The domain of retro in iSaloni 2013.

Funiculí by Marset

It’s because we do not like the present and the future frightens us?. This might be the cause.

The quickness with which the design industry adapts to changing times makes it an indicator of what happens in society, especially in Europe. In recent years, consumer goods sectors such as fashion, footwear or habitat, dictate a retro feel, with «vintage» as a trend and rage.

Both designers in fashion, as the industrial designers that now colonize new habitats alternative in neighborhoods in London, New York and Barcelona ​​have taken this trend, similar in culture and its manifestations such as film, art, music or literature.

This look back today has an economic cause. In times of crisis and uncertainty, the industry plays it safe, and safe is to minimize risk, or go to what has worked before, and many brands have sought this balance between tradition and innovation.

In this line of risk minimization many brands have entered this year in different planes. Just had to go through certain stands and meet construction scaffolding, metallic woven with plastic ribbons or silk-screened walls stands.
When in Milan, the Italian companies have marked both imbalance between investment and innovation of products and materials, and decoration of exhibition spaces?. We were accustomed to magic and the new trends!

RO chair by Jaime Hayón

Another factor that may have caused this retro look between our industry can be fatigue of the new aesthetic which leads on the one hand a certain obsession with the past, seen in many brands, and in the other hand this approach as an insurance fact as a value for the prestigious brands, that had experienced many years working as a creators of trend and now repeated vanguard elements, ie ancient design with an actual look. Example the new RO chair by Jaime Hayón for Fritz Hansen. Were the Danish firm looking for one reprocessed EGG?

In this latest edition of the Milan fair re-topicality has been the keynote of the Salone.