Why the Design Industry is Obsessed with Newness

Original article posted at Business of Home by Fred Nicolaus.

If everyone agrees that there’s too much fabric on the market, then why are so many brands rushing to make more of it? We explore who's launching new collections—and when and why—in search of a unified theory of newness.

New, really, isn’t an objective quality. It’s just a funny little wrinkle in our brains that gets us excited about things we haven’t seen before (or think we haven’t seen before). But what amounts to nothing more than a minor quirk of human nature helps explain why parts of the fabric industry are slowing down—and why parts of it are getting much, much faster.