Y our patience is much appreciated as you've hopefully kept yourself entertained by the image focus on the companion Instagram feed for the Fashion Observed world (you can click on the link in the heading to find it or Google "Instagram fashion_observed_") You don't need to belong to social media to see what is posted, but it's better that you did as you never know when it could transform from public to private, and, if so, whether unfollowers will be allowed back in to refollow. With that, let's shift gears to fashion and leap forth from the last time this blog shared information as we speak of culture, history, architecture...and of not.
Many are familiar with the idea that history is cyclic and repeats (or that we are doomed to do so); grim yet unfortunately true. This blog has practically hammered in for years how parallels between past and current historic events trigger inspiration in current collections. Whereas, in the past, the influences were more obvious and direct, our age has shaped us towards having far more information about the world at large, and thus more varied influences and parallels to refer to. As well, more collections are geared towards internationalization so, to reach a wider audience, collections have more elements to broaden appeal across culture lines. This becomes a more complex amalgam of concepts, inspirations and ideas that translate into sophisticated collections balancing wearability with creativity.
The politically charged environment of the United States of America and its affect on the global environment it is intertwined with is unmistakably powerful, dominating attention and inspiring discord among many nations as interconnected policies find themselves threatened by upended protocols unleashing unexpected chaos not seen since the last midcentury. Just as it was then, friction and tension also randomly erupted simultaneously across the globe as economic strain tested once-peaceful (or at least contained) regions, with the eventual result culminating with the onset of World War II. It is our hope that we do not repeat this, but historians will certainly attest that many aspects are becoming humanity's rerun, and well-informed designers who take into consideration world affairs as integral influences that shape design decisions are no stranger to what is happening today.
The 2.0 version of all this...that is, the elevated scenario...now includes our environment and how increasingly tenuous and unpredictable economic forces are threatening the inroads made in the name of reversing our role in accelerating global warming. This added stressor has become more prominent in the face of current policy reversals from a leading world power. Since the effect of this acceleration have had such a sweeping and destabilizing effect on every aspect of life on this planet, it would make sense that nature and the environment would find itself part of the expressive vocabulary of contemporary creativity as it harbours our minds with increasing prominence.
Our concerns with the preservation of nature is nothing new; it was in the early 1900s that began the first wave of environmental awareness, spurring conservation movements within the first few decades as we sought to mitigate our impending footprint in the face of industrial advancement and preserve what we had long taken for granted, realizing that such bounty wasn't as infinite as we once thought. The attention to nature and its soft forms and curves meshed nicely within the beginnings of the Arts & Crafts movement of the late 19th century, the movement itself a reaction to the mechanized and production-line soullessness of the industrial age that later informed Art Nouveau soon after. Here, nature held greater sway as inspiration, becoming more prominent in many aspects of design; this included the fashions of the day. Today, clothing design has been returning to inspiration from nature in the face of our current technical evolution for several years now, this plus the growing environmental focus has put nature further back into design focus in many ways.
While one arm of fashion, the architectural, keeps its palette cleaner with solids and colour blocking (another design aspect that takes inspiration from other parallels spoken of in prior articles in this blog), the contrast to satisfy those seeking variety are finding nature to be the primary and growing source of inspiration. Unpredictable seasons appear to be triggering nature to scramble its cycles (for example, many have noticed that, in many places, flowers and season-predictable plants now bloom or commence cycles out of season), fashion has followed suit, showing florals and nature-inspired patterning regardless of which season it is and inspiring presentations [like from Kevin Cube (example here) and Maria Aristidou (and here)]and the occasional music video (Sofi Tukker, for example) while inspiring an Instagram trend this year of taking selfies amidst foliage. Trend and textile sources from many directions confirm that this is not about to abate anytime soon as we find comfort in this easily accessible go-to, further enhanced by the recent exhibit showing nature-inspired fashion at London's Victoria & Albert Museum (creatives such as Diana Scherer demonstrating the power of harnessing nature as seen here and here). Many collections showed this continued reliable trend influence during 2019 Resort, 2019 Spring Summer and even at 2018 Fall Winter haute couture seasons, and it is expected that many more will continue to oscillate between the influences of modernity and progress that our architecture inspires versus the contrast of all that is nature and natural (think of nature when looking at Phoebe English and her clean minimalist clouds as an all-encompassing hybrid). Even in the more architectural and harder cut or structured collections, florals found a place; on the Fashion Observed Instagram, examples include Antonio Marras (example here), Guo Pei (here), Maison Martin Margiela (here and here), Preen By Thornton Bregazzi (here) and Toni Maticevski (here).
Another aspect of our current age, again thanks to events broadcasted from within the United States is the merging of the confusion of reality and imagination (pop culture will forever see this as the year of "fake news"). It is only fitting that fashion will find interpretation in naturalistic pattern influence as a worthwhile expansion on the naturalistic influence coupling the transition from factual to imagined, such as expressions in extinct or imagined natural sources rendered in the same matter-of-fact norm that conventional floral inspirations would. The Voynich Manuscript would be an ideal example where nostalgia and escapism merge to inspire this combination of fact versus creativity, an aspect already becoming too comfortable in areas not meant to be. Fashion has the uncanny ability to incorporate interpretations like these in the name of relevant inspiration, so who knows how prescient this example as potential observation may be in the coming seasons.