On January 19 & 20, Edelkoort Inc. will look at the 2018 Fashion Trends
On January 19 & 20, Edelkoort Inc. will give multiple seminars in New York on 2018 fashion trends. Click on the links below to register.
The world is in flux and culture responds with fragments of ideas, sketches of innovative forms and creative utopian concepts. We are looking forward to ambiguous and rather unfathomable times, tasting moments of promises, and experiencing instants of doubt, knowing that much is wrong in a society witnessing the decline of its institutions. We are living a bipolar moment where we can go from a jubilant personal experience to dismal public aggression, from an absolute high when encountering the outdoors to a depressing down living in the outskirts of gentrified cities, a transversal construction of time & space.
This focus on the face and shoulders will create a stir in fashion where the portrait collar will take on new social media value, showing the essence of dress within one detail. The portrait often shows a person looking directly at the artist and the audience in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer, and therefore a good portrait is not measured in likeness but in liveliness.
Recent philosophy has rekindled the discussion about the material mind. This movement is called New Materialism and it advocates the vibrancy of matter, something that animists and shamans have believed for centuries: that matter has its own force and possess a mind of its own, that all other physical and mental processes are animated by the raw power of these substances – the result being matter upon matter, materializing the strong bonds people need to survive in the encroaching virtual web, which is jeopardizing our perception of tactility and human interaction.
Young designers are certainly leading this conversation with their inventions; using new machines to serve their purposes, reprogramming antiquated robots to construct their designs, hacking 3D printers to boost their ceramic forms and repurposing old mechanical looms for contemporary creation. Suddenly the machine is no longer the antithesis and enemy of making but the handmaid of the designer: enabling, embellishing and advancing creative production processes. Man and machine finally merge and become one.
Lidewij Edelkoort is one of the world’s leading trend forecasters. She is an intuitive thinker who travels the world while studying the evolution of sociocultural trends in order to share her foundings with clients in industries as diverse as fashion, textiles, interior design, cars, cosmetics, retail, and food. With her Paris-based company Trend Union, Edelkoort creates trend books in which she features the trends of the future, thinking ahead two or more years. Strategists, designers, and marketeers use her books in order to develop a strong brand strategy for the future. Edelkoort has worked for major companies, including Coca-Cola, Nissan, Esprit, and Lacoste, helping them look forward as far as 2068 or propose business development ideas for expansion into new fields of interest outside their area of expertise.