Colour, Sharing and Emotions. The 2021 trends for a Christmas 5.0
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Colour, Sharing and Emotions. The 2021 trends for a Christmas 5.0

Rediscovering values, new daily rituals, personalisation, craftsmanship, new passion for nature, a different approach to shopping and lots and lots of colours. The Christmas 2021 trends discussed in the webinar organised by HOMI, as part of the run-up to the next edition of the fair in September, to be held in conjunction with the Salone del Mobile and Design Week

 

The speakers who participated in the webinar held in February, organised by HOMI in collaboration with Fiera Milano Media - Business International, outlined the trends and products to focus on for the next Christmas. An initiative that is preparatory to the next edition of the Salone degli Stili di Vita, organised by Fiera Milano and scheduled from 5 to 8 September 2021 in conjunction with the Salone del Mobile.

 

"We want to tell a contemporary Christmas - said Chairman of the webinar Federica Sala, curator and design advisor - Christmas time is usually linked to tradition, but with everything that happened this year even the usual routine of Christmas was broken. Thus, an extremely different Christmas holiday was experienced that also discovered many "different Christmases". All this, inevitably, brought together many thoughts also on the priorities of families and friendships, bringing also greater attention towards the home".

 

The first speech by Gianfranco Ranieri Vice President Assogiocattoli as well as Sole Director of Flora immediately highlighted the increase in online sales noting that families devoted more resources to spend Christmas together, a tradition that was fading. The increase in sales of board games, along with nativity scene building, signals a rediscovery of traditional values. An interesting fact that triggers one of the many questions, namely: will it also be so "after"? Certainly, communication strategies aimed at supporting remote sales were issues already in progress that the pandemic only accelerated.

 

Mariangela Negroni, Art Director of Funky Table, a young and dynamic Milan-based company intervened on the topic. Her company, thanks to the training in design and fashion of its founders, offers a "new decorative language" and she spoke about the new approaches to purchases linked to greater attention and care for the home. So travel inspirations (for now just virtual), items that tell more and more places in the world. A trend emerged where the contamination of tastes gives life to an "uncommon" language and the exaggeration in the use of gold acts as a fil rouge of different approaches. For example, like kintsugi (literally, repairing with gold), the Japanese-inspired manual skill that gives birth to new and better things from broken things. A manual activity to perform together, in the family, the traditional one or the one made up of friends and roommates who increasingly find themselves sharing home spaces.

 

Andrea Santambrogio, Viridea's Vice General Sales Manager, also talks about new manual skills and getting closer to nature , and he traces the new customers who have approached DIY in recent months back to the "lockdown effect". Up to now, it was mostly retired people who took care of the green spaces but now there are many young people involved in it too, probably because they can't travel.

 

Roberto Pieraccini, Managing Director of the Salvadori store in Prato, has also noticed unprecedented interest from younger customers. Purchases have turned more towards practical products and, "in a very bad year, we've seen an explosion of colours, to the point we're going out of stock!" An interesting fact, together with the observation of the role played by social networks. Because, as Pieraccini points out, the ability to excite customers and lead them to buy depends on the company's online behaviour.

 

The activity of Casamenu is based on the creative and strategic use of social media, an editorial project that through the sharing of videos, tutorials and evocative images on the Instagram channel @casamenu.it tells the story of the evolution of table decoration, also in relation to the family (whether extended family, or family made up of friends and housemates) in its everyday connotation. Cristina Galliena Bohman highlights the new rituals for physical and digital sharing, underlining their generational transversality. A fact that companies should take into account, in order to reach the heart of people. In this, Instagram's reel tool makes great strides: in 15-, maximum 30-second videos, Casamenu offers recipes and ideas for personalizing the table at home. Peaks of 90 thousand views are a demonstration of the importance of exchange and sharing, as well as the creation of a virtual archive from which to draw at any time. Casamenu founder Francesca Martinez identifies two other trends for the table: taking refuge in the certainties of traditional tableware and preferring a few items chosen with care, in search for a personal tradition, in contrast with the disposable approach. This is a trend seen in people in their twenties and thirties who are looking for their own way of renovating their rooms and table decoration.

 

"Without digital media and e-commerce, we wouldn't be here!" states Mariangela Negroni of Funky Table. To emphasise the power of images to excite users, images full of colour and exaggeration are used.