Yayoi Kusama and the Colors of Optimism.

I'm guessing the botanists, elderly volunteers and groundskeepers at Fairchild Tropical Gardens don't know it, but they're cultivating Spring 2010.  No, not that kind of Spring Spring.  I mean the Fashion Spring.  When you do visit (you can be my guest member if you buy me lunch or a box of chocolates), it'll be hard to miss the psychedelic oevres of the sometimes orange-haired, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and her compulsive, avant-garde polka dots and her colorful monster-like flowers and pumpkins (yes, flowers can be monstrous).  Kusama got it.  Right on the dot.  (Bwa ha ha.)   http://www.fairchildgarden.org/art-at-fairchild/Yayoi-Kusama-/   For those of you who aren't ready to part with the dark, edgy, metal studded, biker jacketed, strong-shouldered, acid hued, vampire obsessed of the 2009 80s revival, you're in luck.  Just keep the 80s in the back of your closet because they'll be back in 2029, maybe 2019 for a brief season if you're lucky... or maybe even tomorrow.  With retailers like H&M, Zara and even Target, trends are sucked in and purged faster than you can turn a page of Vogue.  The Wall Street Journal reported: "David Wolfe has been analyzing style trends for 41 years [...] Mr. Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group consultants, stood up in a room full of retail executives and told them: "There are no more trends. Everything is in style. (http://www.doneger.com/web/112119.htm)."

                                           http://www.fairchildgarden.org/art-at-fairchild/Yayoi-Kusama-/

And so, a question I love to ask for the non-fashion obsessed among us.  "So, who the heck cares? You want to wear a metal studded, polka dot, floral dress, go ahead!  And why am I reading this anyway? After all, everything is in style!"  Here's why.  No matter your fashion, you'll likely still buy into the trends that have been dictated by the elusive fashion and color forecasters.  Yes, they do really exist and have predicted what we will want to wear because they've decided that that's what we should want to wear even though we've become rebellious fashion wearers of late.  Turns out Kusama's flowers and pumpkins were perfectly hued, as orange was and still is big and Mimosa Yellow was the 'it' color.  Positive change, optimism, brightness, warmth, passion; yellow and orange.  It seems that the color people might actually know what we might need too, not just what we should want.  And so, you might consider wearing Turquoise (and Aurora and Tomato Puree) this Spring/Summer 2010.  "Turquoise transports us to an exciting, tropical paradise while offering a sense of protection and healing in stressful times (http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?pg=20706&ca=10)."  Does the whole print and polka dot thing make sense to you now?  Maybe the orderliness, yet innocence of the polka dots and the cheeriness and femininity of the prints are what we need to bring us out of Vampiric 2009.  You may have had some blood drained out of you, but Mimosa Yellow and Kusama's The Flowers that Bloom at Midnight were there all along reminding you that tropical paradise was within reach.  And if you still feel the need for some good ol' 80s armor, it looks like you may be able to protect yourself with the military inspired trend for Spring/Summer 2010.  Orange, yellow, turquoise, polka dots, military, patterns, pastoral, less is more, more is more... By the time you finished reading this, another trend just passed on to the fashion catacombs of New York, Paris and Milan.  Hopefully Yayoi Kusama and the Colors of Optimism will influence the decidedly boring achromatic trend in Fall 2010.