We are one week of the grand opening of M°BA 13, the world’s only fashion biennale in the city of Arnhem in the Netherlands.  One hour from Amsterdam, one hour from Dusseldorf, four hours from Paris or London. One year ago I was asked by the board to be the main curator of this Biennale and I have accepted!  The tension is building and the stress has taken temporary residence in our bodies. To see not only one mega exhibit but also nine other super shows come to life is an exhilarating experience.  The theme of the whole six weeks is Fetichism in Fashion and this direction has given us an important possibility to explore new ways of telling stories and new ways of curating young and experimental fashion work.

Picked up on the net and with often small pictures we have ammassed a magical collection of more than 150 clothes that are groundbreaking. When I saw the first room realised with a group of spiritual clothes I was awstruck and dumpfounded. Goosebumps would run all over my body (even my legs strangely enough) and tears came to my eyes. These clothes are all animistic creations, garments with a soul and a spirit that seem to dialogue with you. Covered with hoods, veils and tiara’s the circle of silent silhouettes was of an extreme power, akin to an Arte Povera installation. I will tell you more about the exhibitions every day.

On saturday,  I woke up in Berlin to visit a beautiful country mansion where the very succesful online store Zalando was hosting a beautiful group of seductive bloggers from all over Europe. Very beautiful environment, very beautiful people. I had the chance to interact with all these headstrung independant nomads on a very intimate morning where I lectured about how to detect trends, what are the trends of the future and of course about my current mantra Fetishism.

Since I wrote a book about the subject I have become somewhat of a specialist. And was happy to share my ideas of the fetishism in the future. We then speeded back to the airport to go to Holland as soon as, to work on texts and exhibitions and this blog.

In the plane I became VERY excited about the article Flatland in TIME magazine written by Lev Grosman. It argues that soon the major players on internet are going to radicaly change the icons we use which are all skeuomorphs = representations of an old function that doesn’t cover the new possibilities. The Apple graphic design will soon be in the hands of the former director of hardware design. He aims at radically changing the way we see tools in a more abstract and truly FLAT manner. No longer pretending to be 3-dimensional like the trashcan.

In my thesis for the book POP-UP GENERATION, about the fact that young designers live in a world between the two dimensions  my story ends with a prediction that by and large we might become flatter and flatter in our expressions. A nice conformation of the book that was published in december 2011. For more information about my books Fetishism in Fashion and The Pop-Up Generation please contact BIS publishers and FRAME publishers.

Lidewij Edelkoort