Bold and Brave

Bold and brave is a head-turning look: it is pattern out to make a statement. Dynamic, hard-hitting and generally quite masculine, it might sometimes even be called loud. Abstracts, geometrics and florals are heavily stylized, usually overscaled and drawn with bold lines or in flat blocks of unnatural colour.

Delicacy is not the issue here; it is impact that matters. The roots of this look are in 1960s style – the era of youth and rebellion, when fashionable culture revelled in the ephemeral, the innovative and the zany. Motifs came from film, music, television, comics, adverts and everyday items such as seaside postcards or domestic appliances, using vibrant, self-assured colours such as orange, yellow, purple, green, crimson and silver. Abstract geometric shapes and polka dots were also popular, as were the swirling geometric shapes of Op Art, often in monochromes, especially black and white.

Later in the same decade, and into the 1970s, patterns were strongly influenced by psychedelia, which arose largely from the Californian hippy movement. Influenced by Art Nouveau, free love, Eastern religions and drug culture, it featured amoeba-like patterns and clashing, acid colours.

Contemporary bold pattern takes elements of the above and updates them for the 21st century. Well-defined outlines and dense patterning in abstract forms are key. Rather than a plain, pale background that provides a relief for the lines and shapes of the pattern itself, in this case there is no distinction and the entire field comprises an all-over pattern.