London’s biggest textile fair! This edition focused on Spring/Summer 2018 pre-collection and Autumn/Winter highlights presented by around 430 exhibitors from a wide number of nations, mostly from: Italy, United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Turkey and Spain. But also from: Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Ireland, Egypt, Japan, Greece, Germany, United States, Czech Republic, China, Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, India and Mexico.
The January edition closed with a very positive result. See report here.
A huge variety of fabrics adorned the space in an explosion of colours: woven, jerseys, jacquards, silks, woollens, synthetics, prints, outwear, active wear, sports wear, organic, technical and lace. And I just passed my fingers through all this samples for hours and i just couldn’t have enough.
I’ve learned that the minimum order goes around 300-500 m in most cases, in others even 1000 m, and just very few of them go down from 100 m.
Curiosity: Most of the exhibitors didn’t have problems with me taking pictures, but some of them, mostly from Spain, but also Turkey and France, were very strict in denying it. This exhibitors, or the agent/s that represented them, wouldn’t advertise any piece of the new collection on the web in order to protect their designs, so the fair is actually the only place where anyone can see them. Second of all, it happily surprised me the reaction of some exhibitors seeing my student badge. They were asking what i was studying and answering gently to all my curiosities. One of them even decided to explain in detail a technique they used to make a floral jacquard fabric.
These are the 4 SS18 Trends by Patternbank.com:
Warped ‘Materials take on a technical and optical visual look.. Here surfaces are brought to life with abstract structure and warped 3D Techniques’
Dark Neon ‘Summer looks to a darker, neon injected aesthetic in this update on the iridescent trend. Metallic and fancy colour effects have a slight eighties look with powerful hyper real visual’
Future Craft ‘In this artisan focused trend we look towards innovative, future forms of craftsmanship. Here a fusion of cultures from the east to the west, blend together in this textural crafted trend’
Eastern Exotic ‘Decoration and embellishment is celebrated in this exotic materials trend, inspirations come from exploring India’s rich past. Here vintage exported textiles are given a twist with a vibrant colour palette to add a summer fizz’
Anda Avramescu 