Is your body in jail, or are those stripes just happy to see you?
That joke may not have drawn many laughs, but this summer’s trends are certain to evoke smiles from consumers anticipating the season’s offering of short shorts, skirts and tight tanks.
As long sundresses and scoop-neck tanks flood sidewalks during local summer festivals and city celebrations, trendy prints are easier to find. One print in particular that fashionistas love to love during high temperatures is stripes.
Vertical, horizontal and diagonal stripes and even pinstripes are offered year-round in pretty much any garment you can imagine. But summer brings about the hot hues mixed with cool and neutral undertones that consumers wear to the movies, water parks and snowball stands.
What’s even more interesting is the popular horizontal zigzag stripe inspired by the Chevron logo, which has inspired many manufacturers who designed garments inspired by the logo, dubbing them “Chevron stripes.”
These Chevron stripes, in addition to a patchwork of lines juxtaposed in different colors, widths and directions, make up some of the most recent releases of this classic fashion trend. Items exhibiting such traits are the Alexander McQueen patchwork green stripe sweater, the Junya Wantanabe Comme des Garcons Man denim patchwork button through shirt or the very affordable Splendid Patchwork Stripe Slub Sweater sold on REVOLVEclothing.com. The site features loads of cute block-section stripes, beach stripes, maritime stripes and circus dyed sections to suit the bohemian fairy look.
Even feather-dyed detailing is popular on this trendy website, providing the most convenient separate maxi skirt, dresses and tanks for reasonable prices.
Another dye-based design regaining popularity is tie-dye, in all of its crafty ’70s glory. This dye phenomenon has resurfaced as folk- and craft-inspired items come into focus for the vintage lover with modern flare.
While tie-dye fashions appear at first to be retrograde, technology advances the reinvention of every resurfacing market product. This season, tie-dye has been designed to simulate floral patterns, and some styles are offered in fabulously intricate tie-dye-ombre styles, such as the very cute beaded tie-dye Mickey Mouse tank top on Polyvore.com.
More specifically, an excellently executed example of this trend can be seen in designs from Joel Janse Van Vuuren shown in his runway collection at South Africa Fashion Week the first week of April.
Africa is just one continent currently inspiring some of the more indigenous prints offered by brands and manufacturers looking to cash in on the indie-print trend. Many geometric and earthy styles are seen in maxi dresses, tights, tanks, shorts and even denim, as demonstrated by those offered by Raven Denim and plenty crafty-but-sexy-looking hot pant shorts found on shopplanetblue.com.
This season’s hottest trends help to pull off those scorching looks that are sure to inspire heated summer flings, road trip adventures and countless duck-lipped pictures on Instagram with friends influenced by the hot colorways that make these outings hot.
While select colors may sway a lot of fashionable purchases, jumbling them all together for rainbow looks proves to be one of the most prevalent trends thus far.
One hot cocktail dress is the rainbow-colored Zena dress from the Nasty Gal website, which offers so many hippie-chic styles for the young, beautiful and free.
The rainbow colorway is a rather classic trend that makes special appearances in collections across the globe every year, never compromising the value of its integration but also never saturating the market. Even classic polka-dotted styles can be fun and flirtier when using a rainbow color palette in the product’s design.
With all the colors in play for summer, orange you glad this trend summary gave you the scoop?
Al Burks is a 25-year-old apparel design senior from New Orleans, LA.
 
 
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Contact Al Burks at [email protected]