Summer is traditionally the season for bold and bright colors. The autumn/winter season gravitates towards more somber tones season after season, giving us grays, blacks, and browns. And indeed Première Vision has predicted a color palette that has many darker inclinations such as deep earthy greens (algae, mud) and rich browns (truffle, root), but it is the intensity of its subversive and grating brights (mauve, atoll, fertilizer), the incandescents (gum, bilberry), and the volcanic blazes (toxic violet, lava) splashed across the color board that caught our attention. Première Vision's Fashion Team told us these palette was meant to "revive a combative confidence and creative boldness while fearlessly experimenting."

One hopes that "seizing on color as a power source" will in fact prove a powerful enabler to the consumer in these increasingly difficult times. The weavers and textile factories have already prepared bold offerings for the market in the hope that this tactic is just what the consumer will desire. These colors evince a clear predilection for risk taking, showing that the fashion industry believes cannot maintain a low profile.

The trouble with predicting the 2009/2010 season is that there really is little collective understanding of just how far down our economic climate will tumble as we stand on the precipice of what could be the worst recession in decades. In this sense, the rhetoric used by the fashion team of "putting aside consensus" makes a certain amount of sense. Shifting aesthetic boundaries may help us to move the market and these bold colors may do just the trick.

However, designers can hedge their bets with the selection of warm and lightened neutrals on display (ginger, amanita, oyster) and the tone on tone tinted sauves (cat's tongue, chemical cloud, North Sea, lichen) that are still decidedly brighter than an average while maintaining a kind of calm.

The Fashion Team behind Première Vision has an impressive focus when it comes to helping vendors and buyers navigate a season. A concern for profits and the bottom line is obviously predicted but Sabine Le Chatelier noted in her Trend Tasting seminar that she was surprised at the level of risk the textile designers were taking in the new fall/winter season. A desire not to repeat the past was evident as fashion consumers increasingly let go of their hang ups when it comes to purchases.

More concrete trends for womenswear that we can look forward to in fabric include dynamic tailoring, dense and springy materials juxtaposed with the unstructured. Sabine predicted profound darks and
winter acid tones for this high tension suiting.

Another possibility is lukewarm neutrals is trafficked tartans, colorized cottons, with decodifying folkore motifs and decorations. A kind of bizarre nature will round out the neutrals with not very natural beiges combined with chemical pastels. Cashmeres, furs, velvets, embossed jacquards, silks, and lace evoking imagery of vegetation will play into this trend.

Our favorite prediction was something Sabine called uniform and couture. The interplay between cultural uniforms and intensely personal clothing will be interpreted in colors and fabrics with graphics, blooming shades, deep darks interrupted by ecru. With the couture influence historical references to volume and details, double weaves, compressed broadclothes, boiled knits, wool lace, guipure are predicted. On the uniform side cavalry twill, whipcords, herringbones, and covert cloth will make an appearance.

Première Vision always lives up to its name as the first look at a new season. The famed textile tradeshow that occurs in Paris twice a year hosts a smaller fabric show in New York each January and July as a Preview. This trend concentrate as they call it, is our favorite fashion geek out.

Anyone who is serious about the business of fashion makes it a point to attend Première Vision. The textiles showcased are not for cost cutters (though we did follow a Forever 21 designer for ten minutes to see what she shopped) as each weaver must pass a rigorous Selection Committee which examines the creativity of their products, their ability to present regularly updated collections, their service qualities, and their financial stability. In other words, this is for serious sourcing only. And we saw many serious faces from designers at big firms like Coach to Calvin Klein to individual designers like Alexander Wang and Erin Fetherston (who was in the registration line ahead of us).

While the list of vendors at this Preview is impressive, and we certainly got our kicks by playing with worsted wool, technical stretch jersey, and lace (we met a certain celebrity twin with a fashion line at one of the specialty lace vendors), the real reason to attend the Preview is to prepare oneself for the coming year by perusing the offerings of attend one of the Première Vision's Fashion Team.

The fashion team prepares not only a color wall to help designers focus their color stories but a veritable bazaar of fabrics organized by theme (such as high tension, sweet and sour chic or uniform and couture) in the vendors room. This incredible centerpiece allows you to see first hand the offers of the weavers in a quick and accessible format. The sheer visual impact of is a reminder of the power that Première Vision has in shaping a season.
The fashion team's attention to detail is astounding, their rhetoric is coyly humorous even as it packs an informational punch, and their curation of fabrics quite simply forms a cohesive vision of a season that is both emotionally inspiring and practically actionable.

But our favorite element of Première Vision is hands down The Trend Tasting Seminars presented by the inimitable Sabine Le Chatelier. An hour long presentation includes a twenty minute film using music, images, and words to show the Fashion Team's major influences for the coming season and a three part organization schema to highlight key themes that are then broken down into color harmonies and fabrics for womenswear, menswear and sportswear.

Throughout the day we will present you with what we learned at Première Vision. We certainly hope you will check back!

Season number six of Mercedes Benz Berlin Fashion Week begins Thursday, followed by Miami Swim Week, which starts this Friday. Consider the Spring 09 season officially underway. The names you'll probably recognize, showing in this year's Berlin Fashion Week include Vivienne Westwood Anglomania, Kai Khune, c.neeon, HUGO, and JOOP! jeans. We'll have loads of photos and reviews for you as things progress. To read about the designers participating in the Berlin shows, click here. Miami, which will no doubt serve as a alcohol-saturated vacation for all of those showroom reps who undoubtedly deserve some time off, will also host an exciting roster of designers including Zimmerman, Custo Barcelona, and Tibi. We're off to Premiere Vision tomorrow afternoon, a textiles trade show for the Fall 09 season, and then to a Paul Wilmot Holiday 08 preview, which means sneak-peak pics of Uniqlo, Monique Lhuillier, Naeem Kahn, and L.A.M.B. Exciting things happening in Coutortureland and the fashion world proper. For the rest of the day, we're going to throw back caffeine and office-poll who will confuse the seasons in an interview first and what everyone will be wearing come spring 09. One possible answer: straight jackets.