The Avant Garde Aesthetic: Curves, Gloss, and Reimagined "Vintage" Fabrics

This year we're welcoming the return of a kind of 'Age of Aquarius' vibe that invites us to dream bigger. We're calling this offshoot Avant Garde, branching off from Age of Aquarius into its own little private lagoon.

Powder gloss, charming fabrics, fluid shapes; a sassy 1960s vibe: it can only be Avant Garde, a striking mid-2025 microtrend.

The timing couldn't be more perfect. As we navigate an increasingly digital world, there's a palpable hunger for designs that feel both futuristic and nostalgically grounding. Avant Garde emerges as the answer to this cultural moment, offering a sophisticated blend of mid-century optimism with contemporary innovation.

So, with Age of Aquarius we're seeing the 'dream bigger' feeling play out in materials and colourways. We're talking a dynamic flow of materials, colours and technologies: the mysterious grey colourways of deep water, misty glass, burnished silver and augmented realities.

Wavy lines and curved silhouettes are defining hallmarks of this trend, blurring the lines between 'real' and 'digital'. These organic forms speak to our collective desire to soften the harsh edges of modern life, creating spaces that feel more human-centred despite their technological sophistication.

Avant Garde: Age of Aquarius Evolved

Where Age of Aquarius celebrates the fluidity of water, Avant Garde takes that celebration on-land in a kind of warmed up minimalism. It never falls out of style, and this is the subtle glow up it's been waiting for.

So, what do we mean 'on-land'? We're leaving the hazy realm of sheers and layering behind, focusing more on finishes and specific fabric characteristics. This shift represents a move from the ethereal to the tactile, from the conceptual to the concrete. Where Age of Aquarius might have you floating in a dreamscape, Avant Garde grounds you in a space that's both visually stunning and physically comfortable.

We're talking about everything from furniture shapes to furnishing fabric choices:

• Curved Furniture Pieces: The New Geometry of Comfort

Curved sofas and seating areas are showing no sign of going away, and we love it! They really do feel like a bit of a ‘cocooned’ space, offering intense comfort in the middle of a busy day.

• New and Improved: Vintage Fabrics Reimagined

A modern re-thinking of 'nostalgic' furnishing fabrics like corduroy, except this time they're more durable and easier to clean than ever before. This represents perhaps the most exciting aspect of Avant Garde for us as a textiles company. It’s a marriage of beloved textures with cutting-edge performance technology.

This evolution speaks to a broader trend in consumer expectations. We want the emotional connection that comes with familiar textures, but we also demand the practical benefits that modern life requires. Avant Garde delivers both.

• Finishings and Effects: Light as Material

A bubble-like sheen on glass and lighting designs, stretching out to include transparent room dividers and partitioning. This aspect of Avant Garde treats light itself as a design material, creating effects that seem to capture and hold illumination in unexpected ways.

• Powdery Gloss Tones: The New, Quiet Luxury

High-impact glossy finishes on occasional tables and decorative accessories represent a departure from the matte finishes that have dominated recent years. But this isn't the high-shine chrome of the 2000s; it's a more nuanced gloss that seems to glow.

• Web content and social media themes:

Our Midjourney artists are reflecting this theme back, with our own designs and collections in mind. They’re working to create social media content that captures the essence of Avant Garde, taking imagination out of the box and into the playground.

Upholstery fabric colourways

The colourways that of Avant Garde follow on from the mysterious, sea-depth colourways of Age of Aquarius:

• Grey: dove grey, Payne's Grey, pewter, charcoal grey/black
• Green: pistachio, sage, Chinois Green, sea-glass
• Blue: French navy, lapis lazuli, midnight blue, indigo
• Black: Smoky quartz, kohl, charcoal grey/black

Sustainability and the Future of Design

Avant Garde is about responsibility as well as aesthetic vibes. Every aspect of this trend has been developed with sustainability in mind, from the recycled content in our fabrics to the durability features that extend product lifecycles.

Consumers increasingly want pieces that will remain relevant and functional for years to come.

The trend also emphasises repairability and upgradability. Modular furniture systems allow pieces to evolve with changing needs. Fabric treatments are designed to refresh rather than replace, extending the life of beloved pieces.

How We Find Our Trend Themes

Our Trends team pulls influences and resources from a wide range of fields including fashion, architecture, visual culture, and product design. As always, our insights play out through our passion for fabrics and even in our own collections of stain resistant fabrics.

The process begins with monitoring everything from street style in Tokyo to architectural innovations in Scandinavia. We attend trade shows and follow emerging artists.

But data collection is only the beginning. The real work lies in synthesis; finding the common threads that connect seemingly disparate influences, identifying the underlying cultural currents that will drive consumer behaviour, and translating those insights into concrete design directions.

For Avant Garde, the synthesis process revealed a fascinating convergence: the nostalgia cycles that make mid-century design perpetually appealing, the technological capabilities that allow us to improve upon vintage aesthetics, and the cultural moment that demands both beauty and responsibility.

This is design that understands its cultural moment while building toward a more thoughtful future, and that's exactly what makes Avant Garde so compelling for mid-2025 and beyond.