July 2012 / Sustainable Sophistication


Located throughout the world, the Trendease Team continues to deliver our subscribers around the globe must-know market information and inspiration straight to their computer screens.

In this issue the user experience and generation of fresh points of view are at the heart of the matter. The lines between fantasy and reality blur. Play with materials brings innovation and technique to the table. Taste and style are weighed heavily where the vision for new tabletop designs and home fashions flourish. Sensual pleasures inspire novel involvement with home products, and boundaries are pushed with creations uncovered at events in Berlin, Milan, Paris, London, Los Angeles, and New York. Furniture and lighting are a part of the green movement of homemade and home grown, while a new hotel in town offers a place to get away from it all. Get inspired with the July edition!

We attend over 100 design events a year on your behalf to bring you trend insights and design movements to help you maintain cutting-edge knowledge of the lifestyle and design markets. Currently we keep readers within 171 countries/territories in the know! Are you reading Trendease.com?

Show us what you’ve got! For editorial consideration please email editorial@trendease.com with your latest original designs. Upcoming Trendease Market Edge PowWows and Trendease.TV scheduling can be found on the homepage.

REPORTING TO INSPIRE,
Jennifer Castoldi,
Chief Creative Director

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Features and Articles

Jennifer's July Jargon

Berlin — In today’s globalized world where practically everything is available through the internet and the choices are plenty, how do you stand out from the rest? Are you greener than your competitors? If you are a large firm, does your brandividual bridge the communication gap between you and the end user? Traveling the world to research the markets makes one thing very clear to us: designers and their companies have a lot of competition. Learn more and see over 50 highlights from DMY in this gallery.

All Wound Up

Multiple European Cities — We have no intention getting you wound up, but we cannot speak for the designers out there creating a new range of products for you to feast your eyes upon in here. What we have noticed at Spazio Rossana Orlandi, SaloneSatellite, Zona Ventura Lambrate, and DMY International Design Festival Berlin, is that winding material up is a new way to enhance lighting and seating creations.

Loop de Loop

Worldwide — Homegrown and homemade are key terms in today’s societal shifts. Adding a personal touch to an item, making something more individual in a time where the masstardization of design and the activity of overconsumption have run rampant, is growing in popularity. Like large firms are using brandividuals to make communicating with corporate mammoths more personable, designers are bringing the human element back to reality.

Design Implants

Worldwide — The use of plants represents ‘green’ design in both an intellectual and literal way. And who can deny the beauty of these projects and their exceptional innovativeness in both technology and design? Whatever the case may be, the relationship between nature and household items opens the doors to vast design possibilities. Whether you consider yourself a scientist, an environmentalist, an artist, this series of designs has an eye-catching effect that appeals to all.

May I Braid Your Chair?

Multiple European Cities — In recent travels the Trendease Team has found another age-old practice being reinvigorated: braiding, or plaiting as they call it in some parts of the world. The crisscrossing and intertwining of various materials by designers in Sweden, Italy, and Germany have caught our attention. Aside from the actual technique there lies deeper meaning behind the designs: ones of revulsion and preservation.

Seduced by Design

New York — Food and sensuality meet in this tabletop and meal reserved for two, where the meal cannot be enjoyed thoroughly without the cooperation and participation of each partner. We have seen food-related sensuality in designs discovered in Paris before, but never have we seen such an interactive and well-thought out designer experience as that by Garini. Where food is moving into the center of design, Garini is just in time for dinner!

A Festival of Taste & Style

Berlin — The Taste Festival, 10 days of food and creativity, located in the multistory Direktorenhaus, brought together designers, artists, food curators, chefs and producers to show off their latest projects to industry professionals and food lovers. These combined influences make up an influential gallery of images that aim to evoke a fresh point of view and new user experience that plays with materials, ingredients, and the question of fantasy versus reality. Feast your eyes on this and eat your heart out with 85 photos!

Playing on Originality

Paris — The new Hôtel Original Paris could not have a more fitting name. Its originality is in its design, all done by the creative genius, Stella Cadente—fashion, jewelry, cosmetic, and interior designer and illustrator. Each component of the rooms from flooring, light fixtures, fabrics to wall decor is an original design of Cadente’s, made especially for this hotel.

New Talent and Green Living

Los Angeles — This year marked the seventh annual Dwell on Design in Los Angeles Show. The show has expanded with more square feet, an additional 60,000 and an expansion of programming that included New Home Tours and district events. Green and sustainable is the name of the game here. Have a look of some of the products and architectural units on offer within.

Outlandish

Outlandish in 2013/14

Paris — Le Cuir à Paris has just revealed its Autumn-Winter 2013/14 trends under the theme Outlandish. “Winter 13-14’s fashion transports us elsewhere, far away, outside of our universe or to the heart of our inner being. A fancy for foreign, rather than strange takes over our daily lives or thrusts us into an undefined time and space. The word ‘Outlandish’ will be the vehicle for this season’s journeys.”

Minimum - Nendo

NEWSLETTER #403 - Maison&Objet Trends

Paris — On exhibit this September is the “parcours d'inspirations”, this time with the theme Essential; the inspiration trail at Maison&Objet always draws a crowd. Now we are pleased to bring you an avant premiere featuring a video and over 50 products to be shown this fall in the three scenarios demonstrating design directions through 2013.

NEWSLETTER #404 - Fold-n-Tuck

Worldwide — From Boston to Hong Kong, Milan to Berlin, there is an abundance of folding and tucking going on. Fashion, bedding, lighting, floor coverings, and upholstery, are a few of the product categories undergoing neat creasing and stitching at the hands of the creative community. Subscribers can discover the elaborate 3D structures within this gallery.

NEWSLETTER #405 - Bright and Fluorescent

Worldwide — On Wednesday, the sky got dark and the heavens opened up in a torrential downpour accompanied by large balls of hail, causing flash flooding and havoc with impressive displays of thunder and lightning. While the weather put some people in a dreary mood, this gallery of product images from around the world will brighten your spirits. Color is back! Especially brights and fluorescents.

NEWSLETTER #406 - Wenlock and Mandeville

London — If Jennifer did not have key client and designer meetings this week in London, you can rest assured she would not be anywhere near the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, as she is not a crowd person. However, she is someone who has come to appreciate the act of seizing the moment, so here she is reporting from the throngs of it all. This week’s gallery features some of the more creative sides of the pre-games snapped throughout the week while on the go.