Knitwear Trend Forecasts S/S 19

Pitti Immagine Filati

Firenze – Fortezza Da Basso

January 24- 26 2018

Raw

This edition of the Knitwear Trend Forecasts by Pitti Filati, for Spring-Summer 2019, was original and revolutionary as usual. Raw is the theme around which the six shades that summarize the mood revolve: raw attitude, raw summer, raw shelter, raw data, raw masculine, raw feminine.

The choice of “RAW” theme stems from a very realistic picture of our time. This is a time where everything is becoming hyper-technological, virtual, oneiric, simple and complicated at the same time.

The massive use of technologies that make our life more and more easier, however, has a disquieting backhand in the loss of imagination and intuitive abilities of the human being, which are gradually replaced by machines.

With RAW, Pitti Filati writes his manifesto as a reaction to the excess of sophistication, which steals more and more space to imagination, fantasy and sentiment.

The excess of processing that takes us away from the essence of things and their understanding, finds a sincere and spontaneous road to freedom of identity, of transforming and to become what each one really is, in this edition of Pitti Filati.

THE THEMES

Raw Attitude

It’s the expression of brut and informal art that emphasizes the instinct. It’s a concept of raw, unworked, which becomes a true sign of style. Stitches such as wood surfaces carved by scratches and remained rough even after being painted.

Knitwear trend forecasts

Reliefs, primitive sculptures, naive, simple and rough volumes. Irregular, random, variable gauges and points. A primitive work of art, made of strong colors, pasty, full-bodied, encrusted in well-studied but apparently random paintings.

Soundtrack of the theme: “Primitive” – The Groupies.

Raw Summer

It is the dramatic and romantic image of a summer storm to inspire this theme.

In fact, we are constantly searching for novelty and surprise, lazy and spoiled by a too big offer of everything, which raises our expectations making them more and more difficult to satisfy. Just a few things are still able to amaze us.

And here is a storm in the middle of summer that upsets everything, in a very short moment. The colors change. The surfaces beaten by the wind are rippling, fraying, creating filamentous transparencies. The pouring rain drenches the nature burned by the summer sun, making it three-dimensional.

Knitwear trend forecasts

A game of positive and negative materials, of glossy and opaque, of shadow and light, which follows each other on knitted garments like clouds in a stormy sky. Colors are delicate but palpable. Gray and pink pastels, like threatening clouds, crossed by a sunshine orange ray at sunset.

Soundtrack of the theme: “Summer Storm” – Mozart Heroes.

Raw Shelter

In this theme, knitted garments become a sort of “first prototype of the dress”, intended as a real home for the body.

The primitive men left the caves and began to build their shelter by shaping the raw earth, kneading it with straw. The raw earth becomes an expressive means to give shape to the natural and the divine, to cover, to isolate, to decorate and to tell.

Knitwear trend forecasts

Pure clean lines that privilege the research for textures rich to the touch and raw to the eye.

Jerseys with a rough and three-dimensional look. Glossy, moist aspects. Surfaces moved by archaic signs. As clay scratched from the nails till transparency, which congeals under the sun in archaic pleats.

Natural yarns and polyester create rough surfaces typical of raw material. The construction made with dry bricks, without mortar, inspires points, geometries, and micromachining. A color chart inspired by kneaded lands, looking raw and wet, with a touch of green, ready to be shaped.

Soundtrack of the theme: “Shelter” – Xavier Rudd.

Raw Data

A topic of great actuality: internet and the amount of data that we put online every day. Analyzed, processed, and sold by expert analysts. In an increasingly virtual scenario, it is difficult to talk about concreteness and humanity.

Perhaps, a blackout or a super hacker will make of tomorrow a time where real material things, like the pages of a book, like an abacus, will return to be the most reliable certainties.

Knitwear trend forecasts

Pitti Filati transforms the abstract concepts from which we are submerged every day into tactile images and real knitwear.

Sweaters with a vintage taste, handmade futuristic geometries. A cruder representation of data for a slightly hippie and wild-looking shirt. The colors, inspired by the computer screen, have a vivid but natural, not aggressive appearance.

Soundtrack of the theme: “O Superman” – Laurie Anderson.

Raw Masculine

The masculine image of Spring Summer 2019 is that of a confident and comforting man, rough but reassuring, looking for concreteness, and humanity, according to Pitti Filati. So due, far from a magazine-like looking, he takes its connotation from the male portraits of figurative art.

A combination of strength and elegance. A real man, stripped of useless tinsel and seen in its essence.

Knitwear trend forecasts

Garments are inspired by the underwear wool knits, which underline the importance of wool also for spring summer. Moreover, it’s the expression of the evocative power of all artistic mediums mixed together, with abstract patterns and geometries.

Wool tank tops give a sporty accent while contrasting necks and wrists add a touch of freshness to the winter effect.

The classic masculine colors, strong and spicy, have an aspect slightly yellowed by the sun, but as if they were looked in a cool and shaded environment, away from summer heat.

Soundtrack of the theme: “Personal Jesus” – Johnny Cash.

Raw Feminine

It’s a theme that speaks of raw and wild aesthetics, of a woman who refuses the role given to her by man and social conventions.

Moreover, it’s the manifestation of a free femininity that is denounced in the form of a visual protest by the feminist avant-gardes of the 40s, until today.

That’s why it’s a theme that speaks of hairs as an inconceivable right of rough and wild beauty, free from the obligatory conventions of fashion, and of social customs.

Knitwear trend forecasts

Sweaters are amorphous, not constricting.

The materials, almost ambiguous, give a hybrid feel, between plastic and silk. The new is translated by handmade crafted in the shape of genital parts openly exhibited.

Underwear garments worn outside, over light or transparent knits, sign the slogan of protest. An intellectual fashion that does not delight the eye and does not particularly emphasize the body. A strong message from Pitti Filati.

Violent colors and signs used with strong contrast, reinforce the message of protest with red and fuchsia put on activist photography’s gray and black backgrounds. White and skin colors as a counterpoint of sweetness and purity.