Seasonal touches

TFL has released its new Colour Trend Catalogue for the autumn and winter 2019–20 season for the leather garment, footwear, accessories and upholstery industries.

Knowledge of the future colour preferences and trends in the market helps designers, manufacturers and tanners to stay one step ahead of the competition. In combination with the fashion colour trends, TFL provides information about the appropriate dyes and dye applications.

The detailed catalogue also highlights TFL’s SELLA colour range, which uses anionic powder dyes that have been specially selected for the drum dyeing of all article types. The product’s advantages include brilliant and intense shades, good general fastness properties and an excellent cost-to-performance ratio. In addition, TFL presents the RODA Lite 07 casein-free range of finely dispersed, anionic water-based pigments with overall good fastness properties and excellent covering power. RODA Lite 07 pigments can be used for shoe and leather goods, as well as upholstery and garment leathers.

Extravagance and luxury

The trends are divided into two categories: Wearing and Living. These detail the rationale and influences for each colour, and the moods and emotions they evoke. The Wearing category comprises inspirations and colour trends for garments, footwear and accessories, whereas the Living section features all of the colours that are set to decorate the season’s interior designs.

In the Wearing section, which is influenced by high-tech fabrics, clothing leathers are transformed into all-weather protection garments, and in footwear, suede leathers are printed with animal designs. Sunny yellow and various brown, orange and green tones are the main colours of the season.

TFL says that the ‘aesthetic language’ of fashion is highly eclectic, building on a theme of extravagance, and interpreting the contrasts between soft-patent finishes and brilliant suedes in footwear.

As glamorous as any red-carpet statement, suede leathers are printed with animal designs, such as African zebras, bison or gleaming Arabian horses. By applying the latest chemical advancements, one can enhance the final product. Waxes can transform lower-grade leathers into supplegrain articles, while oils impart a warm touch to natural vegetable-tanned kidskins and buffalo hides.

Yellow is a byword for lightness, artistry and a desire for fun. A sunshine yellow warms the finest full-grain leathers, such as New Zealand calf, Iberian lambskins and shrunken-grain deerskins. Leathers are also being developed into protection gear for motorcyclists, for example, and are influenced by high-tech fabrics and 3D technology.

Living big

For the Living category, TFL presented a technological mix of carbon fibres and tearresistant full-grain calfskins for seating. These are designed to guarantee comfort and extraordinary visual effects for working spaces, which need to be increasingly flexible and open to change. And thanks to newly developed systems, a multitude of brilliant, clean and vivid colours, such as yellow, red and pink, are entering into the living space.

Every six months, TFL unveils its new collections, offering unique chemical and technological solutions. No longer confined to the restrictive role of adding soft texture and comfort to furniture, leather has taken off towards new and unexplored heights. The possibilities are endless and for this season, the emphasis is on oversized seating in nubuck, embossed with damask and mélange wool designs. Bedheads are tufted with brilliant suede splits, such as exotic furs, and vegetable-tanned calfskin rugs are laser-etched to recreate vintage designs of crocodile and elephant grain.

Bamboo and stonewashed leather should always be used together to conjure the idea of what TFL calls a ‘poetic island’, where one can rediscover handcrafted Japanese culture in accessories positioned around every room.

The must-have in the home of any millennial is the green living module, a hybrid space in which one can live and work in a flexible way. The use of ecofriendly materials is a matter of course; for example, leather is combined with natural fabrics or upcycled materials for multicoloured wall hangings or pareo covers for the best way to relax.