By E. Nina Rothe
Huffington Post
June 23, 2016
At times it is important to get back to the basics. While understanding the heart of the matter of politics, religion and even humanity seems challenging at this very moment, getting to what is at the core of fashion was as easy at traveling to Florence for me. In this magical place, laden with all kinds of opportunities, I found the essence of all trends: thread. And in the process I discovered just how trends come to be.
While ready-to-wear collections are shown a year before, to the season — for example, what is on the runways now will be in stores in time for the Spring/Summer seasons of 2017 — trends in thread, yarns are shown a year and a half before they are turned into looks that are finally in stores. Because now is when designers and fashion offices decide what to utilize once they begin working on the collections that will be shown come next January 2017, for their winter collections in stores in 2018. See how that all works? Predicting colors, textures and weight this far in advance had always seemed to me like some kind of hocus pocus alchemy experiment. Yet, now that I get how it works, it’s all making a lot of sense. The secret to all fashion is held together by a thread. Literally.