Future Fabric Trends: Proposte Fair 2021
After two years of waiting, I was finally able to return (masked-up) to the famed Proposte Fair to sample textiles for my clients and scout leading-edge textile trends, before they hit the market.
Since 1993, Proposte Fair has been an indispensable trade show of textile mills and manufacturers for the high-end home furnishings textile industry. By now, I have lost count of how many times I have walked the halls of Proposte looking for the perfect textile for this collection or that project. I first visited early on in my career when I worked at Schumacher in the 1990s, and I’ve never stopped feeling like a kid in a candy store. Robyn Willson, managing editor of The Textile Eye, also attended. We are currently working on a Proposte Special Report, which will be available exclusively to paid subscribers.
One of my favorite parts about the show is the commute. A beautiful boat is sent each morning to the dock to pick up any visitors staying in Como and deposit us at a private pier just steps away from Villa Erba. Even in bad weather I love this ride!
This show is a must for the high-end market–featuring many of the world's top mills–with a focus on Italian and other European mills specializing in upholstery fabrics, draperies, and trimmings. Over the years, the show has expanded to include manufacturers from other parts of the world including Turkey, India, and the United States. The mills must entice buyers with original design and innovative product, and to do so employ scores of designers, purchase artwork from textile artists, and often subscribe to trend and color reports. Buyers for textile editors/jobbers, furniture manufacturers, wholesalers, converters and retailers from around the world attend, meeting with key suppliers on proprietary projects and also sourcing patterns and textures created my the mills.
The main show takes place in Villa Erba, a pleasant, light-filled exhibition hall on the banks of lake Como in the town of Cernobbio. In addition to the sanctioned Proposte mills that show inside, there are many mills that set up pop-ups in every available space, from the grandest of stand-alone, lake-view villas to tiny shopfronts and hotel conference rooms. These temporary showrooms can be found in Cernobbio and in the larger town of Como, across the lake. This situation is much like the relationship between Salone de Mobile (the trade show at the exhibition center in Rho) and Fuori Salone (the collection of galleries, showrooms and pop-ups in different areas of Milan), so I’ve started to use the term “Fuori Proposte” to describe the outside mills.
This September, Proposte was handling pent-up demand. The fair, which usually takes place in late April, had been canceled and rescheduled several times due to the pandemic. And though the number of mills that were showing was smaller than usual and the attendance not as robust as the last show, there was still a lot to see and do. A new section in the center of Villa Erba, called Proposte Forum, presented a selection of samples from every mill showing. This was a great overview and is something I hope will be continued! Another new offering from the organizers is a comprehensive list of exhibiting mills.
Proposte 2021 attracted 2700 customers; while the American turnout was tiny, there were visitors from across Europe and beyond eager to see new collections. About 65 mills showed inside Villa Erba and dozens more outside at Fuori Proposte. The feeling at the show was very upbeat. People were clearly thrilled to have the opportunity to touch fabrics, see each other's masked faces, and get back to business.
(A word on COVID procedures: the Italian digital “green pass” (proof of vaccination) is currently required at most indoor venues in Italy–including Villa Erba–and the American paper version is widely accepted. Indoor mask wearing is de rigueur, and the Proposte organizers allowed additional doorways to be used for entry and ventilation.)
Tendencies
Huge emphasis on wool as well as luxury animal fibers and undeyed fibers used as color components
Recycled fibers and environmental stories, with each mill presenting its own story and offering
Contract, performance and yacht fabrics, with a special emphasis on outdoor
Experimental and less-used fibers, including lots of hemp (hemp velvet was fresh), paper fibers and reclaimed fibers
Linens and hemps being used in outdoor textiles
Looks
Menswear looks including small geometrics stripes and herringbones
Nostalgic crochet looks are emerging
Dimension continues its importance, with quilting, matelassé, embossing and pleating all gaining strength.
Textured, pebbled, wrinkled, and hammered surfaces
Outdoor velvets & epinglés
Patchwork and crazy-quilt looks, including blanket stitch details, and stitched-look wovens
In sheers leno weave (known as giro Inglese in Italian) was in the spotlight—manufacturers have been updating their equipment to allow for weaving leno at wide widths
Conversational designs with strong stories being told
Complex large scale and multicolored geometrics with playful shapes
Cut fringes on the face (fil coupé)
Colors
Strong royal/Yves Kein blue
Raspberry and radicchio
Madder and darker oranges joining copper and terra cotta
Rainbow, gradient, and opalescent
Cocoa and golden brown
I was deeply grateful to be back in the presence of world class mills showing fantastic fabrics, and to be able to touch the goods, feel the drape, and hear all the technical details that make these items so special. There were many new and innovative things to see: mills have been creating and designing throughout the pandemic and many had two or more collections to present. So inspiring!
Luigi Verga, one of the “Fuori Proposte” mills, showed in a villa and adjoining courtyard
The goods shown at Proposte take months to years to come to market, meaning their influence on interior design trends begins in 2022, at the earliest. Trends from Proposte 2021 will be relevant for years to come, across categories of home furnishings and accessories and at different levels of the market. This post is only a small snapshot of important mills and trends for brands, buyers, and designers to take note of for product development and sourcing.