Premiere Vision report!

For those who don't know, Premiere vision is a huge textile trade fair which takes place twice a year in Paris and is an event where design studios have the opportunity to show their collections to a range of buyers. I have been before as a student to carry out trend research, and again as a freelance designer in an attempt to sell my designs but this time I was representing a company which is an altogether different experience!

The print department is a relatively new addition to the design team where I work,because of this, there has never been a print trip to PV before. In previous years the knitwear designers have visited and bought fabric samples to use as prints but gravitated towards the digital prints which aren't very workable for the company, no fault of their own-they bought the beautiful prints they thought would sell! However, because of this, we were on a very strict budget to prevent wasting money on prints that wouldn't be applicable to knitwear. This proved to be somewhat challenging when it came to purchasing prints! We had to choose designs that would be extremely commercial,  that the (very fussy) buyers would love, that were screen printed not digital, preferably one or two colours, that were bang on trend.....simple right? 

It was so interesting experiencing the buying side of the industry and I genuinely loved seeing the variety of designs each studio had in the Indigo section of the event!We saw collections from Keeler Gordon, Sam Morray design, Amanda Kelly(a company who offered me a freelance position when I first moved to London) Baxter Fawcett, Tom Cody, Pattern and Cake studios! It was so difficult buying as a representative of a company as you have to make sure you aren't too influenced by personal preferences which is a lot more difficult than it may sound!

Image courtesy of Indigo: http://www.indigo-salon.com/fashion-paris/Press/Film-photos

Another great thing about looking around the studios in Indigo is that you get to talk to experienced people who have been in the industry for years and set up their own studios. I loved having the chance to speak with them all and hear their feedback on what designs had been selling well, what was in demand and what they are currently working on!I also surprised myself with my catwalk/trend knowledge and managed to recall information I didn't even know I had!For the first time in my life I actually felt like a confident designer and I received some feedback from the studio owners saying that they were shocked that this was my first 'proper' job and PV buying trip-an immense reassurance for me as I was a quivering wreck underneath my mask of professionalism!

So that's my personal feedback from PV but this post was actually meant to focus on the upcoming trends for S/S 15. So here they are....

The trend section of premiere vision was a great insight into what the print predictions are for S/S 15, some of them I loved...others...not so much! I did try and take photos to put on this blog post but the PV security team seemed to take their jobs very seriously, cornering anyone caught in act of photography and forcing them to delete images. Thankfully, with the introduction of selfies last year, I managed to take a few cheeky photos but all others are courtesy of Stylesight and WGSN reports.

Trend predictions

The key trends highlighted at PV were:

- Freehand(love this trend): sketchy textures, distressed filters, scribbles, illegible text

- Teeming flowers(not a fan of this one): close together ditsy florals similar to liberty prints.

- De-saturated: digital prints with washed out colours, de-saturated tropical prints.

-Blurred: fading in and out of focus also a trend on the current A/W 14 catwalks championed by Peter Som, Tia Cibani and Vera Wang.

Left to right: Tia Cibani, Laura Biagiotti, MSGM, Peter Som, Vera Wang.

-Exotic gardens: dark tropical scenes, orchids, foliage Hawaiian prints

-Palm trees: an offshoot of the tropical trend but one that seemed to be consistent throughout the studios

- Ink sketched: painterly scribbled circles, similar style to the new Burberry collection see my previous post on New York and London fashion week favourites: http://textilecandy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/runway-favourites.html

- Pencilled(I love this trend similar the ink-sketched trend), floral outlines over posse painted/inky shapes, scribble shading over florals.

-Aquatic motion(a somewhat unexpected trend) this was where the trend team had introduced the marble/ water ripple prints that had been present in the S/S 14 collections of Peter Som and Rachel Comey see here(http://textilecandy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/new-york-fashion-week-print.html), Fish repeat prints, fish scales, fluid watercolour prints- could all this be inspired by Kenzo's  S/S 14 collection?

Some of the prints from the aquatic trend section of PV.

Kenzo S/S 14 campaign

- Curious figuratives(another of my favourites): palm tree repeats, pineapples, fish over tonal brushstrokes,ice cream sundae repeat(makes me feel very on trend as this was one of the prints I designed for Keka)

First 3 images left to right taken from Stylesight, image far right my own design.

- Ethnic accents(although I love ethnic design and primitive patterns I felt this trend was one of the weakest) okay style prints fading into ombres, small geos similar to Carolina Herrera.

Left to right: first 3 images taken from the A/W 14 Carolina Herrera collection, last 2 images taken from the Stylesight PV report.

-Freshened up( I disliked this trend so much that I didn't even write anything in my notes from PV- it was an odd combination of prints that felt very disjointed!

-Miniaturised (I love the mini conversationals in this trend) After a season of artistic oversized prints and expressive experimentation, prints have been shrunk to a tiny scale and orderly layout! Miniature repeats included: cocktails, ice creams, boats, deck chairs, sand buckets, whales, seahorses, ditsy florals, mini faces.

- Super position florals: this trend didn't seem very conceptual to be honest, it wasn't very fresh and had obvious catwalk copies from Preens' S/S 14 collection and Dries Van Notens' S/S 14 collection-not as forward thinking as I had hoped the trend department would be!

Left: Preen S/S 14, Right: Dries Van Noten S/S 14

Images taken from Stylesight.

Studio wise these were the trends I picked up on:

-Nautical-lots of beach themed conversationals

- Fruit- there were so Many fruit prints on all the stalls, one of my favourites was a quirky leopard face made up from pieces of fruit/not the most commercial of designs but I loved it none the less!

-Painterly brushstrokes

-Mixing florals with small scale geometrics- loved the contrast here- mixing floral and tile style geometrics

-Black and white optical illusion style prints- after seeing several of these my brain suffered from an image overload very Bridget Riley!

- Abundance of cat conversationals possibly a reaction to Markus lupferd pre ss14 collection and Miley Cyrus sporting a cat twin set!

- Mini figuratives usually on a beach it was all very retro 1950s tea dress style prints  possible a reaction to resumption Chisato etc and their small synchronised swimmers

- Abstract was huge, white noise textures almost animal prints, scratchy textured prints with a strong black and white theme!

The trends from PV I think will be most popular for S/S 15 are:

- Nautical/aquatic

- Mini conversationals

-Exotic holiday/50s prints, quirky beachy conversationals, tropical florals, fruit prints

-Abstract textures 

-Blurred florals

-Continuation of the pencilled painterly trend

In all honesty, I wasn't completely enthused by the trend predictions at PV, it feels like designers have loosened the reigns slightly,experimenting with the merging of art and fashion, only to have prints return to familiar and stereotypical spring prints like florals, fruit and tropicals. I do,however, love the new abstract/textural trend and am particularly happy that the painterly trend is having this much longevity.