Top 5 fabric trends // winter 16/17 // watch out for these cool themes and styles this winter

Every season we reveal our best selling designs and make a fun top 5 of current trends. In this part of the world we are preparing for the colder season and all winter themes are picked up. But down under things are getting warmer, so we always have to contrasting geographical areas fighting for the hot sellers title. So much fun to see those two world join in our shop sales. Here is our Top 5 in fabric trends for this year’s winter season. All fabrics are listed below.

Monochromes & Textures
More and more people begin to realize we need a serene and peaceful place to call home after being overly exposed to so many things each and every day this seems to be a ultimate lifestyle change all around the world. As a designer the prints I love most are the basic, plain, pure shapes. We have been making fabric and print designs for over 8 years now and we have seen the shift from crazy colorful-all-colors-of-the-rainbow-in-one to the pure Scandinavian inspired texture like designs. And we love it. In this time and age our fabric buyers are more conscious and fabric should fit into a multi purpose: gender neutral, age neutral, cross seasonal etc. We love this strong trend since we love working with a clean simple shape and turn it into a strong repeat for fashion and home decoration. Especially the monochromes have been very popular this season. In strong black and white, less saturated natural colors and soft pastels.

Kawaii faces
When we visit japan almost two years ago we were inspired to make a new series of Kawaii style designs. We all know Hello Kitty right? Kawaii means something adorable or cute in Japanese and while I was traveling through this amazing one-of-a-kind quirky country I notice nearly everything ‘graphic design’ related, business logo’s, packaging, public adds, infographics: everything was Kawaii. Cute tiny eyes and a smiley face. So we are so happy to see these eyelashes, tiny faces and smiles pop up in home decoration in this part of the world. Our most popular Kawaii inspired print must be our popsicles and ice-cream design. But we also created some winter themes for this colder season. We mixed it up with a little Scandinavian: less colors. Hopefully we can enjoy those smiley faces for another few years.



Bears & Sloths
We looooove all the typical fall and winter animals. Animals will always be one of the most hot-selling themes and every year there is another animal standing out and trending like no other. This winter it has been the grizzly & polar bear. Bears are popping up everywhere and unfortunately a lot of copies are also going around also. But we have a cool, very unique selection in our shop. When we are preparing for snow, down under they are sewing their new summer pieces. This summer we saw our Sloths picked up all around the world. Now 8 months after releasing the Pura Vida series in our exclusive design presentation every single print artist has their own sloth available. So the sloths probably won’t be here next year but we wanted to celebrate them a little anyway. Next to elephants my personal fav-of-all-time animal. How can you NOT love those quirky creatures?



Gender Neutral Kids Themes
The past few years there has been a worldwide discussion about gender. This topic made it a little difficult to sell my pink designs as ‘girls print’ and blue designs as ‘boy print. Sometimes we get the most nasty comments on designs in blue or pink. The thing is: if someone is looking for ‘baby boy fabric’ you kinda need to tag designs in a way everyone can find what they need. It does not mean we think blue should only fit boys. As a Dutch designer I can tell you I am quite happy about the gender discussion and when people get better informed they also make better choices so that is why we see an increase in sales in kids designs that are gender neutral. It is getting more and more important to NOT label and we are so happy to see how strongly this effects our sales. That is why we wanted to add it to our top 5 trends this winter. Buying gender neutral is not only a gender conscious decision, it also reduces the footprint for our kids fashion industry and home decoration companies. Why release two lines when you can cover all at once? I love it! We plan on making more and more neutral prints ourselves but keep adding a boy and girl tag every now and then.

Dreams
All night and sky related designs are crazy popular this year. It is so funny to see how all dream themes and sky related prints are trending. Our hot air balloon designs were all sold with an exclusive license this year, we did not manage to add new designs to our fabric shop but our oldies, clouds, moon & stars, they are all picked up and are popping up in small boutiques all around the world. So funny how quick a trend can set! We thought this dream topic was a good one to end this post with. If you are looking for some fresh themes go visit our Spoonflower shop and show us what you make!

Black and white and soft pale // Hot Selling fabric 2015

Little Smilemakers designs usually are colorful prints on a white surface. The past few weeks we have been redecorating the Little Smilemakers Studio office and put up some pale nude powder tone prints. Whites make colors pop and there is no other color that creates a more peaceful environment to work in. I was inspired by numerous visits to art galleries and museums that always present art on clean fresh white walls. But the winter also brings a clean crisp vibe into the office. The powder white snow, the softened sounds absorbed by the thick layer of snow. During the winter I always feel the need to make my surroundings more calm.

After redecoration the studio I felt like holding on to the new calm color scheme of the work place. I decided to make an entire series of designs that would be gender neutral. The prints and patterns that are being sold as gender neutrals are usually based on soft pastel tones of green and yellow. Since I am not a big fan of both colors I decided to make an entire series of with fresh whites contrasting blacks and shades of gray and beige. Little Smilemakers designs usually contain numerous bright colors. It has been a challenge but also very mindful to work with only white, black and shades of earthy tones. Imagine the number of colors that usually are used in the prints. I did not have to worry about a color scheme for a change. It was all reduced to the basics and focus was on the composition and detailing more that on working with a certain color scheme. A relief!

This month I was also arranging a baby shower for one of my best friends and it strikes me that gender neutral prints, wallpapers, home decor items and fabrics are so hard to find since there are enough creative artists working on the theme. I hope with this series of designs there is enough to choose from for decoration your soft neutral nursery.



Reducing colors might be useful in the gender neutral theme but I still love to work with bright strong colors. But if you are looking for more beige and gray tones, we have an entire collection ready to be produced on fabrics. Geometric abstracts, woodland animals, Indian summer themes and many more. So check out the shop. All designs will be added to our collection first week of March so stay tuned!