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Fashion Observed


Trend observations with a sociological eye from afar...

by Darryl S. Warren  

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B arely a week has passed and already the tsunami of Spring Summer 2018 collections have burst forth from New York City, the first of the Big Four to show over the next several weeks. The range of design approaches is vast when looking at what is coming out of this center, with collections covering every aspect of design. The subtle distillation of trends is found in wearable collections that meet the needs of daily life while more energetic expressions highlight a more cerebral sophisticated appreciation of fashion that also comes into play.
 

There are many trends spoken about in this blog due to early arrivals from those who decided to present outside of the traditional calendar, and trends from last season and last year also find their place as fashion strikes a balance between security and appeals for freshness to keep interests high...and dollars flowing.
 

The falling away and haphazard assembly that deconstruction first initiated has continued, in part inspired by the more experimental design approaches of the late 80s when fashion made its most dramatic impact towards modern design. The tech in textiles and experiments with layering and incongruence in pairings of the 90s along with continued technical assembly along more architectural lines also finds itself influencing current collections. The last memories of joyful experimentation along with more outre retro inspirations are merging in an effort to push us further towards the 21st century as we struggle to embrace change. The chaos in pattern mixing, haphazardness and incongruence reflect the "new ground" approach we are facing in life at large as traditional structures make way for new perspectives, and the response is not automatic embrace, but the range is looked at with dichotomies between resistance and inclusion. Such push and pull becomes the chaos we live in and, as we embrace it, we find beauty in it rather than fear, for we are in too deep now; it's only a few years from 2020 and there's no turning back.
 

Within this creative output, a few items of note were found that confirmed observations that Fashion Observed made earlier...as in a few years earlier (Recombinant Deconstruction Is Its Name-O, September 19, 2015). Within that article, this blog indicated that advances in seamless clothing and 3D printed clothing would yield designs that could morph one textile into another, like tweed into shirting or charmeuse, and design elements seamlessly organic, like a pocket turning into a partial jacket front that could sprout secondary layers that could become pants (or something like that; the combinations are endless); the equivalent of genetic mutations fusing unlikely items more seamlessly together rendered into fashion. 2018 is but a few years for the expected mark of 2020 when this concept was predicted to appear and fashion has not let us down.
 

So far, a couple of collections has demonstrated the idea of merging garment portions to each other to create new design executions. Alexander Wang, Public School and some offerings within Parson's MFA graduation class all provide expressions where unlikely items are merged not merely by stitchwork, but woven and integrated into each other. And when looking at contrasting textiles integrated into becoming one transforming to another, Creatures of the Wind contains such experimentation within their collection.
 

These are important hallmarks that will only further inspire greater evolution beyond fashion and into broader culture, just as this blog first imagined, and in ways that only those with no connection to the previous century and millennium will understand and execute. As we look more closely at what comes forth from each season (and this one as it continues to reveal more), fashion will let us know more and more what the 21st century will be about...and how we'll dress for it. This is truly exciting now, for fashion becomes more than just looking at pretty things. It's not about finding what it will reveal as our future.

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