|
|
 |
|
|
From style statements that sit on coffee tables to colors that enliven walls, trends influence interiors at many levels. Here’s who’s keeping score.
|
|
Online Exclusive, February 2007
|
|
By Kitty Shea
|
If anything has the power to simultaneously attract and repel design types, it’s a trend. We feel and fuel them. We follow them. We “tsk-tsk” them as inferior to original thought. We finesse the distinction between “trend” and “trendy.” And still they come and go and grow, influencing our work and lives in ways both conscious and not. Trends have a hierarchy of relevance. Some evolve over years or decades, rewiring our reflexes along the way. Others — “beige is the new black” — are market-driven pursuits du jour.
Minneapolis research and advisory firm Iconoculture posits its macrotrends as “major cultural shifts in how we live and what we want,” including the pursuit of convenience, the constant quest for style and good design, and the practice of sustainability. “It’s not enough for us to say ‘Mexican sushi is big,’” says co-founder Vickie Abrahamson. “We’re interested in understanding values: how they’re prioritized and driving behavior.
Amsterdam-based trendwatching.com paints with similarly broad strokes. Its online database flags 70 trends, among them “5 Star Living,” the placement of condos within luxury hotels so condo-dwellers can live like pampered guests; “Being Spaces” and “Brand Spaces,” living-room-inspired settings à la Starbucks with Wi-Fi access) in supermarkets, hospitals, hotel lobbies, laundromats, bookshops, airports, etc., where urban dwellers can carry on within the clutch of community; and “Insperience,” homeowners’ desire to simulate commercial-grade experiences — yoga-studio serenity, movie-theater acoustics (and popcorn!), hotel-shower water massages — at home.
The trend-consciousness of apparel is spilling over into homes, according to trendwatching’s founder Reinier Evers, who follows Wallpaper and I.D. magazines and core77.com for substantiation. “Architecture is on par with fashion these days: It’s about eco, about grand statements, about experimenting, about wanting to show the rest of the world what you’re about,” he says. “The only thing missing is a trend, like in fashion, that links starchitects to low-cost housing and buildings, as in no-frills chic.”
Societal shifts and industry swings aside, the home design trends that register most immediately take the form of finishes, fabric and furnishings. The Mini Trends section of the blog Design*Sponge tags themes from founder Grace Bonney’s international scan of chic decor. “Birds are still extremely popular. Birds and branches. I grew sick of them a year ago, but then, my shelf life for a trend, personally speaking, tends to be three weeks!” she half-jokes.
Bonney will only christen something a Mini Trend if she’s noted its repeat presence at design and student art shows and confirmed its emergence abroad. Wallpaper is coming back, often with one main color against washes of silver or gold. With rugs, “the bolder the colors, the better,” she observes, the better to express ever-bolder graphic patterns.
For color counsel, Bonney is keen on colourlovers.com, an online community where professionals and amateurs alike create colors and color combinations on which fellow members weigh in. “The scores of palettes and colors get reset monthly,” says founder and editor Darius A. Monsef, “so you get a great sense of what people [numbering 100,000 in December 2006] like right now.”
And if ever a word had the power to describe a trend — however deep its reach or significant its impact — that word would be “now.
Image credits
- Top left image: Design*Sponge trend spotter Grace Bonney.
- First image on right: Metallic paints and finishes are appearing on tableware, such as this Kings Road plate by designer Rosanna Bowles.
- Second image on right: Discounters like Jet Blue have secured a devoted customer base by offering a design-savvy consumer experience at low cost.
For additional information on trend-watching, see the latest issue of STIR magazine, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2007. Not a subscriber? Click here.
For additional resources on this topic, click here.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
