Elegance: a "mega-trend".

My husband-to-be is an economics nerd. Usually I tune out when he starts talking "financials", but when he recently started mentioning this guy Gerald Celente, and more specifically his prediction for a return to Elegance in popular design and consumer goods, my ears started to perk up.

He showed me a few youtube videos, where Celente talks about the reversal of the "bigger is better" trend, to move toward a society of "smaller quantity but higher quality."

After reading the full version of Celente's predictions in the Winter 2010 Issue of The Trends Journal (Vol. XVIII, No. 1), I agree that the "mega-trend" of Elegance, could (or indeed, should) become a defining principle in fashion, architecture, interior design, and overall consumption.

Hard and dispiriting times will engender a wide range of spirit-enhancing strategies to dispel the enveloping gloom. “Affordable sophistication” and “Elegance redux” will direct and inspire products, fashions, music, the fine arts, and entertainment at all levels. It will be a restoration and amplification of a well-documented historical phenomenon.

But it's not just about the way we shop. Elegance is political, in the way we refuse to live the way we've lived before; the excesses and the dizzying turnover of trends are unsustainable, and it's certainly not the consumer who's benefiting. To declare that objects--objects of use and objects of beauty--have an inherent value, one that exists and persists, is to declare that you will no longer be a machine of consumption in society. Your things are meant to work for you, and make you happy.

Celente also reminds us that Elegance can be spiritual:

From the beginning of recorded time, there has never been a major civilization without the connection between beauty and spirit. “Beauty can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God,” said Pope Benedict XVI to 250 noted painters sculptors, architects, musicians, poets and directors whom he had invited to the Vatican in November [2009]. Concerned with the direction the arts have taken, the Pope reminded them of their “great responsibility to communicate beauty.”

Whatever an individual’s personal or religious beliefs may be, “Elegance” can be applied to every creative profession, trade and endeavor. While there are no precise dimensions or definitions for Elegance, everyone knows it when they see it.

But my favorite passage, selfishly, is where he perfectly sums up what I think this blog is all about:

In the grip of the “Greatest Depression,” people will have a lot more time on their hands, a lot less money in their pockets, and ample opportunity to tap into the creative talents formerly submerged beneath the exigencies of 24/7 job overload. Self-made style will become the new style. The design-it-yourself, tailor/sew-it-yourself trend will span the socio-economic scale and serve as a high-fashion equalizer. It will take time and talent… not just money… to create good looks.

Get creating.