The upcoming season has been described as a low-key and strong-minded season. An aspiring and confident season shaping a path between apparently opposite, yet deeply complementary polarities which is all about sincere, fundamental, obvious quality for disconnection and protection offset by the extravagant, lightly ironic touch of stand-out moments. Energy is concentrated in understated looks, with sensory and/or functional content enriching simplicity. Clothing addresses a need to get away from the constant visual frenzy. Technology takes on a human dimension as new artificial skins reveal unique sensations. Fluids are denser, deep shimmering fabrics mesmerize the eye, light surrounds and protects…, striving for simplicity.
Outerwear
Supersized coats will boast of XXL yarns or patterns with oversized, engineered checks and herringbones with very thick yarns, ribbon yarns in tweeds. Hyper decoration will be introduced through highly colourful graphic woollens, tri-toned jacquards, geometric fake furs, floral tapestries, printed wools and home furnishing embroidery on wool. Whereas, the extra soft and light coats will have fantasy quilting and puffiness, supple shearlings, super airy brushed fabrics and mohairs, cosy torn-outs. Blurry pronounced textures, bold and diffused colour ways in knits and wovens. Jackets will include neat diagonals in stretch cotton or wool, ultra-even surfaces and weaves for sharp and comfortable lines. Resolute patterns from wide tennis stripes with hesitant lines, to bold stick stripes or muted club and university stripes will be present.
Tops
Knit T-shirts and tops in blocked knits will be compact and light, mercerized cottons and refined felted wool to structure the T-shirts like dresses or shirts. Skin-touch softness will be achieved through natural/artificial blends, almost weightless yet elastic, like velour. There will be warm transparency using woolly voiles and fine ribs. Synthetic/wool jacquards and burnt-outs, transparencies made opaque with brushings and plays on hairy yarns. Decorations will include bitter sweet romanticism – climbing or bouquet-style thorny roses, sticky sweet colour ways and the same in darker, negative-style versions on sombre backgrounds. Inhabited jungles with stifling vegetation, pervasive foliage where birds and exotic animals hide, disturbing, and carnivorous flowers. Cartoon-type treatments, handmade gouache or badly inked designs, anything but photographic, is the direction.
Shirts
Shirtings will revolve around cotton flannels, warm handles with fine brushings. Plays on yarns and chiné grounds, dispersed micro-knops are definitely in. Deceptively thick looking, cosy checks in warm soft colour ways in winter ginghams, blanket and slipper-plaids. Complex semi-plains will have patterns in blended darks, plays on weaves combined with plays on chiné or thrown yarns, puzzle-style geometric figures, caning effects, and textured weaves to perturb the reading of micro yarn-dyes. There will be room for emptiness with hollowed-out stripes and checks, scattered stripes, more spaced-out micro-dobbies. Decoration will be in the form of totally recomposed, broad brush strokes, amazing and spectacular, on delicate and light silky bases, everyday fruits and objects, inspired by logos or pictograms.
Eveningwear
There will be graphic simplicity in geometric-style bouquets, angular petals, thickened inserts, simplistic flowers and warm folk embroidery. Embroidery, guipure and cut yarns with super simplified graphics, shadow-puppet patterns, lace drawn in stripes along with ultra-precious nested geometries, rhythmic and sequined fabric are the direction. The luxurious ones will be in stretch silkies, opulent and minimal synthetic satins and twills, double-faced with colour backs for couture trenches or coats. Richly incised plains in monochrome jacquards, relief engraved in tone-on-tone, plays on weaves and grains. Metallic light will include shine emerging from metalloplastic or lamé yarns and sequins as laminations and coatings grow scarcer. Not really gold, not only silver: the palette grows broader, brown, green, or blue-toned metals.
Sportswear
Power-stretch knits will be present with even finer and ever more elasticity combined with stretch membranes to add-up performance features. Bi- or tri-layer fineness will be achieved through ultra-performant lightness for tops and bottoms, neat and matt surfaces, discreet, suiting-style prints. Camouflaged with barely discernible patterns that emerge and disappear in matt/shine, mists of pixels, subtle clouds and shadows, and fancy reflexives in the form of over-printed or woven into weaves, ever lighter and sportier, in a playful and aesthetic functional note. For cosiness inside, there will be 3-layer polar-bonded synthetic stretch, performant teddy-bear fleecy backs, thermal and fast-dry T-shirt knits, authentic hybrids will be carded wools or membrane boiled wools and anti-UV for T-shirt knits and shirts.
