Lanxess sets trends for spring-summer 2010
11/11/2008
Leather experts at the competence centre run by specialty chemicals company Lanxess in Santa Croce in Italy have prepared a series of leather samples to illustrate the fashion trends that they believe will dominate the spring-summer 2010 season.
The company believes the work it does on trend collections enables customers to see and feel for themselves what leathers the fashion world will require at that time. Bianca Verstegen, global product manager for the Lanxess leather business unit explained: “We also provide the recipes and products needed to manufacture the new leathers and colours and, if necessary, offer technical service at the customers’ own plants. This gives our customers a genuine competitive advantage, as it helps them decide on their next leather collections at a very early stage.”
Close cooperation with a well-known Italian designer and stylist who is also under contract to some of the major Italian fashion houses means that at Lanxess tanners can find out at an early stage what kind of surface touch, appearance and overall impression are going to be in fashion.
In particular on this occasion, the three visions for the spring-summer 2010 season sound like a homage to nature.
The first theme is that Simplicity + Naturalness = Chic.
The competence centre has described the leathers that fit this category as offering exquisite, refined and yet casual elegance for a timeless style. Materials and colours combine to surround you with an air of fresh modernity. The message is: “Be yourself, be straightforward, be natural and free.”
The second vision has the title Born Biological.
The main element here is a close affinity with one’s origins, to traditional culture, in which colours, materials and scents awaken in us the desire to shout from the rooftops: “This is leather—I am at one with nature.”
Lastly, there is New Hippie, reflecting consumers' desire not to be tied down and to be free to choose and interpret styles for themselves. Natural instinct for colours and materials creates a link to the old hippie culture, which people can experience in a new, modern, personal way.
“Anything goes and everything is possible,” says Giuseppe Latini, head of the competence centre. “We can incorporate more or less any colour or structure, even special embossings such as motifs from the hippie era.”
Colours for the coming fashion trends are borrowed from nature and range from pastel to full shades; from delicate pink and bright red (New Hippie), through to earthy and rusty browns (Born Biological), to a natural white and sky blue, also in combination with a modern, metallic silvery gloss (Simplicity + Naturalness = Chic).
Patterns, structures and colours of days gone by form a symbiosis with the world of tomorrow. This applies not only to shoe upper leather, but also to fashionable bags and leather accessories. Small, fine, filigree patterns and structures dominate. In keeping with this, there is a trend away from large crocodile embossings to more fine-scaled reptile effects such as lizard and snake.
Share this story:
