Wednesday, September 27th 2023

Programme:

3:00 - HIBERNATION: Winter 2025 Fashion, Colour & Textiles

4:00 - 2023 MILAN & PARIS DESIGN REPORT

4:20 - AVANT GARDE: 2025 Home & Interiors

5:30 - Q&A with Philip Fimmano

5:45 - Approximate end

HIBERNATION: Saving Essential Energies
A/W 2024–25 Fashion & Textile Forecast

The fear of an escalating war and inflation, coupled with generalised social unrest and threatening political conflict, influences people to invent alternative ways to survive winters by keeping temperatures lower, wearing clothing in layers, embracing knitwear and adopting blankets at home. We cook one-pan meals to save gas, we huddle together as a group to keep warm and we cuddle up with loved ones to stay cosy. We swaddle our new-borns and imitate the gesture for our own wellness at any age. We learn how to underdress, to double dress, and we protect ourselves with heavier outer garments. Scarves and gloves are back, as are knitted socks, caps, cowls and balaclavas. Worn with fur-lined slippers and boots. Even with clement winter weather, the preparations are laborious and bring in a new vision of fashions that are solution-driven but also innovative and of another, more absolute order.

2023 MILAN & PARIS DESIGN REPORT

This inspiring visual presentation from April’s Salone del Mobile and September's Maison & Objet includes Trend Union’s renowned in-house photography and connects the information to current and future tendencies: from key materials such as wood, glass and stone to the importance of matte finishes, circular materials, versatile lighting, crafted clays and woven textiles. Joy comes through as an important emotion to foster and express at a time when abstraction and narration meet. Water is our most precious resource, capable of embodying energy and wellness. The impact of AI is also felt, inspiring a new age in customized, democratic design for the creative consumer.

AVANT GARDE: 2025 Home & Interiors

Today, one can detect a rebirth of the Avant-Garde, with a growing unease around super-rich excesses and their overwhelming governance of society, as well as a nauseating sense of waste from fast fabricate mass-produced goods. Both polluting not only the planet but also our culture, jeopardising our mental and financial health. This malaise creates a violent atmosphere where people take defence into their own hands, and where opposing parties have become unable to listen to each other. It seems that society is moving out of control fast and unrest or even civil war is to be expected. The brutal language of our politicians doesn’t help to ease the pain. It seems that we are on the brink of a cultural conflict and therefore the creative forces in the world start to unite by combatting violence with beauty. An arresting form of elaborate design and craft brings along a militant point of view that makes excess desirable and celebration a necessity. For us battle opposing citizens, culture is the best defence where the intuitive becomes the guiding principle, the instinctive the way to go, the intelligence of human origin.