Designer says ’colour trumps Trump”

Archroma, a global leader in colour and specialty chemicals, who pioneered custom colour engineering in textile and fashion, recently sponsored a seminar with founder of Design Seeds, Jessica Colaluca, during this year’s PrintSource New York exhibition, that focused on the use of “Colour Anthropology” and how recent global political events including the election of Donald Trump and the passing of BREXIT may alter the already established fashion industry colour palette for the upcoming season.

“Colour has long been a form of self-expression over the years,” says Colaluca, “The US election of Trump impacted the colours we are – and will be – wearing this upcoming season. While not in the literal sense of red, white and blue being patriotic, but the notion of Americana and how people want to relate to it was shaken.”

In many ways, the “modern folk/hipster” aesthetic was born in reaction to "consumerism gone wild,” which made natural colours make sense the past three years, but with the volatility of politics, nationally and globally, it makes sense the aesthetic will evolve dramatically once again. Allowing for a feeling of empowerment, optimism, and self-expression.

Colaluca points to strong fashion trends like flannel shirts and red dad caps that have dominated the market such as Modern Folk and Americana start blurring political lines of very different people with distinctly different ethos. As early as Q4 2016, colour anthropologists could see a fallout coming on this trend aesthetic in the hipster and early adopter segments because the aesthetics cross over with people of very different political and cultural beliefs, therefore separating themselves from a belief system they don’t share.