CRONICLE: THE FALCON CREST TREND

unexpected mad and GENUINE

Text: STEFAN NILSSON Trend spotter Trendgruppen

After a couple of years of the housewife ideal, carefully knotted retro ties and home-made cakes, we are looking forward to something new, exciting and innovative with no backward glances. The main trend over the next few years will be about looking to the future, being daring with a hint of madness. To achieve this, we need a tool that will move us forward. The best way to describe this new, crazy look of the future is the Falcon Crest Trend.

2011 is the year we will abandon nostalgia and propriety. The 1980s will provide us with inspiration, but this is really not for nostalgic reasons but because we need help to leap forward - a lever.

Falcon Crest? Why this particular TV soap? Well, it could just as well have been Dallas or Dynasty, but the 1980s soaps were something special. It was all about dreams and madness. Soaps have their own trends. At present, we are watching TV programmes were we examine ourselves. In Sweden, there are soaps about camping, dating farmers or various combinations of housewives. The same has happened in almost all other countries, and it is all about examining and analysing ourselves. In the 1990s and the Naughties, we watched series such as Friends and Sex and the City, which depicted city life as we would like it to be. We watched the programmes and wanted to be successful with successful friends and, at the same time, drink in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. Obviously, a fantasy of modern city life.

The TV series of the 1980s, with their shoulder pads, pool boys and ranches was entertainment, pure and simple. The characters cheated, lied and flirted with complete abandon. And we loved it. When we watched an episode of Dallas, it never entered our minds that this could be part of our own lives. The TV programme was an exciting dream. And now itÕ s back. We are no longer interested in roots and realism, we want to be entertained and diverted, and perhaps even a bit disturbed. We long for the phenomenon represented by Falcon Crest and Dynasty. We want to be shocked by sex and to wear fantastic shoulder pads. IsnÕ t the iPad a modern-day equivalent of the giant mobile phones people carried back then?

Just as in the 1980s, we want to be noticed. We want clothes, outfits and fashion which make us stand out. We wave goodbye to the brown, the grey and the proper. Fashion shows for the coming

The Richard Chai store is a temporary retail installation created by Snarkitecture in collaboration with designer Richard Chai. Photo by David Smith.

season feature strong colours, animal prints and garments made for a life on stage.

Falcon Crest and Dallas are also full of surprises. A vineyard which was blown up could mean anything. Or discovering Bobby in the shower after a handful of seasonsÉ.

Surprise is the new black. We want the crazy surprises of Falcon Crest. The London chef Nuno Mendes has started the Loft Project, where the Michelin-starred chef enjoys dinner at home with various guest chefs from all over the world. Did I mention that it is his own home weÕ re talking about? ThatÕ s the key. Unexpected, mad and genuine. The city of WarsawÕ s new tourist attraction is a life-sized plastic palm by the artist Joanna Rajkowska. ItÕ s about being smart and creative. When the fashion designer Richard Chai wanted to do something different, he invited the architects from Snarkitechture to create a pop-up shop in downtown New York. Since anything in New York is expensive, Chai and the architects decided on a total building budget of no more than USD 5,000. The result was a shop made completely out of Styrofoam, out of which the architect had cut shelves for clothes and light fittings. Entering the shop is like walking into a giant glacial cavern. Certainly one of the autumnÕ s biggest talking points. Smart and attractive Ð an d surprising. 2011 will be a way for all of us to test the water in this madness. There are no complete answers and anything is possible. It may be as easy as inviting each other to back-to-front dinners, where the meal starts with the dessert. Or it may be the robots in Trafalgar Square, as we saw in September of 2010, bus

”Just as in the 1980s, we want to be noticed. We want clothes, outfits and fashion which make us stand out. We wave goodbye to the brown, the grey and the proper.”

RIGHT:

A Jetpack man takes to the skies of London in Trafalgar Square to celebrate the launch of the game Halo: Reach.

BELOW:

Lady Gaga wears her controversial meat dress, as she arrives in the Press Room after winning eight 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.

shelters furnished by IKEA or wallpaper which can receive your SMS. It is difficult, but then, that’s the challenge.

Another significant part of the Falcon Crest trend is sex. Just like Madonna shocked us in that era, we are now being provoked by Lady Gaga. Trend-setter Vogue has already played with attractive fashion shots of the sexy madonna, just like Madonna did in her time. Jean-Paul Gaultier has also launched underwear for the street - underwear as outerwear.

Sexual undertones and provocation is finding a foothold among the trendy set as well. Marc Jacobs surprised us all when he launched his new fragrance, Bang, with an advert showing him lying completely naked on aluminium foil with a bottle of perfume between his legs. He found inspiration for the advert during a workout at the gym. Fragrance? Gym? Naked guy on aluminium foil? Something happened somewhere, and it certainly got us all going.

But it doesnÕ t end there. This trend is not only about the sexualised Madonna and the naked man – it is also about flirting with sexuality, just as during the Falcon Crest era. This time, the word is transvestism. It is cool for celebrities to let themselves be depicted as members of the opposite sex. Celebrities compete to get on the cover of magazines like Candy, a specialist transvestite magazine which features the latest fashion. In autumn 2010, the actor James Franco dressed in womenÕ s clothes and was hailed as the hottest actor in Hollywood. By letting himself be photographed as an attractive transvestite, he raised his status as an independent actor, i.e. he did not bow to the forces of commercialism.

And the fashion world has picked up on this. The Swedish company Acne has even launched its very own transvestite collection. That may sound strange, since there really is no such thing as transvestite clothes. If someone wants to dress as a woman, they buy womenÕ s clothes.... But now a shop near you will be featuring a transvestite collection. Crazy....just as crazy as we expect 2011 to be.

So, to check out the trends for 2011, get a DVD boxed set of Falcon Crest and watch a few episodes. Find inspiration in the colours, the sequins and shoulder pads, but mostly in the madness of the characters. Dare to be different. In 2011, we will be looking to the future. We want to find new forms and ways to live, but to find the future, we need the madness of the 1980s as a reference. So hold on tightly Ð itÕ s now itÕ s happening. When you look back to the start of the second decade of the second Millennium, you will say that this was a time when anything was possible. thes. If someone wants to dress as a woman, they buy womenÕ s clo thes.... But now a shop near you will be featuring a transvestite col lection. Crazy....just as crazy as we expect 2011 to be. 2011, get a DVD boxed set of Crest Find inspiration in the colours, the sequins and shoulder pads, but mostly in the madness of the characters. Dare to be different. In 2011, we will be looking to the future. We want to find new forms and ways to live, but to find the fu ture, we need the madness of the Falcon Crest DVD Box Set.