The third annual Helsinki fashion week, held in July 2017, takes a trip back to the future. The theme draws on the ideas of past decades and thoughts about the future and showcases how they can be and are utilised today.
Fashion changes in cycles and once in a while old trends are reintroduced from a fresh perspective. At the moment fashion is especially influenced by the 80’s and 90’s. In these decades the development of technologies was exponential and its impacts for the coming decades could only be guessed. In the film Back to the Future II (1989), the protagonist takes a journey through time to the year 2015.
The film displays future as a time when there are flying cars and smart clothing. Some of the inventions seen in the film have actually materialised, but in reality, the future is always slightly different than expected.
HFW 2017 continues the theme of the movie, but explores further how things have actually panned out, how technologies have been used and what has been achieved with these technologies. Importantly, HFW 2017 will create its own vision and forecasts about the future. Technologies are increasingly used in industry, and the fashion industry is no exception already using things like 3D printers and e-textiles, for example. Simultaneously, as technologies advance, a counter trend focusing on the importance and appreciation of handicraft is growing.
HFW 2017 tells a story, from the designers’ point of view, about how technologies can be used in the fashion industry in creating something that wasn’t even imaginable in the past. Internationally, the theme is current. The Met Gala 2016 displayed how fashion designers combined handmade and machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde pieces.
Since the first Helsinki fashion week in 2015, HFW has believed in the sustainable way of carrying out the vision and creating new channels for consumers to get to know about international and domestic fashion. The theme of HFW 2017 is intertwined with sustainability, since the exploitation of new technologies and methods also promotes sustainable development. Raw materials are used more effectively, which result in making the production more profitable. Technological development reduces the load on workers and creates new
tasks and new jobs. With the theme Back to the Future, Helsinki Fashion Week 2017 confidently leads the Finnish fashion industry into a bright new direction.
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