Wear prints to lift your outfit - and your spirits

Here are some important rules to think about if you are planning to update your wardrobe in the near future:

Searching out bright colours in a palette of sour pastels is key, but you've got to know how to wear them, as in with what.

Tangerine Tango, which the colour institute Pantone has decreed the colour of 2012, and its superbright stablemates (light-bulb lemon, fizzy apple, duck-egg blue, gold leaf and tomato beach-ball red - not Pantone names, my very own) need to be offset against a canvas of either white, pale nude or toffee brown to perfect the precise "look" of the moment.

You will need to drop in a few references to the tactile surface texture trend, too. Something should be shiny. But then again you must have a piece that's perfectly matte. See, it's not so easy.

Here's a tip. If you want to invest in something that will bring you up to speed without even having to care too much about the colour/fabric thing, choose a digitally engineered print. Anything that resembles a Photoshop grab of petals, blossoms or any floral explosion. Or a paisley or trompe l'oeil landscape will do, as long as it's real. Right now this is the instant coffee of fashion. It will "lift" whatever you are wearing as well as your spirits.

Sandra Keating, the womenswear print designer at the global trend forecasters WGSN, says the designers currently affecting most on fashion "use computers as a tool to create and the internet as their source of inspiration". She refers to them as the "jpeg generation".

The movement is spearheaded by print-led labels such as Peter Pilotto - the British duo who have developed fabric prints by roughly mixing screen grabs of mercury splashes, Liberty florals and paisleys using out-of-the-box Photoshop tools. According to Keating, "screen grab fusion could only have taken effect in an internet era".

The new breed of designers have an "anything goes" mentality heightened by free accessibility to mind-boggling information. The result is an eclectic, highly individual take on virtually anything, with no global boundaries or borders.

Meanwhile, Photoshop effects such as bevels and rainbow gradients, once considered "mistakes" by an older generation of designers, are being treated like "coveted tools" by the rising stars. There are no rules.

The seemingly chaotic nature and abundance of digi prints this spring has a lot to do with the Jpeg generation soaking up influences from popular culture and using sites such as Tumblr, the free blog-hosting platform responsible for so many weird but cool postings on Facebook.

Yvan Mispelaere, the creative director at Diane von Furstenberg, a brand with colour and print in its DNA, points out that prints are always thoughtfully hand drawn by their in-house team of print designers. He cites current inspiration as skaters, surfboarders, rap and "the imagery we get, daily online from the web and in video games". I noticed a similarity at last week's Paris couture shows in the way many old-school labels were approaching their collections, often encapsulating modern fashion trends such as print, while showcasing the pure artisanal qualities of haute couture.

Versace had colour. Dior had texture. But Bouchra Jarrar had colour, print and texture applied with a new jpeg generation way of thinking - and as a result seemed to be ahead of her rivals.

I'm not one for pattern, which can be excruciatingly unflattering and eye-catching for all the wrong reasons, but I will certainly be investing in something printed this spring.

Or perhaps even something printed and 3D, which is hugely fashionable. Even James Cameron's Titanic is going to be coming out in 3D any day.

Nothing cements the blurring of digital, virtual and physical worlds quite like this technique and it can still be elegant and subtle.

For instance, I've seen rainbow-textured snakeskin lining the frames of Linda Farrow sunglasses.

At best, any sort of surface embellished textile or print that has gone through a design process should look like a work of art, just like the sort of creations coming out of Paris last week.

The eye-popping, optimistic and pretty prints and exuberant colours starting to appear on the high street appear to fly in the face of austerity and yet clearly reaffirm that beautiful things aren't just for wealthy haute couture customers.

As with all the arts, the true purpose of fashion is to lift the senses.

Christopher Bailey put it best as he explained his most recent collection, a mishmash of African batiks and shapes inspired by the English sculptor Henry Moore: "It celebrates things that take time to do."

Ah yes, time. Just because your printed top started out life as a grab from Photoshop or Twitter, the agonising design process was anything but instant.

Julia Robson is a London-based fashion journalist, broadcaster and stylist

artslife@thenational.ae

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