Loving the styles this chilly spring in the shopping areas of Milan. This jacket by MaxMara was a really striking piece.

This dress also showed some nice sensitivity to textile pattern design.

The MaxMara line is probably the best known label owned by the Italian Maramotti family based in Reggio Emilia, a city that gave birth to one of the most progressive childhood education methods.

Yesterday, I was an unwitting victim of advertising this new path to the fountain of youth. I was standing in line at a drug store, and as I am want to do, I picked up a magazine to take home with me. The cover said “Our biggest before and after makeover section ever!” I’m a sucker for those before and afters, I have to tell you, but my version is seeing someone get out of their highschool haircut and finally learn how to put on that eye shadow. I was not ready for the magazine I bought.

It’s called New Beauty, and it is 100% (200ish pages!) about getting doctors to suck your face in, suck your fat out, cut it, tuck it, lift it, pad it, whatever it takes to look good. Rather than feeling motivated and inspired to follow these “simple guidelines” to retaining my youth, I felt totally depressed.

I felt a little better after I ate a fudgsickle though.

Wandering this show requires comfy shoes or else wheels. So you must weave your way between booths, skateboards, and people bounding on the latest springy leg contraptions.

As a member of IDEAS, a design/trends collective subsidized by ISPO itself, we set up some simple displays, sell our color cards and let people rifle through our portfolios.

Though the more eager ones among us try to sell from their “book,” I prefer to wander the show during the day searching for new material and get insights to new trends in fabrications and design. Then at night, hang out with the IDEAS gang to discuss what we’re doing/thinking, and what we’ve seen from our various viewpoints. This can happen all over Munich, but tends to conclude at the famous Shiller (Boxing) Bar started by Andrea Lanweider and Hans Fretz.

I was folded into IDEAS by Nadine Cino who was recruiting more American designers at the lackluster Super Show to join a group of exceptionally talented designers from all over Europe, Japan, and even Iceland. Part of the benefits of being a member was to exhibit at ISPO and get involved in color trends with a diverse set of perspectives. The application process was pretty serious but the more I knew about the group the more eager I was to join this network and they welcomed me quite warmly.

In the early days we had color meetings during the ISPO show. My first meeting included the visionary Vittorio Giomo who successfully predicted the dominant trend of charcoal greys in apparel (years ago) by refocusing on the naked human body – and then building a pallet that complemented this perspective. It was an eye-opener to take a philosophical approach to color like this but I loved the process and could certainly appreciate the results. Each season has a group of IDEAS members selling their insight on coming trends. Unfortunately these trend meetings are done in between ISPO’s now, and I cannot swing the extra trip.

Eventually IDEAS helped inform us for the concept for Designbox. Like most associations of creative people, IDEAS has a “dynamic uncertainty” that plagues the group on who we are or what we will become next. For me I see that these times are usually accompanied by a drop in new applicants.

But when a new member shows up, the older ones have to help explain what the group is and the positive aspects of different members they might otherwise criticize. In the end it’s the new energy of a fresh member who makes a group gel. If in Africa, “it takes a village to raise a child,” I believe that in creative networks “it takes a newcomer to build the village.”