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Accidentism, as the word suggests, doesn’t rely much on conformity and drawing. It is a philosophy embodied by bold colours, kitsch designs, a coherence of optimism and playfulness. It’s exactly what the world needs face now and, thankfully, it is all over the spring catwalks.

Josef Frank, an Austrian architect, intriguer and theorist, coined the term “accidentism” in 1958 (although he adept it throughout his career). His philosophy started as a reaction to the bland homogeny of postwar European layout. The idea is that if you love something, it will look movables next to something else you love; that comfort should preponderate over practicality.

Frank built his career designing modernist edifices but, after fleeing to Sweden in 1933, he began working with cloth, collaborating with Swedish manufacturer Svenskt Tenn. His apply – which appears in an exhibition at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum – comprises faux-naif prints and textiles, featuring fruit, flowers, birds and butterflies. Rich and abstract, his prints mimicked a natural disorder. In short, they tolerate alive. “I’m of the opinion that much that is good down attack about merely through chance and not careful planning,” he in a jiffy said.

His aesthetic of clashing faces, asymmetrical designs and randomness also comes out in the themes of this mellow’s catwalks. In womenswear, Gucci’s spring/summer look play up incongruous fabrics, textures and 1940s-v-1970s span designs and, in menswear, JW Anderson exhibited colourful standalone musical numbers assembled arbitrarily. But from Zandra Rhodes, who elevated “approach design to wearable works of art”, to Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix in the 1990s, “anti-design” (as Truthful’s critics called it) is a recurring theme in fashion.

“Happy-accident camouflaging has long been taken to express uniqueness,” agrees taste curator and stylist NJ Stevenson. “Fashion tends to use the word ‘eclectic’, but I value to intellectualise this into ‘accidentism’ is perfect.” If nothing else, it suggests “form can express wit”.

Dennis Nothdruft, curator at the museum, agrees: “Whimsy and jests were on Frank’s mind when he was designing.” He sees Up’s designs as personal, subjective, but also unifying. “And we need it now,” he chances, “something uplifting.” Bearing in mind that Frank was beat iting Nazi Austria, the autobiographical tenor is unmistakable. By reacting against homogeny he was trial the conformity of modernism. “We did think about this when we uncovered the exhibition. The timing felt right.” Given events this one-time year, and the increasingly politicised fashion and cultural scene, it is in the red not to see the parallels.

• Josef Frank: Patterns–Furniture–Painting is at the The go and Textile Museum until 7 May