The latest View Premium Selection trade fair held in Munich from 4-5 December provided a comprehensive overview of the new 2020 Spring/Summer season, attracting a creative line-up featuring some 400 high-quality collections.

Welcoming the numerous purchasing teams, designers and product managers from leading European brands Munich Fabric Start’s Preview textile fair was very well attended over both days. The event was able to follow on from the growing visitor numbers posted at the last edition of View in July, which closed with a total plus of nearly 1,000 more visitors – a 4% rise over last year’s event.

Promising environment

This early and sustained opportunity to sound out the market is currently gaining new significance within a promising environment, organisers report. This is because a big innovative push is now coming from fabrics themselves. With their texture, character and shape retention properties these now determine silhouettes and styles. This means sportiness through to the megatrend of athleisure is largely defined by the new fabrics looks. Furthermore, at the forefront of fashion there is a new desire for striking styles and intense colours.

“We are seeing a greater openness towards new themes on the part of customers,” said Frank Weber, who regularly exhibits with Velcorex at View. In the past it often took several seasons before new fashion collections were taken up. Today, conversations here develop more quickly. This is also confirmed by the majority of exhibitors and visitors.

“We come to View to see new developments at a very early stage. And these expectations are also met. What’s more, this date a few weeks ahead of the major textile fairs is ideal for introducing other new themes to suppliers. This is the event’s key asset. Currently, we are seeking lovely, washed linen fabrics for our 2020 pre-spring collection,” said Guido Ostländer, Head of Design Menswear at Cinque.

Multifaceted fabrics

Grainy textures and natural irregularities are being talked up in many quarters for Summer 2020 – translated as linen and linen blends or wool admixtures. Alongside this, sporty themes with nylons, cotton coatings and laminates for outerwear together with workwear inspirations are also becoming a promising topic. Classic checks and stripes take on a new twist thanks to new colours combinations or in a mix and match with prints.

The colour scheme contrasts with those now tried and trusted summer darks in radiant, optimistic base tones with many fresh greens, yellows and an array of apricot through to red tones. There is lots of movement in menswear.

“Many customers are very consciously seeking non-flats. So things can now also become higher contrast in menswear and for summer thanks to textures and three-dimensionalities,” commented Nicola Aldo Küpfer from Niggeler und Küpfer. This means menswear fabrics are suitably multifaceted: alongside a new take on stripes, jacquards and sporty checks, striking geometrics can be found here through to micro patterns with a feminine slant.

Breaking traditional patterns

The general idea is to create a line-up for an up-and-coming consumer base that breaks with traditional patterns in an entirely unbiased and “uncategorised” way, one that prefers an age and gender-neutral clothing style and, at the same time, seeks answers to the pressing issues of our time in the handling of resources. This was also the topic in intense conversations at the fringes of the trade fair as well as over lunch or in the evening when colleagues wound down from their day at the fair at View X-Mas Moods.

In this context it becomes clear that the topic of sustainability is meeting ever greater acceptance, as confirmed by manufacturers Tejidos Royo or C.Pauli. Even the sometimes 100% higher prices are accepted by ever more end consumers – which in turn impacts the buyers of fabric collections. At the same time, there is an increasing expectation that sustainability will no longer be restricted to the product itself. Instead, the entire manufacturing process is moving into focus.

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