BY DESIGN : Bug-Eyed : Credit the Ecology Movement for Inspiring the Fabric Design du Jour-- From Flowers to Flitting Butterflies to Jewel-Encrusted Faux Roaches
Look out. Fabrics that make you want to scream “eek!” are headed your way.
All those bees, bugs, butterflies and beetles that flitted through the Hermes, Gucci, Gianni Versace and Vivienne Tam collections this season are poised for a mass invasion this time next year.
It’s the fashion world’s version of the trickle-down theory: The rich get first dibs on whatever’s hot; the rest of us have to wait a season or two. (The clever, of course, have been plucking vintage insect prints from thrift stores all along.)
At the California Mart’s International Textile Show, where designers shopped late last month for fabrics to use in their 1996 spring and summer lines, Mother Nature was particularly bountiful.
Los Angeles designer Bonnie Strauss lingered over an Italian material covered with baby blue butterflies from a company called Gordon Textiles International. The textile show, she explained, enables her to see fabric from her favorite manufacturers’ entire lines, rather than just renderings.
Strauss said she likes to take little swatches of $8-to-$10-a-yard fabrics back to her studio to feel, to combine with other swatches and to inspire her.
“Fashion has always been driven by the fabric,” said CNN fashion correspondent Elsa Klensch, who attended the show as a guest of the Italian Trade Commission. She credits the ecology movement for inspiring floral and insect-specimen prints. “There is an enormous feeling for nature now. It raises your spirits.”
Youthful bug lovers will opt for lady-bug-covered Lycra, predicted Edward Albrecht, director of merchandising for Texollini. He showed artists’ renderings of fabric samples that will be available in a matter of weeks. But lovers of vintage-looking bugs turned to New York-based fabric printer Peter Ascher’s showroom, which featured screens from his father’s London archives.
The archives, which date from the ‘40s, contain designs created by such artists as Henri Matisse and Henry Moore. A vintage butterfly print was designed by Cecil Beaton. Ascher prints the vintage designs on the fabric of the designer’s or manufacturer’s choosing.
Cordellus (Cola) Smith, a 42-year-old Los Angeles-based textile designer for the Swiss firm Jakob Schlaepfer, is adding rhinestone-encrusted faux roaches to the company’s trim line. The company’s showroom was a popular stop during the three-day show. Known for its high-end couture fabrics, it drew fashion designers, few of whom could afford fabric priced up to $300 a yard wholesale.
“Not all of our fabrics are designed to make money,” said sales representative Denise Robinson. “Some are for the promotional edge.” She sells to local designers Richard Tyler and Harriet Selwyn, as well as to costume designers and Las Vegas hotels.
Menswear prints and stretchy woven fabrics were also getting a lot of attention, but really, are pin-stripes any competition for roaches?
