Texworld’s New Fashion Trend Book Reimagines the Future Through a Reinvented Past
At a time when fashion is navigating geopolitical instability, digital acceleration, and growing social pressure, Texworld Apparel Sourcing Paris proposes an unexpected compass for the future. Very Middle Ages, the new trend book unveiled for Spring–Summer 2027, does not retreat into nostalgia. Instead, it looks backwards to think forwards, using a reimagined “Middle Ages” as a conceptual mirror of our present anxieties and desires.
The trend book will be officially presented from 2 to 4 February 2026 at the Paris-Le Bourget Exhibition Center, during Texworld Apparel Sourcing Paris. Conceived under pressure, this edition reads the turbulence of our era not as a creative blockage but as fertile ground for radical imagination.
Rather than dictating trends, Texworld’s approach remains sensitive and instinctive. Very Middle Ages does not promise comfort. It invites reflection. Clothing emerges as protection, resistance, affirmation, or transformation – a response to a world where the boundaries between real and virtual, natural and artificial, past and future have dissolved.
For designers sourcing responsibly and thinking long-term, this trend book is less about medieval aesthetics and more about strategic imagination under pressure.
To place this edition in context, explore our previous coverage of Texworld, including our analysis of innovations shaping responsible sourcing at Texworld Paris and our deep dive into past Texworld trend forums and material futures, both available on Luxiders Online.
“WE, as a society, as a community, as a species: are we really better than yesterday?”
A Middle Ages Without Nostalgia
In Very Middle Ages, the past is neither romantic nor decorative. It is symbolic. Protection, conflict, magic, and identity are revisited through a contemporary lens shaped by surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence, and fragmented realities. The Middle Ages become a metaphor – a time of fortified bodies, blurred belief systems, and shifting powers – strikingly resonant with today’s world.
Artistic directors Louis Gérin and Grégory Lamaud anchor the trend book in a fundamental question: how do you create when the world doubts its own capacity to imagine? Their answer unfolds through four creative universes, each acting as a narrative friction point between reality and expectation.
How do you create when the world doubts its own capacity to imagine?
Four Creative Universes to Rearm Imagination
Each universe is developed through detailed moodboards and colour systems built around three star colours supported by six complementary shades. During the fair, these narratives will come to life in the Trend Forum in Hall 2, where visitors can explore curated looks created from selected fabrics and finished products. The scenography is designed to be sensory and immersive, turning abstract concepts into tangible material stories.
Louis Gérin will further unpack the trend book during a dedicated conference, offering designers and brands concrete creative tools for developing Spring–Summer 2027 collections.
Digital Lordship
Power structures are rewritten through the prism of Big Tech. Silicon Valley becomes a feudal system, with individuals acting as voluntary vassals trading privacy for perceived safety. Fashion translates this tension into layered, protective silhouettes — heavy fabrics, ribbed knits, metal-coated finishes, and textile-like armour. The palette stays austere: steel grey, charcoal black, and silver holographic accents.
Nuclear Sorcery
Here, technology becomes illusion. AI offers comfort while quietly eroding critical thinking, creating a new form of digital obscurantism. The silhouettes deceive softly, built from iridescent organza, translucent fabrics, foamy knits, and second-skin jerseys. Colours glow unnaturally — spectral purples, carmine red, opaline whites, and radioactive greens — evoking a techno-magical aura.
Speculative Crusade
This universe confronts humanity’s endless hunger for domination. Martial and visceral, it draws from conflict and survival. Armoured silhouettes, combat-inspired constructions, and hybrid materials dominate, rendered in organic, warlike tones: dark reds, textured blacks, military khaki, burnt chrome, and deep browns.
Data Inquisition
Surveillance becomes doctrine. In this cold, algorithmic world, difference is suspect and individuality dissolves into collective data. Clothing evolves into an interface — modular, adjustable, and second-skin-like. Icy blues and digital neutrals reinforce an aesthetic shaped by control, transparency, and loss of intimacy.
Highlight Image:
© Pia Hinz
