Forever Tourists
47th edition
Product development proposals gallery · mood 1
“Time machine”
Product development proposals gallery · mood 2
“Trip Advisor – Diminished reality”
Product development proposals gallery · mood 3
“Trip Advisor – Augmented reality”
Product development proposals gallery · mood 4
“Pioneers”
Yarns gallery
Colour cards gallery
The Macrotrends
By Gianni Bologna
Luxury is changing, and this has already been stated both within Luxury Revolution of last edition and in Curriculum Vitae of the previous one.
If turnovers of the big Companies belonging to this sector are considered, the decline of last year is clear. It didn’t take much to expect that, considering the general situation of the global market. Having said that, the phenomenon is not only due to the economic and political framework, but also to a natural change in tastes from over-exposure to the more and more rapid trivialisation of the ‘distinctive marks’ which expose even the shortest fall of attention to the risk of losing the (true or supposed) expressive individuality, leading to the exact opposite result for those people who practice fashion as aspiration to uniqueness.
This doesn’t mean that an ‘abdication’ had been imposed since the interest for beautiful things, even though it has changed, has not been completely lost.
This is proved by the growing interest in Made in Italy. This does not only refer to our sector, this ‘brand’ is now to be considered as something that covers a proposal which is increasingly global and which comprises all Italy’s beauties, which are also and especially mentioned by ‘the others’; let’s just think about documentaries about art and Italian cuisine in foreign TV programmes. This leads to be aware of the fact that textile pipeline, as the one of other areas of excellence, must not only continue to exist, but above all must be strengthened also through the re-setting of outsourced processes. This process, while it is developing as far as high and very high product ranges are concerned, is still absent within the medium range, that is more and more characterised by a huge discrepancy between the style SUGGESTED by media and advertisement and visible product WORE in the streets. One could say that few people are aware of this split personality which find out lot of Companies acting as Dr Jekyll and the streets full of Mr Hyde’s crowds.
It is generally believed that the improvement of this state of things could be carried out through the support of new means of communication and digital spread. That is true. Or maybe not: for the very simple reason that these media also (and especially, it might be added) broadcast messages that are exactly opposite to that one. This has been indeed the theme of Filo Trends that has been discussed during the last 12 months.
The communication’s basis of that virtual world is completely focused on illusion. The illusion of being protagonist of an adventure, a game or, even worse, a gamble – a Pokemon-Go is not denied to anyone – that is to say on a certain way of sublimating the powerlessness which distinguishes the everyday life leaving it being swallowed within a playful, virtual and consumer’s world used as shelter, far away from commitment and appropriate stimulus to go beyond that kind of ruling bovarysme and to create a desirable surge of pride, that is identifying/personal and communitarian (useful to the awareness of belonging to a Country that knows how and must express Beauty… for instance).
Our industry is interested in coming to a solution and must do that, but this does not alter the fact that positions are currently in clear conflict. Under these circumstances, we cannot exempt us from talking about an environment made up of devious and alienating visions, parallel and/or overlapped planes that just in this kaleidoscope generate that kind of ‘charm’, always quite ambiguous and disorienting too but remaining the element that, so far, is highly reflected in everyday reality, that is to say market. We are always talking about continuous shifts in meaning, translation, disorientation and displacement of temporal levels, going and return between reality and appearance: in any case, in some way, always: j o u r n e y s.
