After a short break from my fashion spot in Select magazine I’m back with a new shoot. The thought process behind it stems from a seeing so many 80’s, 90’s, 50’s etc inspired shoots at the moment. Being a new decade, its time we looked to the future to see what new ideas in fashion are out there.
I started looking at famously fashion forward designers like Gareth Pugh and the late Alexander McQueen to see what futuristic visions they have been creating and if I could spot any of those elements filtered down onto the high street. Then It was the task of first time stylist, Lois to pull in 4 looks with the above in mind. The more we looked though the more we realized so much of the clothes available now days seems to blatantly references to old styles.
However after lots of trawling, this is what we found..
Photography Matt Ford.
Make-up Hannah Ellen.
Stylist and Hair Lois Molloy.
Click images to enlarge.
Whole outfit from
Topshop Liverpool.
Whole outfit from
Topshop Liverpool.
Dress- Topshop Unique-£85. Shoes Prisila Sandal- Topshop-£120
(following text By Daniel Lackey.) FASHIONING THE FUTURE!
Forget Blackberry’s and Ipod’s: the futures next innovative gadgets come in a strapless size 4! Cutting edge fashion of the future requires designers to explore new and different ways of producing and showcasing their work. Many designers are now merging fashion and technology and future brands of haute couture will probably owe more to Cisco systems than Coco Chanel!
Fashion always seeks new ways of presenting innovations in fabric technology both revolutionary and ecological in style and appearance. Technology has been incorporated into clothing in a limited way, but more recently companies are now beginning to investigate ‘wearable technology’ like the Japanese company Kuchofuku, who make jackets and shirts with built-in fans and cooling systems. Their marketability seems all the more real right now as we enter a new decade where people are striving to find the next ‘new’ thing. There are several exciting advances in the production of future fabrics and one is the use of recycled PET (polyethylene terepthalate) made from recycled plastic bottles. Yukie Nakano, a PHD student from Northumbria University is working to identify the barriers affecting the wider introduction of recycled textile products. She is working with recycled plastic to produce new types of visually enhanced fabrics – mainly knitting yarns – to evaluate the potential market for their use as textiles. It is not the first time plastic has been used in clothing, 1960’s designer Paco Rabanne challenged pre conceived ideas about the use of it as material in which to experiment with clothing of the time. The enfant terrible of his generation, he used a series of unconventional materials, such as paper, metal and plastic to create his outlandish and flamboyant designs. Of course all of these can be manufactured from recycling everyday products that we so knowingly discard as a nation without thought and hesitation.
Sustainable fabrics are very much ‘in’ and there is an increasing rise in the use of by-products of the food industry as staple fabrics for the current ready to wear collections. Salmon skin and the use of bamboo as a fibre are namely two that are fast becoming a reality. So will this new decade bring something fresh and groundbreaking in fashion? Yes. It will because it has to. FASHION IS THE FUTURE! Take for example the ‘Spray on dress’ which comes in a can and can be sprayed directly onto the skin and moulded into whatever shapes the wearer requires.
The noughties gave rise to many numerous avant-garde ways of seeing and one particular designer who encompasses the notion of fashion for the future is Hussein Chalayan. His collections are an articulation of his immediate and philosophical ideas. The ‘Airplane’dress shown in his 2000 spring/summer collection was operated with a remote control by the model on the catwalk. Unconventional as it seems, he presents his collections as ideas and he is however, a designer of clothes that are to be worn. His high-concept pieces are often accompanied by finely cut, deceptively simple wearable pieces. He is a designer of the future yet he is often informed by the past.
Looking back over time can be said of much of the noughties fashion and style. In the latter part of the decade we have seen the sleeve and shoulder line become a focus of interest on many garments. Balmain, Margiela and Nicholas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga have all toyed with the shoulder over the past few seasons and no doubt will continue to do so in the future. Many people refer to it as an 80’s trend forgetting that sleeve and shoulder shapes were very much a staple of late 19th century clothing. Which raises my final point, that being that whatever happens with the future of fashion one thing for certain is that we will always be informed and inspired by what has happened in the past.
Matt. x
