Autumn Trends in Abergavenny -

Time for an update on Abergavenny and how this small town in Monmouthshire is keeping up with the latest fashion trends.

Fortunately, in our modern culture, owls are not the symbol of doom that they were in the past and still are elsewhere. If they were, a shopping trip in Abergavenny would be very depressing indeed - owls seem to be taking up residence everywhere!

But the owls that are filling the shelves of our local stores and our window displays are decidedly friendly-looking, cute creatures - most of them not even looking particularly 'wise'!

And owls are also not the only woodland creatures to be popular this autumn - it wasn't always possible to photograph some of the lovely little animals - including squirrels and hedgehogs - that I spotted. But here are a few that were accessible to my camera -

My personal favourites are the Toadstools and I love them so much that I'm working on a new toadstool pattern when I get time.

I suppose it's a natural progression from the forests of the Northern climes to the unmistakable Scandinavian style of Christmas. 

And there's plenty of that in evidence in the Abergavenny shops, as well as the year-long trends, Black and White, Emerald Green and Chevrons, sometimes all three combined!

Strangely, though, I didn't notice these colours carried over to the High Street dress shops, though the styles were in evidence in Fair Isle jumpers, Chevron pattern knitteds and the ever-popular black and white. 

But the overriding colours are vibrant pinks and magentas continuing along the purple spectrum, right down to a really deep, dark aubergine:

This beautifully nostalgic lavender lace particularly caught my eye!

What will 2015 bring to tempt us to throw out the old and rush out to buy the new?

That remains to be seen. But this year's look at the way Abergavenny shopkeepers have responded to global fashion trends encourages me to believe that, small though the town may be, 'out in the sticks' doesn't mean we have to be 'out of fashion'!

Spring 2013 - What's Trending Where You Live?

One thing I learnt as a result of the Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course is to keep my eyes open and my camera at the ready, even when I go shopping!

I live in Abergavenny, a small market town in South-east Wales, not far from the border with England. Abergavenny is known for its 'Markets, Mountains and More . . .' and if I walk into town on a Wednesday morning, I hear the sounds of sheep and cattle from the livestock market on my way. And from the park I cross on my way to the shops, I can see Sugarloaf, Skirrid and the Blorenge, the three mountains surrounding the town.

Not exactly the kind of place you would expect to find high fashion in the shops. But in fact, Abergavenny has far more shops than you might expect in a town of fewer than 15,000 inhabitants. And there's a good variety, ranging from quite a classy little department store and independent boutiques to small branches of most of the national chains.

I've been too busy to venture outside of Abergavenny for a while so I don't know how its shops compare with other places, but my impression is that most of the shopkeepers have at least some awareness of what is currently trending.

So here are some Trend Boards I've made from photos I took in town this week and you can decide whether or not Abergavenny's style is up-to-the-minute or lagging sadly behind!

My first impression was that there was 'Nautical' or 'Coastal' everywhere. There is certainly a lot of denim, canvas shoes, boater shoes, more denim, blue and white, even more denim - and 'deckchair' and 'matelot' stripes. But I also found some butterflies - on mens' clothing, unfortunately too small to show up here.

There are also a lot of 'Conversational Prints', which anyone who read Part One of Repeating Patterns for Painters, will know are patterns with everyday objects as motifs. Today I saw sailing boats, bicycles and paper aeroplanes on men's clothing! And I was pleased to find mini-prints that could have been Laura Ashley's in the Sixties and Seventies.

There is almost as much 'Tribal' - mostly in black and white and again, lots of stripes.

These were the shop windows that initially caught my eye. Not all of the green is Pantone's Tender Shoots Green and I think the yellow may be more influenced by Wales' national symbol, the daffodil, than by Pantone's Lemon Zest. But it all looks lovely and spring-like. There are bright green trousers for men and even the charity shop's window sported various shades of green, teamed with check shirts.

I finally spotted some Tangerine Tango in Abergavenny - better late than never! It was almost always teamed  with bright pink, one of my own favourite colour combinations.

Reds ranged from Pantone's Poppy Red in the department store window, through rusts and Burgundy to Aubergine. And there are still plenty of large florals, polka dots and lace.

Turquoise abounds in Abergavenny, often in combination with pink and white - checks, polkas, florals, and some with a definitely 'oriental' feel about them! If the green and yellow feel springlike and the orange and pink combination reminds us of roasting high temperature, this turquoise, pink and blue palette is somewhere in between.

In fact, I've got my eye on that check shirt - it's just the sort of thing that I'd be likely to wear a lot when the weather gets warmer. But after last year's wash-out of a summer, I feel it would be tempting fate to buy something so summery while it's still snowing outside!

So what's your verdict?

Are Abergavenny shops keeping up-to-date?

And what's on offer where you shop?

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Just how Trendy do we need to be?

TRENDS was the ‘Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design’ topic last week and it’s continuing through the whole of this week too.

So if two weeks out of a fifteen week course are devoted to one topic, the chances are it’s pretty important.


But with the Mid-Century style and Animal Skin prints being the two trends I was already very much aware of, both of which I dislike, I wasn’t much looking forward to this part of the course.

One of the few Mid-Century Modern designs I actually like - but it's not my style!

Just as well then that, right at the beginning, we were sent forth with our cameras to take a closer look at the trends in our local shops.

Yes, I found plenty of the Fifties-type motifs but, much to my relief, it wasn’t too difficult to spot plenty of others as well!

By the time I had compiled these records of the different aspects of what I found, I had decided that there were several elements I could work with.

First, the currently popular motifs, for instance the painterly florals that I saw on both gift and fashion items as well as on homewares, are right up my street!

from Pip Studio

from joules.com

from joules.com

And the butterflies too, that seem to be everywhere once I started noticing . . .

. . . prompted me to attempt a Butterfly 'mini-print', though I'm still unclear as to how to get the butterflies really evenly distributed in a repeating pattern. (I'm very much hoping that's something I'll learn later on in the course!)

This week we were directed to an online Trend Report for the coming season and asked to identify key trends and palettes that we feel able to work with.

There seemed to be so many options that I wonder how they can possibly all succeed in being the 'style of the day'.

This one, using a single watercolour butterfly, worked a bit better!

As well as the outsized florals, checks and polka dots, even patchwork is forecast to play its part in 2013!

So – all is not lost! Even if I don't want to create Mid-Century Modern patterns, I can still design using the ‘trending’ colour palettes-

- and if I get bored with designing florals, polka dots, hearts and checks, it looks as if patchwork will probably still be around for a while to come!

Image from patternbank.com - Jasper Conran