Fall/Winter 2019-20 Trends with Li Edelkoort

May 22, trendwatcher and fashion designer Li Edelkoort presents her new collections at The Tishman Auditorium. Tickets $395 per person and $200 for current Trend Union clients; there is a 10% discount for groups of 4+. Click here for tickets.

Program

8:30   – Doors open 

9:15   – Indian Summer: Colour, Fall/Winter 2019-2020 
            presented by Li Edelkoort

9:30   – Enlightenment: Fashion Fall/Winter 2019-2020
            presented by Li Edelkoort

10:50 – short break

11:00 – Softwear: Home & Lifestyle 
            presented by Li Edelkoort

11:30 – Activism-wear: Activewear & Millennial
            Engagement Fall/Winter 2019-2020 
            presented by Philip Fimmano

12:15 – approximate end

Collections

Indian Summer: Colour F/Wr 2019-2010

Today, as far as November the sun keeps shining, prolonging summer in our minds and choices. What was once baptized as Indian Summer becomes a reality and is here to stay, inviting people to dress and eat differently, to color life in other ways, celebrating warmth and tenderness as the one positive side effect of climate change.

Ice creams are enjoyed later, country weekends are prolonged, and light fibers such as cotton and silks are chosen longer. People start layering lighter weight materials, are wild about cardigans and covers, and wear winter sandals. They start choosing color over darks; gradually changing the mantra of chromophobia.

Slowly, marketing’s irrational fear of color fades to make room for whiter neutrals, lighter neutrals and tinted neutrals, as well as washed brights, medium brights and vivid brights to ritualize the summery autumns and mild winters that are here to stay. 

Enlightenment: Fashion Trend, F/W 2019-2020

Never before have people felt so pummelled and abandoned. The need for togetherness is growing and the void is filled with animals, friends, food, and films. Meditation is governing our creative emotions as yoga is stretching our imagination. Switching off becomes a survival system, producing altered states of consciousness, empowering people to exist. 

Fashion is at the forefront of this thoughtful evolution, creating a balance between simplicity and generous opulence, inspired by the cloth and clothes from diverse spiritual journeys to stop the stream of no-news news and overdone drops, to bring content and context to garments that are designed to help us simply be. 

Fashion demands another approach to heal our planet and cure our shopping sprees. Conscious consumption will become the norm for the next generation, born and bred in a world in crisis.

Softwear: Home & Lifestyle

Software is material that informs a computer. Softwear is material that forms a lifestyle. With the softening of lines between work and leisure comes a need for new clothing and interiors, not to mention other consumer products and services.

Textiles will need to conform to this major lifestyle change by developing fabrics that are highly comfortable yet eminently tactile, in both natural and high tech materials combinations. Jersey and knits will be of capital importance, for in fabric terms they describe the well-being we seek. Fine-gauge synthetics and thick woolens, Shetland blankets and smooth lacquer coatings, subtle tweeds and cool metal accents all form part of this picture. 

Softwear is more than just a trend. This forecast heralds the confirmation of a major new industry, not only in clothing but also in interiors, design, gardening, hardware, retail, consumer products, communications… The possibilities are far-reaching; indeed, softwear is as important and widespread as activewear and the demand for it is already there now.

Activism-wear: Activewear & Millennial Engagement F/W 2019-2020

In a period riddled with scandals and fake news, clothes start reflecting our most urgent issues through material choices, color coding, shape formulation and text messages.

The clothes themselves are rather basic and straightforward, expressing these trends in a subtle way through details, sizing, and layering. Making space for communication.

Thus activewear becomes activism, wearable to communicate and propagate what we believe in, and how we see the future: women wearing black, men wearing lace, juniors wearing waste, seniors wearing white; women asking for respect, men expressing tenderness, juniors fighting for our planet and seniors demanding peace.

Li Edelkoort

One of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters and colorists, famous for her inspirational seminars and on-point trend books which are sold to companies in diverse industries from Armani to Zegna. Li Edelkoort is an intuitive thinker who constantly travels the planet tracking how socio-cultural trends evolve to influence concepts, colors, materials, products, and services.

She is also a publisher, humanitarian, educator and exhibition curator. In 2011, Li launched an interactive online trend forum called TrendTablet.com. Since 2015 she is the Dean of Hybrid Studies at Parsons The New School in New York.