Is it me or is it happening?

I see mustard everywhere; I eat mustard in all kind of recipes and believe it is the newest ingredient in food trends. Mustard will become a fashionable darling, to be used in salads, omelettes, sauces and even with fish and vegetables. Mustard gives a slightly acidic, sometimes bitter bite that is designed to enhance all the other fragrant elements in a dish. In tomato salads it somehow appeases the fruitiness, on eggs it seems to bring out the roundness, and on vegetables it accentuates the greenness in beans or broccoli. Mustard will become a much-discussed wonder ingredient able to intensify and transform. And mustard will come in many guises, from very rustic to whipped and smooth and in many colours from brown to yellow to green.

The colourcard of mustards will also influence fashions in the years to come. Starting with this coming autumn we will see these subdued and warm yellow tones come to life in knitwear and leathers, in blanket coats and day dresses; ideal as accessories, we will witness a growing array of mustards to embellish our silhouette as sensible wedges, high-reaching boots and stockings and socks, as well as scarves and mittens.

Mustard might become the new jam!

Lidewij Edelkoort

Dietlind Wolf's work is multiple: she is a propstylist, a photographer, an illustrator, a designer… exactly the kind of person we love at Trendtablet. We are happy to share with you one of her latest work on poppies with a personal and powerful expression of colour. We asked Dietlind to give us some keys to better understand her work and personality.

"For my final examination I spend a month in India, to write and recreate the story of madras checks. It was the first time in my life I lived "inside" the colours I knew only from colour pigments before. In the field of creating prêt-à-porter and Haute Couture textiles, I found the way to materialize colour into textile, to play with materials and to create new ones.

Those two experiences really shaped me.I then had years of experience in styling for food and still-life photos. Digital photography allows me to play with real materials: with flowers or with my porcelains. As a stylist, I build a bouquet and focus on it, and after, I "ruin" it, or in other words, I use my finger and my hand as brushes. I transform the still life into something more textile, always with a need of balance between form, colour and contrast. At the end, it touches me when everything play well together."

Adults miss toys … Fortunately there are many solutions to resolve that! We found out recently that some real "old classic" toys have now versions devoted solely for adults. Lego has developed several architectural kits like the impressive one for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

Dudebox, a new brand in UK, is part of the market of art collectibles.They have 52 partner/artists from around the world to create characters.For one of their products, the customer buys "blind boxes" and will discover later what he gets ... It's like Pokemon for adults and you go on purchasing to build your own collection! This is part of the weird and wonderful world of adult "art" toys.

Ingrid Hulskamp, recently graduated from Central saint Martins, has created a series of contemplative toys for adults. She says:"these objects remind us of the candid fun we had as a child, when we fully got caught up in the moment." She wanted those toys to catch our attention, to afford us a poetic moment with different sensory experiences: tactile, visual and sonorous. 

The ideas behind those signals, coming from major companies and from young talent,  are that tangible items are taking on a new allure in a very digitized world and that we, as adults, really want to have our own toys which are more than just fun and games.

Cécile Poignant

ingrid hulskamp

dudebox

lego

When Scholten & Bajings were approached to formulate a new vision of the Mini, they were given carte blanche. The Dutch design duo took the car apart to the very last detail and with their signature curiosity, asked elementary questions such as why is a wheel a wheel, why is the door as heavy as it is, and why does colour have to be solid? Why does a car still seem to be the same car after so many decades? Scholten & Baijings broke some rules and questioned them in order to innovate.

The vehicle’s wheels have been completely reinvented to become solid, made within one process using transparent synthetic matter and rubber – why had the tyre never been questioned so before?

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Over the past year—especially in the United States—much has been said about the pairing of fine wines with fast foods like hamburgers, pizzas, chicken wings, and more. While the blogosphere has been rampant with reports about which wine is best to pair with a Big Mac, one of the more serious reviews came from Joshua Wesson for Food & Wine.

This food trend forms part of a bigger picture where high and low are freely mixed in today’s world. Lidewij Edelkoort illustrated this idea many years ago, explaining that consumers would nonchalantly wear H&M with Hermès, fusing opposites into one, putting black caviar onto burratas or eating something naughty to compensate a healthy diet.

The embracing of mainstream fashion by high-end designers has been one testimony to this trend’s success. We have witnessed the gentrification of our cosmopolitan centres, the refinement of consumers’ wine palettes, the re-emergence of niche breweries, the explosion of cooking as a cultivated past-time and of course, the influence of organic and local produce on many aspects of lifestyle.

What’s most interesting is that fast food is now fighting back, with more sustainable farming and packaging, and an awareness that good ingredients are far less detrimental to our bodies than the commonly-used low-cost substitutes. This means that we will search for the best burger even if it means paying $50 (each city has their own), drive miles for the best fish tacos in town (Rockaway Taco, Brooklyn) and that a club sandwich can actually reach perfection at $40 (try the bar at Le Meurice in Paris). Lidewij is an avid hunter of fine clubs: she has awarded the Oberoi Hotel in Delhi as best in show and adores how South Africans have the unique ability to even introduce tandoori chicken into the mix! If only the sky were not the limit, and airlines could get it together to upgrade their cuisine on par with what is taking place on the ground…

Such is our obsession with fine mince burgers that they are now rarely served with distractions (tomato and salad are often being replaced by caramelised onion and relish). I myself have tried gorgeous burgers made from tuna, wagyu, ostrich, lamb and even whale, opting to pair them with a simple Coke with ice and lemon. Since the burger has now been elevated to sophisticated heights, I can concentrate on finding better potato wedges (Singita Sweni, Kruger National Park) or the perfect ice cubes (Café de Flore, Paris). Another quest begins…

Philip Fimmano

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Maestro of avant-garde fashion, Yohji Yamamoto remains one of the world's most influential and enigmatic designers and over the last forty years has made a vital contribution to fashion, challenging traditional norms of clothing with his style. A great exhibition to be seen in Israell at  Design Museum Holon.

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