why sneakers are the new stilettos*

The sneaker trend featured during the Spring 2014 Couture and Fall 2014 Ready-to-wear collections.  |  Image Sources: Style.com

Sneakers are the premise of cool right now. In fashion’s perpetual search for the next must-have item and the hottest new look, fads are birthed and die faster than you can say, "trendy". But it’s without a doubt that the practical, humble and comfortable “it” shoe’s reign will gain more and more traction because of how representative it is of what personal style has become. 

When Karl Lagerfeld had sample-size supermodels navigating Chanel’s Spring Summer 2014 haute couture runway in sneakers at the Grand Palais in January, I was like: “OhMyGodHeDidNotJustPairSneakersWithHauteCouture!" But he did, and he was right on the money. He actually did it again this past Tuesday for Chanel’s Fall 2014 ready-to-wear collection. He had Cara Delevingne and Lindsey Wixson modelling in Chanel-version warm up sets and matching sneakers to match. Talk about real-life street style influencing luxury fashion. I see girls dressed like that when I’m doing after-work grocery shopping at the Woolworths in Kloof street. They’re the stereotypical working women who’ve just finished gym and needed a litre of milk before heading home, so they throw on a coat over their gym gear and push their grocery-filled trollies between aisles of neatly branded and merchandised goods, much like the Chanel show we all witnessed on Tuesday. If you don't believe me, go to the Woolworths in the Lifestyle centre between 17h30 and 19h00 on any weekday and see for yourself. Apparently real life has become the realest and coolest new trend on the runways, especially after Lagerfeld converted the Grand Palais into a Chanel-branded supermarket for active-wear-sneaker-clad models to shop strut there stuff in. 

I was at work on Tuesday trying to write a press release and check my twitter feed for visuals of the Chanel Fall 2014 show as it was happening at the Grand Palais. It was by far the most "social-media'd" collection of the season.  |  Source: Twitter

I've noticed Lagerfeld's penchant for taking topical social subject matter and turning it into luxury-branded fads. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, he just seems to have a natural knack for knowing how to keep the Chanel brand current. Lagerfeld is a fashion designer as much as he is a businessman and he’s totally recognized the social, monetary and style value of the sneaker for fashion consumers in 2014. The incredible reaction to his SS'14 haute couture collection has also confirmed the ubiquity of this sneakers-with-everything styling trend. But this wasn’t a trend initiated by Lagerfeld’s couture collection, it began on the sidewalks, not on the catwalks and bears testimony to how the trickle-up theory materialises into runway realities.  

Sneakers have been synonymous with the street-style kids of cool since blue jeans and biker jackets have been associated with bad-boy James Dean swag. The current fashion climate has made the emergence of this footwear trend ready to flourish, especially considering the fact that "ugly shoes and flats are totes the new heels". The incredible rise of sports-luxe fashion has also paved the way for sneakers to become an acceptable shoe to juxtapose against a beautiful designer piece. In a world where our lifestyles are defined by the workload stressful jobs, online and offline social pressures, information overload and the ever-increasing need to be able to travel from home to work or one side of the globe to the other - something's gotta give and a practical, functional and comfortable dress code can act as great armour to cope with insane pace we're marching to nowadays.

So style your sneakers with a dress or pair your sweatshirts with pearls, it's all about the dualism between being on-the-go and looking good. I think great personal style is no longer defined by what you look like when you have to look good. It's a consistent expression of your taste whether you're at home, at work or out socialising. Ultimately the sneaker trend is just fashion's appropriation of an idealised scenario where everyday people are trying to be stylish and practical at the same time.   

report | the design indaba 2014*

On 27 February 2014 the company I work for and its buyers attended the Design Indaba Buyers Day to scout for new local brands.

Click here to watch what me and other attendees had to say about the Design Indaba 2014.

I've been attending the Design Indaba every year since I was fifteen years old studying Surface Design as a seventh subject in high school. A lot has changed since then but the 2014 Design Indaba Expo has probably been the best one to date, its success most probably also inspired by the fact that Cape Town is the World Design Capital for 2014.

Unfortunately many people only define the Design Indaba as the Expo event, which acts like a trade show marketing local designers from multidisciplinary design categories, but it's actually grown in to something which is more like a festival, hosting conferences, workshops, design projects, Simulcasts, FilmFests and Music Circuits to strive for 'a better world through design, creativity and innovation'. I also understand why Cape Town has played host to the Design Indaba every year since 1995. This city is filled with creative minds who understand the homeostatic relationship between form and function, and who also know how to use available resources to create something out of nothing. Walking around the Design Indaba Expo I was continuously impressed by how many designers were using materials one would never even think of utilising to make beautiful handcrafted objects. One example of this was shown by a silversmith named, Ashley Heather who creates incredible jewellery fashioned by the silver extracted from photographic waste. I couldn't believe that such beautiful, modern pieces of jewellery could be created from that kind of waste. Usually you think of bottle caps, plastic bags and old clothing being used as the waste materials to create "up-cycled" goods.

If you'd like to know more about the designers who exhibited this year, click here, and if you're reading this post and feeling keen to visit Cape Town for the Design Indaba next year, make sure you bring a lot of spending money because it's way better than a shopping mall. You get meet the people who are directly involved in producing the products you buy, which naturally adds a different kind of value to your purchase when you can understand the design-thinking behind it. I picked up the skirt pictured below by a Tanzanian fashion designer, Anisa Mpungwe at the Design Indaba Expo and can admit without a shadow of a doubt that I love it more than my French BCBG Max Azria pleated tulle skirt. I think I've become even more obsessed with local fashion brands after this year's Design Indaba and am a firm believer that local is the new luxury. When somebody asks me about the designer of this skirt, it gives me so much joy to talk about Mpungwe and her successful story as a fashion designer in South Africa.

Besides the fashion, I was overwhelmed by the kaleidoscope of colours, patterns and textures on display. It was a visual feast and my eyes were like two hungry mouths excitedly chewing up as many beautiful things as it could. My bank card just quietly handled the bill afterwards and trust me, it was the best date I've had all year. Key trends I noticed ranged from loads of photo-real prints to different types of woven textures but overall I was very interested in the extremity between maximalism and minimalism design aesthetics.

For more visuals on objects, colours, textures and patterns that caught my magpie fashion eyes - just keep scrolling down and enjoy.

confessions of a fashion trend forecaster*

World-renowned trend forecaster, Lidewij Edelkoort presenting her Spring Summer 2015 trend forecast last week Saturday.  |  Photos by: Zakirah Rabaney

I arrived at the Cape Town International Convention Centre at 08h30 last week Saturday with an urgent excitement in my walk. My high heels were quickly click-clacking on polished tiled floors and my mind was rushing with anticipation for the information Lidewij Edelkoort was about to present. It was like I was about to be let in on the secrets of the future of fashion and damn did I get that and a whole lot more.

If you didn't already know, I'm a fashion trend forecaster by profession and it would be near impossible for me to be good at my job if my brain wasn't able to operate like a cool-hunting-sponge, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's like studying the zeitgeist through clothing, shoes, accessories and beauty and I must admit that, Edelkoort did an impeccable job of assembling a concise thesis of her trend observations. Intellectually it was so much fun to witness how she interpreted and presented her Spring Summer 2015 forecast to an audience which included local fashion industry professionals like Dion Chang, Chris Viljoen and Rochelle Malherbe. Edelkoort's forecast also served as a thrilling confirmation of embryonic trends I noticed during my own research of the Spring Summer 2014 season although I'm not going to delve into those details, but will rather share how she helped me rediscover the value of creative presenting in trend forecasting.

Far too often my profession is perceived as a very analytical and data-based craft, with little to no regard for the creative intuition that assists in critical trend analysis. It's as much about being accurate as it is about using one's "creative gut feeling" to "connect the dots" and decipher which trends your target market will be ready for and when. What I took away from my experience with Edelkoort was a much deeper appreciation of how vital it is to share my knowledge of trends in a way that will make the news educational as well as memorable. A trend forecaster's information can only become an asset to a company if the information is presented in a way which can be easily digested, processed and absorbed by key stakeholders. If this doesn't happen, the forecast can't be used to make sound business decisions and in that regard, a trend forecaster's function will be ineffective. I change the way I format trend reports every season in hopes of finding the best possible way to convey each season's story. It gets a little bit better every season but I've begun to realize more and more that the way I format and present my forecast must completely satisfy the needs of the end user and in order to do that, I need to know and understand what those needs are, not what I think they are.

Edelkoort used audio-visuals, a soothing and consistent tone of voice and a damn good sense of humour to deliver her forecast. Unfortunately I'll only be presenting my interpretation of the Spring Summer 2015 season to buyers and marketers next year since we're delayed by one season in the southern hemisphere. But it gives me enough time to think up fresh and creative ways of influencing buyers to bring in the right products at the right time, and to rediscover methods of making trend presentations memorable lessons in fashion's latest and greatest new cools.

could fashion bloggers be the next generation of fashion journalists?*

Preaching to the fashion masses on social media.  

I've just read a thought-provoking article by Jason Dike reviewing the current state of fashion criticism. It's a subject that's been a common topic on the minds of many fashion writers and journalists since Cathy Horyn's recent retirement from the New York Times, a woman noted for her frank points of view as a professional fashion critic. 

"Let’s remember that the real problem isn’t that there’s no one with an honest opinion anymore. It’s that there are very few places left to publish that opinion."

Jason Dike - Can The Current Media Environment Produce An Honest Critic

Cathy Horyn wasn't just a seasoned fashion critic/ journalist, she was also part of a legendary league of journalists embracing other luminaries like Suzy Menkes, Hebe Dorsey, Lynn Yaegers and Diana Vreeland. What Horyn and her peers have contributed to fashion journalism parallels what Paul Poiret's, Cristóbal Balenciaga's and Christian Dior's designs have contributed to 20th century fashion.

It's no wonder Horyn's departure from the fashion media landscape has left people like Dike full of questions and retrospective opinion editorials. It's hard to imagine a publication in this make-money-from-advertising day and age, jumping at the opportunity to publish an honest critique at the expense of an advertiser's top-paying dollar. It also just goes to show that as democratic as most of the world's become, freedom of speech can still come at a very high price. To be able to say what you want without the threat of censorship because of a paying client, conservative audience, diplomatic editor or full-of-politics publisher, is probably every critic and journalist's dream. This is why after reading Dike's piece, I couldn't help but wonder why he didn't mention blogs as a potential medium to express honest fashion criticism.

A blog's penchant for airing straightforward perspectives is the very thing that made me fall in love with it in the first place. To me, a fashion blog is an online publication unbarred by those restrictive formalities that traditional, established media need to answer to.  Bloggers are not journalists, in the traditional sense of the word, so they don't need to follow the same rules - ultimately they're just individuals expressing opinions. It's true that some fashion bloggers are not literate in "the clockwork of the fashion industry" and some fashion blogs have become extremely commercialised by excessive brand collaborations, endorsements and advertising partnerships, but a lot of them still retain a lot more editorial freedom than established magazines, because they don't depend on advertising to sustain them. Rather, they're supported by the blogger's passion for the subject that he/ she blogs about, and that's a hell of a lot more honest than an editor needing to court brands to continue paying for advertising. Then again, Style.com's journalists do do an excellent job in writing honest (sometimes scathing) reviews about certain luxury fashion brands, brands which also happen to advertise on their site (at least some online publications are getting it right). 

But to answer my own question: Yes, fashion bloggers could definitely be the next generation of fashion critics. Allowing for the integrity of honest critique to prevail over bottom-line-mediocrity is so important and bloggers are totally capable of this, as long as they don't let the promise of advertiser's money dictate the formatting or subject of their content. After all, there's a reason why journalists are not allowed to accept gifts in fear of them appearing as bribes, I guess fashion bloggers just need to think about their personal stance on the matter, and what the point is of their blog. Some might want to be taken seriously as a commentator on industry happenings, while others just do it for the fun of it or they'd like to make some money from it or all of the above. It's really not that cut and dry.

At the end of the day, bloggers are watching fashion weeks and Tweet-ing/ Instagram-ing/ Facebook-ing/ Pinterest-ing and Tumblr-ing about it in real time anyway, and this isn't much different to what Cathy Horyn and Suzy Menkes used to do while sitting front row at Chanel in the 1980s. Sure, they didn't have social media, and they're a different calibre of fashion media, but in principal they were reporting on an event the same way bloggers do today. Thorough knowledge of fashion as well as an honest and original viewpoint are the stuff a good fashion critic is made of, and these are natural resources readily available within the current fashion blogosphere. So to all the "floggers" reading this: You know that fashion means something, it's why you blog about it in the first place, and if you're interested in the life and times of this industry, then you can absolutely give it a voice through your text as well as your images. Keep in mind that visuals are great, but the next Cathy Horyn out there will be revered for their wielding of words, not only for their eclectic styling of booties with fur chubbies.