Styles that were still fashionable yesterday are no longer “in” today and designers are already looking ahead to the future - things change fast in the world of fashion. Since tanners have to be up-to-date with the trends for the coming season in order to produce the type of leather that designers and others in the world of fashion wish to use for their creations.

In order to offer guidance for tanners in the “jungle of fashion trends”, the leather experts at LANXESS have produced their own special collection of leather samples that shows the trends for the fall/winter 2010/2011 season. LANXESS thus demonstrates its technological expertise in the field of fashionable leather.

The trend collection is created in Italy, one of the main centers of the fashion industry, where the company has a competence center, including a laboratory in the city of St. Croce. The samples show tanners what kind of appearance, surface touch and overall impression are going to be in fashion for leather in the future season. The trend book also includes recipes and practical processing suggestions so that tanneries are well prepared to reproduce the new trends, whether brush-off effect or glossy surface, nubuck or patent, imitation crocodile or abstract grain patterns.

The company’s leather experts have come up with three new trends for the fall/winter 2010/2011 collection:

• "Technological Inspiration": Fashion is inspired by the past but made with the technology of tomorrow. New developments and materials play an important role. Knowledge and ability give rise to revolutionary visions that shape tomorrow. The emphasis is on ecological articles. Here are light and dark blue in combination with white and gray shades.
  
• "Creative Emotion": Natural materials linked to dynamic ideas of the creator. Materials are soft with a cozy feel. Colors vary from bright violet to a warm red in combination with multiple earthy brown shades.
  
• "Elegant Passion": The frenetic rhythms of a new metropolitan elegance following the Haute Couture of the past. A style that captivates the senses – timeless. Nubuck and super-soft brush-off are materials of choice. Calm brown shades dominate the trend highlighted by meadow green and pale blue.

“Our leather experts support interested customers worldwide, offering individual service at the customers’ own plants to enable them to produce leathers with the desired characteristics,” says Pino Latini, head of the Competence Center Italian Innovation. “That is a genuine competitive advantage for our customers, because time is money – also in the fashion industry.”