Lidewij Edelkoort organizes and joins New York Textile Month

The Parsons School of Design and Lidewij Edelkoort organize the third edition of the New York Textile Month, a month-long city-wide festival designed to celebrate textile creativity and promote textile awareness. 

New York Textile Month

Initiated by Lidewij Edelkoort, trend forecaster and Dean of Hybrid Studies at The New School and assisted by Willem Schenk, this multiple-location event will gather all voices and expressions concerning textiles, bringing together museums, galleries, showrooms, retailers, design studio, students and the general public. 

Events

The New York Textile week organizes various events by different designers, museums, galleries, showrooms, retailers and students. Below you can find the events that feature Dutch influences by Li Edelkoort and other Dutch design studios and retailers. 

Iconic Textiles

Textiles have the power to brand a collection, communicating a company’s heritage far beyond the talents of mere marketing. Traditional fabrics have traveled from region to region throughout history, recognizable because of their unique motifs, their authentic weaves, and their local colour. Today, luxury houses build empires on the strength of their textiles, allowing the fabrics to do all the talking, narrating stories and advertising craftsmanship just like a woven billboard. Prints, stripes and pleats are just some of the mediums that brands claim as their own; putting textiles front and center as a business strategy in itself.

As part of NYTM, the 2018 Talking Textiles Conference will host an array of international speakers revealing the secrets and techniques behind the seams of their garments and home textiles; fuelling trends and creating icons for the decades to come.

• September 14 | The New School Auditorium | Tickets & Info

Moooi’s Extinct Animal Collection

Dutch design company Moooi celebrates the launch of the Extinct Animal Fabric collection, during New York Textile Month.

At the launch event, Lidewij Edelkoort, Trend Forecaster and Initiator & Editor of New York Textile Month and Christie Wright, Art Direction at Moooi, discuss textiles during a panel moderated by Metropolis Magazine’s editor-in-chief Avinash Rajagopal.

The event will feature cocktails & hors d’oeuvres, while the panelists discuss how Moooi pushes the boundaries with new textile production processes, how it created a fabric collection inspired by the Museum of Extinct Animals and how our sketches became reality!

• September 20 | Moooi New York Showroom & Brand Store | RSVP & Info

“Blooming Seadragon” Carpet by Moooi Design

Claudy Jongstra

Parsons Healthy Materials Lab hosts an event with Dutch design artists Claudy Jongstra, who will provide a lecture and will have a conversation with Lidewij Edelkoort. 

Jongstra’s artworks and architectural installations embody environmental advocacy, placing ancient materials and processes within the contemporary context of global ecological degradation. Her work parallels closely with the tenets that support the work of Parsons Healthier Materials Lab, which is dedicated to fostering knowledge and raising awareness about toxins in the products that surround us, advocating for a world in which human and environmental health is placed at the center of all design decisions.

Each hand-felted piece, composed of Drenthe Heath sheep wool and biodynamic botanical dye pigments, stimulates the local ecology and economy.

• September 24 | The New School Auditorium | RSVP & Info 

Conduition

LMAKGallery is pleased to present a conversation between Liz Collins, Elissa Auther and Li Edelkoort, as part of the exhibition Conduition and the New York Textile Month. In her work, Collins incorporates a variety of textiles, vivid colors, dynamic patterns, and inventive shapes and structures, blurring the lines between art and fashion. Both Auther and Edelkoort are known for their ongoing expertise in this undefined area, focusing on the wide range of the use and understanding of textile and design. While Auther mainly focuses on the connection between art and design through her extensive writing and curatorial experience, Edelkoort’s main subject is fashion, using it to delve more deeply into the factors of the use, transformation, and understanding of various materials. In this conversation, Collins, Auther, and Edelkoort will come together to talk about Collins’ work in relation to the infinite identities of textile, and the relationship of Collins’ work to other artists, to the history of textile, and other ideas.

• September 30 | LMAK Gallery | RSVP & Info

About Lidewij Edelkoort 

Lidewij Edelkoort is one of the world’s most famous trend forecasters. As an intuitive thinker who travels the world studying the evolution of socio-cultural trends before sharing this information with her clients in industries as diverse as fashion, textiles, interiors, cars, cosmetics, retail and food. Under her Paris-based company Trend Union, Edelkoort creates trend books two or more years ahead that are tools used by strategists, designers and marketers at international brands.

Edelkoort has worked for some of the world’s best-known companies, for example: advising Coca-Cola how Sprite should communicate with emerging youth archetypes; defining how western perceptions of Japanese culture can benefit Nissan to improve sales and build their identity abroad; explaining how technology, design and services will be affected by newly-formed social networks amongst consumers under 20 years-old for Time Warner Cable; forecasting new consumer archetypes for Esprit as far forward as 2068; and proposing business development ideas for Lacoste’s expansion into new fields of interest outside of fashion.