Call for New “Textile Architectures” |

New York Fashion Week starts today with the first presentations, but on the Internet you can already read previews in which selected designers explain their influences for the next season. Inspirations come from the most disparate disciplines out there – from art to architecture, geography and literature – and they are usually accompanied by striking images, illustrations or sketches.

The most interesting – and most disappointing as well – thing about these previews is the fact that quite a few contemporary designers seem to focus on references that, with their bold graphic styles, immediately attract the readers' eyes without stimulating their minds.

The late Gianfranco Ferré was probably the last designer who compared the act of creating a new design to that of working on a sort of architectural project, studying and dissecting forms, sculpting the body, analysing its real needs and finding a material to create specific shapes, volumes, proportions and dimensions.

Ferré stated that his designs were described as "textile architectures", a definition he liked because he considered his garments as the result of a balanced combination of form and materials created with the body in mind, structures that became alive when they were put on the body.

These quick previews showing us where the inspirations for the new collections are coming from have replaced more serious concepts and fashion theories with numerous images of works of art, buildings or landscapes casually spotted on the Internet. There is a desperate need to build instead a new fashion glossary based not only on images, but on words and solid concepts to determine new structural solutions for innovative fashion creations.