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Fashion Trend Forecasting Vol.
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LIQ
Magazine
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/Director /Aki Choklat /Art director /Ruggero Lupo Mengoni /Editorial director /Francesco Brunacci /Contributors /Claire Worlidge /Gemma Barbetti /Henriette Bøe Ketilsson /Jaleesa Thijm /Leila Jinsun Kim /Nicoletta Chiani Lin /Nusrat Mahmud /Saeyoung Bahk /Sophie Joy Wright /Stacey Shih-Yi Chow /Stasia Mui /Susanna Bartolini /Special thanks to /Alessandra Pinna /Claudio Scalas /Holly Heuser /Max Anish Gowriah
/CONTENT
/WE NEED TRAUMA TO BE GOOD DREAMERS -interview LINDA LOPPA/15 /THE NOW: /BUTTER OR NOT, THE PRESENT IS A MEAL IN ITSELF/21 /SNACK BREAK/25 /RIOT: /MONKEY HOPSCOTCH/28 /KIDULT : /ARE WE ALL THE NEWGEN?/34 /TO DO: /CHASING RABBITS/44 /AIRPORT VS PORTS/54
/OBLIQ IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO DECODE THE NOW.
interview with Linda Loppa by Nusrat Mahmud
/WE NEED TRAUMA TO BE GOOD DREAMERS We notice that you are a master of being in the moment whilst keeping an eye on the bigger picture. How have you developed this skill? I have always had a connection to the present, and strong intuition, too. Not sure where it comes from, though. But I feel confident of what the future of my actions shall bring to the people I work with, including myself. I can feel those moments when my life is about to change. Maybe, it comes from curiosity, different layers you build in your life, and also the confidence you gain, as you get older. Do you think this can be taught? Yes, I do. I think that our new Art Directing course, and also your job as a Trend Forecaster, is to open this kind of secret box we have in ourselves, that comes from being receptive to what we see, what we like. It is important to feel confident, and also to
generate it to others in order to bring out the same in them. I think I got this during my 25 years of teaching. I listen, but also carefully edit what I see. One needs to bring it out of people, without pushing them. Empathy is very important. You see, education is sometimes doctrinal. You are more creative when you are a child. In school, you are learning things by heart, and fit into a mold. The second step of your education, however, is broader, and you can be yourself, and reveal what was hidden in-between that time. I was a rebel when I was young, and could not stay in that system. I was lucky to live in a moment that was before the ‘68 revolution. I eventually joined the Academy of Fine Arts, where I developed my skills. How will the IFFTI Conference create a future moment for the fashion industry?
The 2015 IFFTI conference in Florence will create moments for interesting people to come together without knowing the end result. It is a future moment for the cities in which we live in, rather than a future moment for the fashion industry overall. We need synergy. The industry is doing well; businesses are fine. Maybe those 3 days together will give us a sign of what fashion, related to the body, or expression, might be. The real essence of our hate and love for fashion, is what I am searching for. Does it involve monsters of hyper-reality? Well, we call Leonardo da Vinci a monster, as he was multifaceted; a hybrid; a visionary who could use different techniques. All the people we call monsters of the Renaissance were philosophers, poets, architects, and even urbanists. So, it is not the person himself, but the synergy of the monsters that give a new energy, a new moment. That is why I created the 6 themes of IFFTI- Body, Space, Imaginary, Calligraphy, Craft and Dress. Fashion is absent. Creating monsters is to create new ideas, new technologies. There is no dialogue anymore. We are very fragmented. I am dreaming of a laboratory where we can continue the interview you are doing now, and continue the debate. Do you consider yourself a trend forecaster of people? Might be. I never thought about that! I have a lot of empathy for people. I can feel the inner mood and sensibilities of a person. Yes, I feel privileged to
be able to do it that way. If I see students I taught 20 years ago they ask, “remember you taught me this and this”; so it works, the empathy. I am curious about people, about their backgrounds, their lives. I want to know. That is why I am interested in the gaze now. In a person’s eyes, you can see what is going on and decode their body language. People sometimes behave in a strange way, and I start thinking “why is it like this?” You ask yourself questions not always agreeing that the world is strange. It is diverse and beautiful. And understanding the world behind that person is fascinating. What prompted you to start the Fashion Trend Forecasting Masters 4 years ago? We can’t only be a fashion design and business school. The middle field-which is more theoretical and open-minded- is missing. Coming back to intuition, both education systems are working but coming to end, so we need to open the middle field. It is for people like you, who are thinking more freely with a broader view. It is not only about fashion and economic results, but also the body, and anthropology. It is good to learn the basics and all those things, but if we cannot open ourselves we become robots of a system that asks us what to do. I am interested in guiding this school because it is possible here, with the pace of the city and people. Because it’s the first course of its kind, how did you decide how to teach the course? We talked a lot about this with Mr. Venturi and Mr. Choklat
because a course has to have a frame where we have moments examining why we do this. I believe in triptychs. Every moment has another way of thinking; you need the freedom to think and translate that into something tangible, as well as your personal attitude. You need to have a clear vision and research to finally make it tangible with your personality. Everybody has a vision, but it is important to also have the ability to translate it to others. People will not be convinced if you aren’t convinced yourself. Do you think intuition can find a space in the outside world when business relies on certainty? Business does not always rely on certainty because if one is certain, there is a problem. You will repeat yourself, without asking questions. You need to question yourself everyday. Even if the business is going good. Your job as a Trend Forecaster is to say “Stop” “Be careful” “Even though you are okay now, do you know where you are going tomorrow, or the next 5 years even?” The world is going so fast you always need to be strongly interested in what is coming up. It is dangerous for a business not to question. Do you find your Belgian origins and Florentine residence meld to create a unique inspiration? Yes. The North, I think, is more conceptual, a little more critical, and cynical in a way like Duchamp. More with less. The South is more baroque, more romantic, more warm, and rounder. I think I am this person today because of those two extremes. You need good balance
in life. If you are only romantic, you are a dreamer, but you also have to be in a kind of trauma to be a good dreamer. Trauma gives you the drive to dream again; otherwise, life is not as beautiful as we think. Is there scope for future collections to be more intuitionbased rather than calendarbased? We can’t turn the clock back. The rhythm has been set. We must accept that quality is less, and everything is the same. I hope there will be exceptions, where people will take time to create. I believe in humankind, in creativity. There is always a balance. When there is too much fastness, the new success will probably be the slowest designer on earth. We are waiting. It is unpredictable. We don’t know. There are so many facets to your job, at school and beyond. Do you have a to do list? No. Strange, isn’t it? I have of course, my agenda that is sometimes full. It is on my mind what I have to do, and when. I have deadlines, but I can cope. That’s life. What’s the relationship between space and creativity? The DNA of a person is very strange. It is important to see what your parents did, and where you came from, for your creativity and mindset. Mindset is important when you are a child. Maybe you were born into the wrong family, and do not feel familiar with your parents; but there is no escape, really. It is a nest- you must come back. I am here now. My grandfather
was Italian. I knew they would call me to Italy one day; in fact, I was just waiting for that phone to ring. There is no escape. My DNA is very Italian. You see, in Belgium I was the Italian, and in Italy I am the Belgian.
Illustrations/Stacey Shih-Yi Chow
by Sophie Joy Wright
/BUTTER OR NOT, THE PRESENT IS A MEAL IN ITSELF Directly on soft bread: large seasalt crystal butter. Within and on the top of toasted sandwiches, finely salted butter. For cooking purposes, unsalted butter, purchased every weekend at the local markets. He has three different butters for three distinct purposes. He moves between countries, but he doesn’t compromise on his rules and he takes his three butter-dishes with him everywhere he goes to prove it. Foreign cultures may not share his same enthusiasm, but he never wavers. For he is a French man and he will have his lifeblood at whatever cost! Of course, he simply calls his butter-dishes beurriers. This Frenchman exemplifies linguistic relativity at its best.
Mr Benjamin Whorf devised the idea that language influences thought and in the 1930s he undertook research on the Hopi people, a Native American tribe that has no mention of time in their language, nor tenses related to the past, present, and future. This hugely influences their experience of the world as they don’t perceive a succession of receding instants, but rather time as something singular and continuous. ‘This was better before when…’ or ‘when it happens, it will be…’ seem to frame the thinking for the rest of us. That’s to say, nostalgia and prospection are used to look at the present with inherent comparison. It’s a strange thing, really, and it feels like a boring past/future
sandwich where the present is just another filling [not butter]. I hate fillings [that aren’t butter]. They serve to only fill the world with disengagement. It’s ironic then to consider that it also goes both ways. Because we cannot separate from our context, our present inevitably leeches into our every thought about the past and future anyway. This is the result: the present is used to look elsewhere, and elsewhere to look at the present. It seems that this back-and-forth mental ping-pong, along with the current saturation of information, has resulted in a culture of mass disengagement that will only continue with the Internet of Things. This is gradually digitalising every object around us, and so adding another function. It’s nice that my toaster will eventually link to my morning alarm and produce crispy, warm bread just when I need it most. But it also implies that because my every move on the internet is already tracked, the brand of toaster I own and my wake-up timetable will be bought and sold as data-currency via the internet, only to further saturate the amount of information in the world, and probably sell something to me. It leaves me no choice but to see everything and pay attention to nothing. And this will only continue with each new multifunctional item splitting my attention as soon as I wake up. So what will come of the Frenchman and his beurriers? At the risk of sounding needlessly profound, what if the now can be reconsidered altogether? Perhaps by seeing the present not as an unremarkable filler in a past/future – nostalgia/ prospection- sandwich but a meal in itself, we will be able to taste it for what it is. Of course it will always be framed by the past and future, but
do we really need to perpetually devour the present so that it becomes zilch? I’d argue that these forces only have strength because of their semi-finite nature, whereas the present is infinite at both ends and so a little more difficult to accept. Considering the present as fleeting or even non-existent only encourages behaviour of disengagement. If it’s considered as infinitely large, where in the far off distance we can see a spec of the past in one direction and a spec of the future in the other, everything in the middle remains the present. What space - and time - we have! I’m not trying to decide what time is or isn’t, or whether or not it exists. This is more about reconsidering its dimensions. Whilst most cultures do not have the linguistic advantage of the Hopi people, almost all of us have the language skills to consider the present in this way. The Present Continuous tense is in all major languages around the world, except French, ironically, but they have other things going for them (the beurrier...of course!). It’s embedded in every other language to consider the present as an ongoing moment, and so we have a tool to adopt a Hopi model of time. A beginning. In order to be present, we need only to look – and really look - at what’s happening around us. Let’s consider again the Frenchman. His beurriers are seemingly old-fashioned, though each connects one action with one purpose. And so, the beurrier - all three of them - is in fact the ultimate object of the Now.
by Nusrat Mahmud
/SNACK BREAK munching lost in wifi NEWS. Eating to savor is now being replaced by eating for the sake of eating. Just ask the random group of students who casually showed up to class - in the glorious Villa Favard, no less - on a pleasant November day. “Any chocolate is good”, she says. Such a nonchalant, general statement; perhaps the response would have been the same if she were offered some popcorn instead? Popcorn and chocolate. Chocolate and apples. Apples and pizza. Anything is unexceptionally good when the brain is disconnected from the tongue. This is the point where the mouth switches on its autopilot, and merely starts to munch. No wonder this happens so often. Munching is at an all time high. A Nielsen survey uncovered that snacking is a $374 billion global industry, with a 2% annual growth rate. Anyway, focusing is so 1997. A chocolate bar is like an attention-seeking housewife. She is always there and serves the same purpose all day, everyday. She wants to be relished, celebrated, and romanced. She craves to be talked about, and in
a virtuous way, obviously. The change in her shade of lipstick cries out to be noticed, even if it is a mere shift from light pink to dusty pink. There must be an impact! That shade of lipstick must evoke emotions in him; bring back memories of the past and dreams for the future. It must be worth a lasting glance, followed by an uninterrupted five-minute praise session. It is all about her. Even though the reaction from him is almost always unexceptionally good. The same rang true with chocolate at Villa Favard that day. When the students were asked to describe the magnificent taste, they self-consciously chewed on the chocolate rather than munch on it. Eyes were closed. Laptops shut. Foreheads creased. 80 seconds of success! A connection with food was finally made, for 80 unbearably long seconds. Imagine how many Whatsapp messages went unanswered in that time frame. And let’s not get started on the unrefreshed Newsfeed. And so it seems, the difference between an apple and a pizza somehow gets found by people but forever lost in the wifi.
Illustrations/Stacey Shih-Yi Chow
by Stacey Shih-Yi Chow
/MONKEY HOPSCOTCH ...xing yuan ji ma... WHITE. Curious and dreamy. Organised and instinctive. This is her. But she runs and walks at the same time. As a child, her restlessness made her parents crazy, and it was a particular kind of hell when they travelled. Here comes the troublemaker entering the plane as if it’s the candy aisle of a supermarket. Everything within reach was there for her fun. She then pulled the hair of passengers, kicked people’s seats, and ran up and down the plane. And her joy! Completely oblivious to the fury she’d created: the woman was wailing, flight attendants scrambling, passengers shushing. But never mind, because she was happy and no one could do anything about it but glare at her parents as if they had created a monkey. BLACK. A few years later, she’s sitting at her desk. She then plays with her hair, and thinks about what she ate for dinner last night. She plays with her hair again. Her neck is sore.
She sleeps. She wakes up feeling beneath her feet. like she needs to compensate for She doesn’t run and walk anymore 8 hours of stillness. She goes for because now she flies the plane. a run. She changes her clothes again. She sits at her desk. She sets out five books in front of her and reads one page from each in turn for fifteen minutes. She goes for another run. She looks at her phone and then turns on the TV. She snacks on some fruit and then goes back to reading the five books, without turning the TV off because she’ll come back to it in a few minutes. WHITE/BLACK/ AND WHITE AGAIN AD INFINITUM. She was told she has a Monkey Mind. The Chinese Zen idiom says her brain is not at peace: xing (heart/ mind) yuan (monkey) yi (thought/ will) ma (horse). “Her mind is uncontrolled and thoughts jump like a monkey and gallop like a horse in every direction”. Now, she lives in transit. Spaces made for passing through are her home and this, more than anything, brings her peace. Finally, her world moves at the same pace as her mind and the stillness of the ground is miles
by Claire Worlidge
/ARE WE ALL THE NOWGEN? What do Nashville Tennessee, Selfridges and the “Paddington” London premiere have in common? An incongruous group they all sit side-by-side as open tabs in my favourite search engine. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can be in all three places at the same time without having left my desk. Researching tendencies gives me a good reason to ignore warnings about doing too many things at once and a perfect alibi for the act of shopping. I can now call shopping ‘work.’ I arrived in Nashville Tennessee with the idea of the ‘No generation gap’ in my mind. Searching for ‘now’ and ‘generation’ brought up a group of young Jewish professionals who call themselves “NowGen”. They meet, they network and they provide community assistance. I like their name. What’s more I would never have found them under their previous title ‘Yad of Nashville and Tennessee’. I like the idea of a rejection of the old adage ‘Act Your Age’ and the advent of a new way of being that sits side-by-side with the concept of ‘no generation gap’. Fashion has embraced the idea. Luxury brands like Celine, YSL, Louis Vuitton and Dior appeal to young and old. As long as the wallet allows, the choice is trans-generational. NowGen is our present and above all the future. I continue to shop and research.
Next stop is Selfridges. I find the Top Ten Wanted Toys for 2014 most intriguing. The list includes the doll Cayla, who when synced with a smart phone she will chat and help with homework. Teksta the Robotic Dinosaur, who responds to voice and touch and gestures. Furby who becomes more fun and responsive the more you play with him/her and the Transformers Grimlock who morphs from robot to dinosaur in a matter of seconds. The list also favours arctic playgrounds whilst a customised Monopoly version allows even the youngest members of the family to engage in customised real estate purchasing. It seems we are witnessing a frozen, robotic, techo collection that encourages personalised consumption and replaces the need for pets. On the one hand, we have children doing things above their years; on the other, men and women are reverting to childlike behaviour in response to the pressures of society. All the while, we are still defined by our D.O.B., by the generation we are born into. Can archetypes become the way of defining a ‘generation’ and not just a framework for consumerism? Does a new generation defined by archetypes not stereotypes create a more fluid society? The mind and mouse wander again.
I’m off to the “Paddington” London premiere. So much hype. I am back in the realms of no generation gap. An idea that started with a bear as a Christmas present from a BBC cameraman to his wife in 1956 gets transformed into a children’s book and is now being released in 2014 as a Hollywood movie that appeals to all ages. Adult to adult. Adult to child. Back to adult and child. Hollywood producers cash in, JK Rowling is a multi millionaire. No coincidence, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden is putting on a double bill of Alice in Wonderland this Christmas. We can’t get enough of it. Can we become a society where we can be defined by our dress size and not our age. The mouse is on the move again. I think to activity based office design. Here’s an idea that aligns with mindset not age. “Activity Based Working, or a new way of working, is not about age it’s about mindset.” Veeldhoen & Company website. I think there is a place for nonage related behaviour across all facets of society. In the future, we might see children exhibited in galleries alongside adults. In the future, the notion of children ‘growing up too quickly’ will become much less of a threat if we have permission to revisit these behavioural habits. We might be able to free society
from its pigeon holed approach and encourage new paths for design, education, art and music. Act whatever age you feel like, today. Nashville NowGen, Selfridges and Paddington Bear seem to be very well connected.
Illustrations/Holly Heuser
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We encounter more than we are capable of absorbing. It’s all become too much, so to survive we superficially engage with everything and fully with nothing. The incessant excess of choice we face makes us create spaces, garments, and surfaces that borrow from every culture, time and idea, and the outcome is the same as the guy next to you, which is mediocrity; nothing. Referencing is not creating. It seems that moodboards are the goal, and no longer what could come after. This is the problem of globalisation; moodboards. Everywhere is beginning to look like an airport. Airports are the epitome of geographical nothing. They’re the worst. No, airport art is the worst but it doesn’t matter because we don’t look at it anyway. Spaces of every magnitude
by Nusrat Mahmud
/CHASING RABBITS Uberlong slides in the workplace: check. Daily Casual Fridays: check. Princess mirror iPhone cases: check. Breaking Bad figurines: (a very controversial) check. There it runs, fedora edges flapping in the wind. Dressed in a cool fleece track jacket, Pokémon shirt, distressed denim, and Stan Smiths. Beads around the neck frantically swaying left and right. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s just Pharrell Williams. Not your ordinary waistcoat wearing rabbit indeed. Luring me down the hole with him, I would like to stay there as long as I please. Could the looming zeitgeist of 2014 somehow be described as escapist? Instant gratification is on the rise. Even Freud would nod his noble head in approval. Rules are bent, if not demolished completely. Who says I can’t wear a hoodie to work? Or, play with- if not transform into- dolls in my twenties. Growing up was a mad race of the masses where rushing into adulthood meant quickly learning your ABC’s to secure a coveted place in an Ivy League and then playing “house” soon after. Why should I own a car when I can share one? Backpackingor rather, flashpacking- all over the world seems like a better alternative than getting a mortgage and being tied to one place, to “settle”. A wise and beautiful friend once told me
that only cakes and puddings are meant to settle down; not humans. The whole idea of what adulthood should be like is so dated. Yet, the fabulously timeless artist, Society, paints and frames - a lovely picture for us, that must be handed down from one generation to the next. But what happens to all the time lost during that crazy rush? The chase, to bring it all back, is on.
/Yo
ou are reading
by Sophie Joy Wright
AIRPORTS vs PORTS Every time I pass by, I get off my bicycle and slowly walk past, looking deep into the glass. I imagine tuberose drifting through the air with a smirk of sandalwood. Reality says my scented friends who aren’t there. Don’t care. (He tends to say foolish things anyway) They’re with me, as is my insatiable desire To go in. I stop stopping and this time - just this time I do it. Heaven. Cos.
Nothing to do. We encounter more than we’re capable of absorbing. It’s all become a little too much. To survive we casually engage with everything and wholly with nothing. We face an incessant excess of choice that leads us to create spaces, garments, and surfaces that borrow from every culture, time and idea. So the outcome is the same as the guy next to you, which is mediocrity, nothing unfortunately. Referencing is not creating. It can be the beginning of the process but it cannot end here. It seems now that moodboards are the goal, and no longer what could come after. This is the problem of globalisation. We walk through airports everywhere in the world, yet everyone looks the same. Steel, ramps, welcome signs with insincere typefaces, and windows overlooking the charming tarmac. Airports all smell the same too, and we all know that it’s not the scent of a sweet and lingering tuberose. Accompanied by uniformed, unfriendly multilinguals, we can’t blame them for being like this. They work in an airport. These spaces are the epitome of geographical nothing, covered in identical airport art that doesn’t have any substance. But everywhere is beginning to look like an airport. Spaces of every magnitude are
now created with this sense of cultural anonymity and lack of substance. The way people act too - call it empathetic, politically correct, or adaptable – is nothing behaviour, and they dress accordingly. Menkes denounced the circus. Extravagance collapsed. No-one is a fan of anything anymore except of COS. It’s the best of the worst because you feel like you’re engaging with style when there’s nothing exceptional about it. It’s fantastically familiar, much like an airport. COS is a beautifully curated airport.
Illustration/Stacey Shih-Yi Chow
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