good where you aim at throwing it away the moment you buy it. Consumers are more and more aware of the consequences from such an inexpensive production exploiting children for labor and environment for producing the garment. And the thing is, consumers of today want less and less part of exploitation of poor people in less developed countries and are ready to pay more for decent goods.
– With a hint of humor she pointed out that traditionally well sewn clothes supported a woman’s body and made her beautiful (no matter how she was shaped) Today, a woman needs to have a beautiful (i e well exercised) body to wear the clothes…
– The whole idea with clothes and style moves towards individualism and the fashion industry needs to figure out how to reach the clients and create interaction with the buyers instead of just producing whatever the industry feels is ‘the new trend’. The buyers don’t want to look the same, they mix, match according to their own ideas. The trend towards vintage clothing, lending, borrowing and sharing of clothes, is huge and will grow even more. This part is also sustained by the fact that we want better quality and don’t want to over-consume.
– The fashion schools need to redefine their education after a long time where they have tried to cover too many aspects of the process surrounding fashion, marketing, advertising, branding, etc I e not only the craftsmanship and the fabrics for the clothes but also design and production of all accessories. Back to the roots to reinstate the knowledge and the pride of the sublime art of textile.
– She foresees that there will be more tailor-made clothes, instead of the massproduced items. Well in line with the other aspects of how to create individuality.
– One of her major concerns is that the knowledge of textile and fabrics are diminishing. This goes for both production (in the Asian countries the knowledge of the old European textiles is not as extensive as in the traditional industry) and design (the education and the lack of focus on the craft) but also for the media reporting about fashion. The knowledgeable fashion journalists are replaced by bloggers and amateur journalists with no opinion on what they are looking at – where did the critics go? Fashion is about making a statement and we don’t all have to love it, someone has to be opinionated!
To me this resonated deep in my fashion and style heart and I felt strongly supported in the idea and thought behind my own blog -return of quality, love for textile and the pride of craftsmanship in producing fashion. Whether it is anti_fashion or just plain old-fashion fashion, to me it’s the same way to describe the same movement, back to the roots.
Read more about Li Edelkoort here.
