World renowned Dutch trend forecaster Li Edelkoort will be in South Africa this month to present her annual trend seminar. This year's two-part programme features "Vanities – The Mythology of Self" and "Activewear – Body and Soul". As part of the 2015 Design Indaba Festival, Edelkoort will present in Cape Town at the CTICC on Saturday 28 February and in Johannesburg at the University of Johannesburg Art Centre Theatre on Monday 2 March.
All Design Indaba exhibitors and Conference delegates receive a 20% discount to the seminar. All Cape Town seminar attendees also receive complimentary access to Design Indaba Expo on the Saturday.
VANITIES: The Mythology of Self – Fashion, Colours & Textiles – Spring/Summer 2016
Vanity is the absolute belief in one’s own magnetism and relevance. Judging by the millions of selfies produced on our planet every day we might argue that we live in the Age of the Vanities – with masses of people immortalising themselves. We exist in a purely ocular-centric age where the power of the eye dominates the nature of all of our interactions; routing is visualised, food is photographed, hotel rooms are captured, landscapes are rendered, events are videoed, the news is shared through images with little or no words. The emotion of experience is put on hold until a later date.
To like has become a formula, to unlike a tantrum. This process of narrating life has gradually become responsible for the idolisation of society, bringing back a mythological aspect to culture, drawing from ancient sources in order to understand current affairs.
Suddenly mythology is a relevant source of inspiration and at the core of this season’s forecasting study in contemporary archetypes, drawing upon muses and models and oracles to design a future of fashion with an elegant hand. Many deities are related to nature and, therefore, to water, air and earth; its resources play a dominant role in colours, fibres, textiles and patterns – focussing on browns, greens and blues to reverse two decades of warm colours. Yet it is a nature that is revisited by classical codes and therefore symbolised and organised in stylised movements with a decorative arts sensitivity.
Our existence is immortalised by our contemporary anthropological recordings and therefore we are allowed to feel a bit godly about ourselves ;) – writes Edelkoort.
Activewear: Body & Soul – Fashions, Colors & Textiles – Spring/Summer 2016
The active sports are revisiting the Olympus for ideas on how to train and sustain the body as well as the mind…
From that first moment in the early 80s when the body became an obsession and training became the instrument to achieve it, sports participation became widespread to develop muscles – to build the human frame – sometimes to outlandish proportions. Aerobics, running, rowing, lifting and boxing were all done indoors often using monstrous exercise machines. The building of the body was the purpose and an iron discipline was demanded. Sports were not much fun – more like a military drill that had to be suffered on a daily basis.
Today we see the start of another and distinctly different period where sports are meant to be fun and functional in equal portions. Where mindful movement is created to enhance the body without pumping. Where social gathering is an essential component and where sports will become a favourite pastime, attracting ever-larger audiences. Training is performed with simple tools such as sticks, ropes and rings. After all, the body is the machine that needs to be stretched, refined and embellished.
Hybrid disciplines are invented, blending dancing and exercising, ballet and stretching, gym and acrobatics, yoga and walking…and this is just the beginning of that trend.
Because of the merging of body and soul, the activewear clothes will become more minimal and better designed with hidden details and stronger form, and emphasis on the aesthetic over the functional. The products should become active and passive at the same time, allowing the body to breathe and the soul to navigate.