Thirty-two presentations over three days can warp your mind, but "warp" is a pretty hot word in design circles.
Not as hot as "goddess", though, according to Li Edelkoort, who spoke this week to an assemblage of the design faithful at Lisof School of Design, a few days ahead of her Cape Town talk, which is an annual part of Design Indaba's 32 presentations. Edelkoort is known around the world to have a handle on the main thrust of design and where it's going in the future.
The design soothsayer is one of the world's most acclaimed trend forecasters. She makes a fortune predicting the future of form, colour and material for industries as varied as fashion, food, architecture, automotive, interiors and cosmetics.
Mushrooms and androgyny were going to be big in the future of design, she informed us in past presentations. As were agelessness and transgression. Children would be sages and the aged would be childlike. Donkey brown had a moment a few years ago and lichen was nature's inspiration for a season or two.
This year's talk, entitled "Goddesses Are Emerging Female Archetypes in Fashion", included the key words "emancipation", "empowerment", "nourishing", "earthy" and "diplomatic" - with not a #MeToo in sight.
To many in design circles Edelkoort is herself a god(dess), and yet it doesn't seem a huge stretch of the imagination for anyone - bar those examining lichen under actual rocks - to have predicted this trend themselves, what with the shifting tides of humanity and the growing waves of anti-patriarchal sentiment.Goddesses are, according to Edelkoort, "at the root of the emerging female fashion archetype for the industry with individuals determining their own goddess based on individual tastes".
This prediction allows her to cover all the bases: Mother Earth is nourishing; Athena is intellectual and strong; Bastet is catlike and sexy; Hestia is domesticated and romantic; Persephone is eternally young, fresh and delicate; Artemis is a hunter; Adoma is confident - and African in origin; Oshun is South American; Saraswati is Indian; Nike is active and the Old Goddess is, well, old ... and so on.So how does this translate into fashion? Basically, choose a goddess and wear anything you like, as long as you lose the heels - they're out. Flats are grounding, and we all know how much people in the fashion world need a bit of that. Oh, and draping, folding and loose cuts are in.
Edelkort expects normcore and streetwear basics to dissolve. That shift calls for "designers, not influencers," she said. The underlying message: free your form from the restrictive expectations of patriarchy ... and for goodness sake, if you want to feel like a goddess, wear a sack...