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Jean-Paul Gaultier Jean-Paul Gaultier is a French fashion designer born on April 24, 1952 in Arcueil, Val-de-Marne, France. At age 18, he joined the house of Pierre Cardin before moving on to Jacques Esterel and Patou. The debut of Gaultier’s own collection was in 1976, but he did not officially launch his own design house until 1982. His style is known to challenge standard views of fashion. He collaborated with Madonna in 1990 to create her infamous conical bras. In 2003, he became head designer at Hermes where he worked until 2011. Diet Coke appointed Gaultier as its new creative director in 2012.   Early Years The only child of a bookkeeper and a cashier, Jean Paul Gaultier developed a taste for fashion at a young age. He spent much of his childhood with his maternal grandmother, and found inspiration in her closet - her corsets in particular fascinated him. He even once made a bra for a stuffed bear - a childhood artifact that was featured later in an exhibition of his w...

The more I travel the more evident it becomes just how the trend and design gap between South Africa and the international markets are closing. Just a few years ago we were at least two years behind on the fashion front and up to five years behind on design, decor and furniture. There are a multitude of reasons for this sudden "catch up" with the biggest being the globalisation we are currently experiencing thanks to the boom in technology and social media. All of a sudden we know exactly what is happening globally as it unfolds and ultimately takes shape. This is more far reaching than just important news, with more and more consumers keeping abreast of international brands and trends. It is important to understand that markets are driven by consumers and even though we have world class designers and architects’, being up to date and forward thinking is not always accepted by clients and consumers. The majority of the famous international brands in decor, fabrics and f...

With technology moving at a rate of knots and the most exciting and innovative product developments coming from crowd-funding sites, the current model of retail product development needs to drastically change, and very quickly at that. Let's first take a quick step back and see what we have learnt from consumer attitudes and trends over the past few years, as we emerge from the financial meltdown and general economic crisis of the past seven years:     ·       Consumers no longer have brand loyalty. ·       Consumers want an "exciting and unique" retail experience. ·       Consumers' online habits are increasing online sales. ·       Consumers are buying into "crowd-funding" whereby they are guaranteed a unique product. ·       Consumers want unique and differentiated product There are many other current trends, yet these five continually ...

We have all noticed how shopping experiences change from season to season with a similarity across products, styles and colour happening at the same time across different platforms. These trends don't get decided by a panel of creatives sitting around a table, but are rather the result of a multitude of influences from economic, social, political and pop culture. In order to predict these trends everything is explored and investigated and certain patterns start to form, it's these similarities that will shape the trends for years to come. It is also very important to understand that South Africa is in many ways different to the rest of the world and therefore important to get a local perspective on these emerging trends instead of just taking influence from international inspiration.  Colours are one area that often varies drastically from our overseas counterparts, we have different light as well as landscape here in SA and we tend to relate better to more earthy colours...