Bare Fashion – defining trends in lingerie

jovoto is hosting a Contest for Triumph – a legendary iconic and internationally known brand in women’s underwear.

There are still two weeks to submit ideas, so listen up and get ready to think about fashion – bare fashion!

This is the background: Each year since 2008, Triumph has held an international design competition called the Triumph Inspiration Awards (TIA). They ask fashion youngsters to work on one lingerie showpiece under a specific theme. (This year it’s “Shape Sensation”) A Jury selects finalists, there’s an award show and the showpieces get presented etc.

Now, on jovoto, we’re not looking for underwear designs – what we want from you are cool ideas how to revolutionize and freshen up the concept of the TIA itself.

A whole new program and procedure. More public involvement and press. Of course, also a new theme. The Triumph Inspiration Award Show needs to rock and it needs to make every fashionista’s heart jump with excitement! A great task, right?

Fashion turned upside down and inside out

Just think – how fashion manages to turn heads, define trends, create this aura of infinite glamor and cool. How Paris and New York and Berlin go crazy during the respective city’s Fashion Weeks, which is mostly a huge show-off for all those well known brands most of will never be able to afford.

On the other hand, with new technologies, through ubiquitous networking opportunities on blogs, specialized communities, and existing social networks, fashion is being changed from bottom up inside out. In no other industry are there so many stunning young, independent designers getting their own work and opinions out and defining the trends all the big players are watching for. Just to name the Wunderkind Tavi Gevinson, a teenage blogger who has a couple of million readers on her blog, stylerookie and is clearly mesmerizing the world of high fashion and high culture. (For example, she was voted into the Top 100 most creative people by the fastcompany)

One of Tavi's many styles, borrowed from her blog thestylerookie.com

The handicraft renaissance of a couple of years ago has led to a thriving DIY-Community that likes to share sewing patterns, up-cycle vintage clothes, use old-time techniques to create unique pieces. Stores like Etsy show how professional and effective even ‘hobby’ designers can be these days.

Handmade Patchwork Hippy Boheme California Girl Skirt borrowed from urbanprairiegilr on etsy.com

There are even communities dedicated to social production in fashion – people rate design and the favorites get produced. Brilliant!

At the same time, the past years have also seen an increasing awareness of the fashion-consuming people about their moral responsibilities when buying clothing – often still produced very cheaply and under horrible work circumstances. Brands such as American Apparel have shown even big players can be successful with a more sustainable strategy. And luckily, there are now more ways for consumers to pressure producers into providing better and more sustainable products. (But we need to be on the lookout and use these tools!)

Another important fashion trend has been the experimenting with wearable technology, inserting smart chips which monitor your movements, exploring options to integrate speakers, headsets and other useful gadgets into your daily outfit.

V2 Test_Lab: Intimate Interfaces. Intelligent foil that changes transparency. Published by centralasian on flickr.com under the CC/Attribution license

The overall message is: consumers to not want to buy off-the-rack, ready made fashion only. They want to remix and share, customize and influence the production of “their” clothing. And this trend is huge and already very much mainstream, as the successful Nike ID mass-customization project proves.

Back to the Triumph Ispiration Award

I digress – what has all this got to do with underwear and the TIA? Nothing, really, but it shows you the scope of what has been recently happening in the world of fashion visible to the outside – and I’m sure this counts also for the fashion you wear closest to your skin!

The TIA needs more attention and relevance, and to achieve that it needs to understand the current trends an translate them into an even more inspiring Award program. Got any ideas on how to achieve that?

To participate, sign up on jovoto and apply to the contest with a portfolio. Mention Triumph in your application and we’ll review it fast.