CERNOBBIO, Italy — Luxurious fabrics with festive designs will be a key component of fall 2005-winter 2006 fashions, at least judging by the stands at a pair of Italian trade shows.
Silk specialists from the Como region offered a range of fabrics with transparency and glittery qualities at the Ideacomo trade fair here, while wool specialists unveiled tweeds and bouclés, as well as embossed fabrics at Prato Expo in Florence.
At Ideacomo, vendors focused on colors that were rich and vibrant, ranging from burgundy, brown and burnt orange to gray, bronze and various shades of eggplant. Many showed fabrics that were enhanced by the addition of baroque designs and geometric patterns. Lurex metallic fibers also were featured at the event, which wrapped up its three-day run Oct. 22.
Fabrics unveiled by Europ and Fantoccoli centered around textured jacquards enriched with touches of metallic fibers. Europ highlighted texture in nubby jacquard patterns by combining silk and wool.
Textile designers at Fantoccoli, a division of Clerici Tessuto, played with texture, applying shiny appliqués to soft wool backgrounds. Knit fabrics evoking the Seventies featured oversized stitches, a casual look made festive by the addition of an overlay of gold lamé designs.
Pentagono Seta also showed Seventies-inspired looks, many in strong colors with geometric designs, as well as delicate and transparent fabrics.
“We have concentrated on creating soft fabrics that drape well and are particularly suited for holiday and formal cruisewear dressing,” said Claudio Allegri, sales manager. He highlighted fabrics in navy blue and eggplant, both paired with Lurex fibers.
Giorgio di Angelis, owner of GdA, continued down the luxury road. He showed velvet devoré in a neutral mushroom color, which used the fluid qualities of the fabric to create visual interest in lieu of a more structured design. GdA also featured white-on-white flower patterned jacquard in a cotton and rayon blend, which di Angelis said would be well suited for suits, jackets or lightweight topcoats. He said the company’s line of transparent silk prints in muted hues of coffee, blue gray and gold were designed with the holiday party circuit in mind.
A month earlier, at Florence’s Fortezza da Basso, exhibitors focused on a color palette with English autumn hues of olive green, oranges and browns as well as powder pink, powder blue and bordeaux. Aside from wool, fine velvets and corduroys also were part of collections such as the duck egg blue velvet.
Related Galleries
Prato Expo’s new president, Riccardo Marini, heralded the interest in wool as good for the show.
“The signs are in line with the fashion of the moment, which is very luxurious and fantasy-like,” Marini said. “We in Prato specialize in creating the type of fabric that buyers are searching for right now.”
Lanificio Cangioli predicted a 25 percent increase in sales by yearend, which would raise its overall volume to 20 million euros, or $24.6 million at current exchange rates.
“Everybody has come to Europe to find a personalized product and that has pushed products to become even more creative and beautiful,” said Lanificio Cangioli’s president, Vincenzo Cangioli. “So now buyers looking for wool and cotton fancy fabrics with the right finish are coming back to Prato.”
At Marcolana, executive vice president Andrea Barontini said wool’s fashionable status was contributing to 5 percent sales growth this year, driving the firm toward an expected 35 million euros in sales, the equivalent of $43.1 million.
“It will continue to grow because wool is the queen of the fibers at the moment,” Barontini said. “Nobody buys wool because it is a necessity anymore and today it has found its new place in the wardrobe as a fashionable fabric.”
Mills showed wool in distinct variations, with a touch of metallic fiber, stretch fiber, rayon or acrylic, to give it a more modern look. Lanificio Biagioli showed powder pink wool with a 3 percent Lurex metallic fiber as well as a wool fabric with a silk lining, with the outside wool fibers left long.
“The fabric is like an all-in-one: self-lined and with a beautiful soft texture outside,” sales manager Elisabetta Biagioli said.
Ospiti del Mondo showed a fabric in which metal fibers were mixed with wool to give a crumpled effect.
Moving beyond wool, Ultra showed velvet that president Stefano Rigotti described as “more sophisticated this season — not like the heavy velvet of the Eighties.”
Buyers searched for new versions of boiled wools. Barry Kay, president of Herman Kay Bromley, a New York-based outerwear firm, said, “Wool is very hot right now. The fair is going very well, the novelties just continue to get stronger and I think they will stay on until next season. There’s so much newness, we are looking for fresh boiled wools that have great new colors.”
Teresa Braddock, a fabric sourcer for the English women’s collection Hobbs, said boiled fabrics would take the place of tweeds next season.
“We are so sick of tweed, we’ve used so much already in our winter collections,” she said. “Now we are after interesting plain fabrics — they have to have a textured surface or be boiled.”
The Prato fair closed with 6,227 visitors, an increase of 2.9 percent compared with last year’s fall-winter edition. International visitors numbers were also stronger, rising 8.2 percent to 2,631.