History really comes alive when you look back at past accounts that aim to predict the trends of the future.
jorg&olif has already hosted forecasts of the future of slow fashion, as predicted by Forum For the Future and Levi Strauss & Co’s report, but it was with great pleasure that we recently came across this video about future fashion trends from around the 1930s.
There’s something to be said for some of the ideas that the video divulges.
They suggested a dress that can be adapted, and well how right they are. This century has truly begun to understand the power of multi-functionality, starting initially with the capsule wardrobe concept, but now being translated in the initial design. Deploy Boutique, in London’s Marylebone is one honourable example of where clothing meets architecture, with its many three part evening dresses and this season’s Sherry jacket, where the wearer, just like the film, can remove her sleeves in a quick snap to be left with a cool and contemporary waistcoat.
As for the “transparent nets to catch the males”, the forecast was not dissimilar from Madonna’s outfit for her Vogue video of 1990 that caused a scandal on MTV, but they could quite as easily have been talking about Lady Gaga’s more recent fashion style.
As for the hair-raising time, these 1930s designers could only have been talking about Cher’s 1985 look, or Amy Winehouse, or singer Pink or…the list continues.
The fashion designers of the past were wrong about the complete disappearance of the skirt and the lightbulb for our hair and they failed to predict today’s trend of jumpsuits or jeggers. Yet, while there’s little sign on the high street of the electric belt that adapts the body to climatic changes, there is talk of nanotechnology within textiles.
Considered controversial over its safety issues and environmental factors, nanotextiles can already create stain-resistant and anti-bacterial fabrics, and it’s thought that it won’t be long before electronics can be woven into the fabric to create wearable technologies. This means that gentleman will no longer need to be “fitted with a radio, telephone and containers” -although it might be worth still carrying around “candy for cuties”.
