Fabrics tell stories

Four months before the start of the Heimtextil trade fair, which will take place in Frankfurt from January 14 to 17, 2025, the organizers invited guests to a preview of the trends for the 25/26 season. “We have been presenting the trends at Heimtextil for over 33 years,” says Olaf Schmidt, Vice President Textiles & Textile Technologies. “We do more than just give simple product recommendations. We want to tell stories and translate them into specific interior design ideas.” For the next edition of the Heimtextil trends, Messe Frankfurt has brought new curators on board who have precisely this aspiration. ‘Textiles are also storytellers,’ says Valentina Ciuffi, co-founder of the Milan-based design platform Alcova, which will curate the trend exhibition. ”They are interwoven with our culture and present in our subconscious.” By this, the design expert means, for example, linguistic influences with metaphors such as “unfolding actions”, “spinning a story”, “weaving in a thought” or “losing the thread”. They also carry memories, reflect identities and document social changes. Schmidt agrees: “It's not just about aesthetics, but also about content that has its finger on the pulse of the times.”

The color palette of the Heimtextil trends 25/26 illustrates this very well: natural, unbleached tones meet dynamic, bright colors. They reflect the tension between tradition and innovation. This contrast is intended to represent an active equilibrium that is constantly evolving – characterized by renewal, growth and a forward-looking vision that goes beyond mere sustainability. This is also what led the experts at Alcova to the title of the upcoming issue, “Future Continuous”. It describes the continuity of trends that begin in the past and extend into the future.

In their analysis, the team first looked at what a trend actually is. The term comes from the Old English “trendern”, which means to turn or rotate. “Trends don't just suddenly appear and then disappear. They rotate cyclically and keep reappearing,” says Ciuffi. If you really want to understand a trend, you always have to look at the past.