PIGMENT PROPHECIES & ARCHAEOLOGY AUTUM/WINTER SEMINAR 2023—24
presented live online by Lidewij Edelkoort
This session includes, PIGMENTS: autumn / winter 2023–24 Colour Forecast and ARCHAEOLOGY: autumn / winter 2023–24 Fashion & Textiles. Followed by Q&A with Lidewij Edelkoort
Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
11:30 AM — 2:00 PM (NEW YORK)
8:30 AM — 11:00 AM (LOS ANGELES )
Tickets
US $350 per person
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Programme
11:30 AM PIGMENT PROPHECIES: autumn / winter 2023–24 Colour Forecast
12:30 PM ARCHAEOLOGY: autumn / winter 2023—24 Fashion & Textile Forecast
1:30 PM Q&A with Li Edelkoort and Philip FImmano
2:00 PM APPROXIMATE END
PIGMENT PROPHECIES
autumn / winter 2023—24 Colour Forecast
For those who like terracotta, ochre or brown today, it is eerie to reflect on the origin of those warm and lively colours. One feels directly connected to ancestors that lived up to four hundred thousand years ago, before modern humans even existed. Now we are well into the 21st century, biding our time during the end of life as we know it. The progress made over past centuries has taken its toll and emptied the earth, impoverished our soil and destroyed our forests, preventing new generations to flourish unless a consensus on circular living can be made; which, at this point, seems unlikely. This demands new substances and pigments to work with, made from renewable resources and creative recycled solutions. Our own colour can be coveted as a source of beauty and melanin is a substance to reckon with for the future, as are natural resources such as mushrooms and algae, crustaceans and food residues. Colour comes close to clothe us…
Studying pigments can inspire us to make progress and write new scenarios for the future. Therefore technology will work on even newer materials that will colour our robots, garments and interiors while inspiring innovation; with pigments that heal and reach out to the human race, in its race against the clock. These almost alive substances are imbedded with information and will create emotional alliances with our customers, where clothes, objects and interiors become vehicles for learning and self-expression. Making us an intrinsic part of a brave new world.
ARCHAEOLOGY: fragments of past & future
autumn / winter 2023—24 Fashion & Textile Forecast
Pivotal trends are excavated from the earliest of times to the latest of futures and will bring a sense of awe, from the human ability to design itself into being to how people design themselves out of the realm of reality. Humankind has managed to invent pigments, materials, metals, tools, textiles, food recipes and culture, and continues to invent colour sources, recycle materials, hybridise metals, tackle tools, weave new fibre, design exceptional foods and write, sculpt, paint, photograph and dance. People are genius and it is good to recall this in terrible troubled times, when aggression and separatism, negligence and racism, as well as blatant patriotism, risk taking over. Somehow, to understand the primitive human is to grasp our basic instinct for survival over the barbarian practices of today, and this helps us remain connected by our capacity for invention and improvisation. If humans have always been that resourceful, we cannot be that bad after all?
We might find a chiselled piece of rock as endearing as the gathered arm of a robot, and somehow it makes sense to see them in sequence since both are tools to achieve progress, to do production and to provide protection. We are still the same, trying to make sense of life, labouring for better conditions and opting for creative solutions to enhance our existence. Lifestyle has existed since we were hunter gatherers in prehistoric times, and numerous people today aspire to again become a nomadic citizen of the world. From the Bronze Age to the Brutalist Age, the circle is complete when we focus on bold shapes, robust matter and an almost combative presence in material design. We can therefore research the past even better than our current culture, since true keys to greatness lie both in our past and our future – for now, forgetting the dramatic present.
Photo by Thirza Schaap
LIDEWIJ EDELKOORT One of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters and colorists, Li is an intuitive thinker who constantly tracks how socio-cultural trends evolve. She is also a publisher, humanitarian, educator and exhibition curator. From 2015 to 2020 she was the Dean of Hybrid Studies at Parsons and she also founded New York Textile Month each September. She wrote the Anti_Fashion Manifesto in 2014 and is the co-author of A Labour of Love (Lecturis, 2020), presenting the work of a very new generation of conscious designers and makers. Her most recent endeavor is the World Hope Forum, dedicated to spreading hope across the globe through design in a post-pandemic landscape.
* Guest will receive a link from zoom to attend the webinar online