Workshop presents future fashions

Reporting on a recent event hosted by SATRA which enabled delegates to investigate material trends for spring/summer 2019.

by Sosennah Every

The SATRA boardroom was awash with materials in all shapes, styles and colours during the latest fashion trends workshop – an event that was attended by a mix of SATRA footwear members and fashion students from nearby Leicester College.

The workshop was led by Orietta Pelizzari from the Arsutoria Design School in Milan. At the outset, she explained that compilation of the trend collections involves travelling the world to visit major retail outlets, noting down how the stores are laid out, what customers are wearing and what they are buying. This is followed by a ‘crunching’ of the statistics of the trends in each store, city, region and country, in order to obtain an overall picture of consumer buying. “I am the ultimate mystery shopper,” she admits. “After talking to the big brands and the Italian material companies, I am able to put together ideas of three main trends for the season.”

One of the trends Ms Pelizzari has identified for spring/summer 2019 is called ‘e-lectro’. Having been derived from the modern obsession with everything hi-tech and online, it introduces ‘optical art’ into fashion (defined as ‘the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns’). Materials will be synthetic, reflective, and stretchy and include polyvinyl chloride (PVC). There will be a myriad of metallic colours, and multi-coloured materials, featuring sparkle and vinyl appearances.

The second trend is called ‘y-blender’, as it represents new patterns that are ‘mixed and melted together’. According to Ms Pelizzari, shoes, clothes and bags will be heavily decorated with flowers, and embellishments will be reminiscent of the extravagant Baroque style. Geometric designs, materials with reptile skin patterns dyed in different colours and gold with a copper finish are expected to dominate this style. Colours will be darker than traditional lighter summer shades, and will include browns and yellows broken up with intense fuscia, corals and violet blues.

The final trend – ‘x-crude’ – is said to have been born from a love of the ‘primitive and natural’ look. ‘Crudism’ is an experimentation with materials to see how they react to being submerged in water, burnt, scrubbed and bleached. Such materials will have a waxy or soapy feel, with some burnt finishes. The colour palette will feature nude, terracotta, stone and burnt brown, with flashes of green, turquoise, pink and teak.

Valuable information                                        

A shoe designer present at the workshop commented: “This is my third time here, and I really enjoy coming as it is the first time I think about the new season and have a chance to see the new colours and materials for myself. The presentation is very thorough on the new types of materials available and new colour palates too. It is absolutely wonderful to be able to see and handle the materials first hand and to speak to Orietta and ask her questions. I go away from this feeling like I can apply the new trend ideas and start working on my designs.

Another delegate commented: “As a fashion and footwear lecturer, this workshop is incredibly informative and inspirational and feeds the students’ technical understanding. They can learn how professionals communicate and translate trends and how they specifically relate to footwear. It is invaluable and we are very grateful to SATRA.”

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 6 of the March 2018 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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