Anonymous: live and let live

Our 2022/2023 Trends Book covers 50 pages and five trends, exploring the overarching preoccupations within the worlds of design and culture. This is a time characterised by introspection and intentional dreaming, examining what we want to take with us into the future to enrich our relationships with each other and with our planet.  

Today we enter the world of Anonymous, a trend that centres on reconnecting with each other, the world around us, and ourselves.

A more conscious way to relate to one another

As the virtual and the real lines begin to blur, Anonymous revolves around finding a way to see each other as humans.

The Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped our relationships unprecedentedly, pushing us into closer relationships with some people and keeping us further apart from others. Life in lockdown has dictated constant, even confined, contact with our families and partners, but social distancing measures have detached us from our friends and broader communities.

"I've seen people begin to re-establish lost connections, not only with other people but also with themselves." - Sharmeen Shroff, a clinical psychologist based in Hong Kong, via BBC Future.

Many families and couples have found themselves navigating new ways of communicating, new opportunities for vulnerability, and even new meanings for the term 'privacy' and searching for ways to set healthy boundaries.

A more conscious way to relate to our planet

As Anonymous pushes us to reconnect with what we find truly important in our lives and relationships, at FibreGuard, we're doing the same thing with our product ranges.

We believe in crafting decorative fabrics that are made to last, coming from a green-conscious standpoint where we take our environmental impact to heart. Read about our more natural approach.

Anonymous isn't just about our awakening to our interpersonal relationships: it's also about seeing our link to the natural world around us. This theme encourages us all to see the living creatures of the world as they are: tied up together, along with us humans, in an intricate web of balanced ecosystems.

We see this in the publication of books such as Richard Powers' The Overstory or in the extraordinary success of videos such as Keeping A Grocery Store Lobster As A Pet, which has totted up to over 14 million views on YouTube in three months and has spawned follow-up videos.

Enveloping materials

In culture and design, this theme is characterised by soft colours and nature-based materials. We see it in gender-neutral silhouettes achieved with enveloping materials and rounded shapes.

The colour palette of Anonymous

Colour impacts us all, and often we take it for granted. It can play an important role in nonverbal communication, conjuring up certain moods and even influencing people's decisions.

In a study by Satyendra Singh called Impact of Colour on Marketing, researchers found that up to 90% of snap judgments made on products can be based on colour alone.

Our FibreGuard design team knows instinctively that colour has an immediate influence on space, whether we are even conscious of it or not.

They've identified key colours for Anonymous as being burnt rusts fading through a calming coral out into blush pinks. These warm, grounded hues encourage us to embrace our vulnerability, bringing feelings of comfort and peace to the foreground.

Trend watching at Bru Textiles

Our in-house team of designers, artists and product developers conducted this analysis across various fields from product design, fashion, interior décor, architecture, art, and visual culture. They draw on their own unique experiences and perspectives, cultural shifts and nuances, and world events. 

The Bru Textiles Trends Team is diverse, composed of trendwatchers from various backgrounds, countries, and skillsets.

Our product development department is the core of this project, with training and passion for fashion, interior design, art, architecture, and visual culture. We have different points of view and education, but we all want the same thing: to celebrate and learn from all forms of creativity for our collective vision on the art of living.

We are as inspired by the collective wisdom of our shared experiences as we are by the trends we see around us.