Gavelle

Undecorating Trend?

 

Photograph by The Selby

The apartment of decorator Jacques Grange from the website 'The Selby' illustrates the undecorating trend.

Perhaps now is the time to undecorate, and by that I mean it's time to embrace the new design trend of undecorating. In her book, "Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design," Christiane Lemieux, the founder of the innovative fabric and furniture company DwellStudio, documents a widespread new trend in interior design, which is to say the lack of it, or rather the profusion of do-it-yourself style: "Perfection," she writes, "is overrated." The ideal the book puts forth is of unfussy, lived-in, creative, imperfect homes; it's a postcard taped to a vanity mirror, or two children scootering across a loft's exquisite floorboards, or cheap blue vases from Chinatown wired into lamps. The premise here is cleverness over money, taste over expense, personality over hired expertise, idiosyncrasy over polish; it's a welcome development, reflective of a recession-fueled revelation that money is not the same as beauty. ("Undecorate" features a foreword by Deborah Needleman, the Wall Street Journal editor who oversees this section.)

 

Melanie Acevedo

DwellStudio partner Jennifer Chused's room is featured in the book 'Undecorate,' by Christiane Lemieux.

 

The origins of the "undecorating" movement lie in the rise, in the past decade, of blogs like "Apartment Therapy" and "Design Sponge," and the creation of shelter magazines like Domino and in Italy, "Apartamento," that began disseminating informal, accessible, personal design to the stylish amateur. The internet provided new access to anyone even moderately interested in design, or even just bored at work, to a whole realm of design ideas, no decorator required. The emphasis is on freshness, on individuality, on places one would really want to live in, and not just look at. Its values are reflected in websites like "The Selby," which celebrates extremely personal style, and in other new books like "Details" by Lili Diallo, or "Summers in France," by Kathryn Ireland.

The profusion of "undecorating" has some connection to the economic times, the idea, suddenly, that lavish is not entirely cool. It is not coincidence, surely, that in a world in which President Obama tells Wall Street guys that they should be ashamed of their bonuses, that the ideals of do-it-yourself, and cheap, eccentric, idiosyncratic expressions of personality should be in the ascendant. Ms. Lemieux says that this particular mode of creativity is, on some level, a response to an interior decorator being out of the question for many. "In figuring things out yourself," she says, "including what you can afford, you make interesting decisions that wouldn't be made if money were no object—the imperfections, the real life demands are what inspires us."

There are people within the decorating world who are suspicious of the idea of "undecorating." Kevin Sharkey, executive editorial director of decorating at Martha Stewart Living, for one, says, "I don't like the word. It conjures up a negative feeling." Yet, he adds, "if there is a trend, we probably initiated it." Ms. Lemieux believes Ms. Stewart had a role in the shift toward the do-it-yourself underpinning of "undecorating" and casts this new movement as more Martha deconstructed or Martha on the fly, or maybe, one might add, Martha minus the turning of tea towels into curtains.

Those who are averagely interested in their surroundings will find something liberating in this new modus vivendi.

The trend toward informal, idiosyncratic decorating is exemplified in designer Inès de la Fressange's Paris apartment, photographed by Todd Selby.

It's true that many of the people featured in these gorgeous, glossy new books are "stylists," or "prop stylists," or otherwise employed in fashion. Gazing at their done-over barns and railroad apartments in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, one gets the definite sense that their "undecorated" spaces are a bit more decorated than our own undecorated spaces, and one secretly suspects that one's own life may not yield up the time to stumble across handpainted Chinoiserie wallpaper by the storied French firm de Gournay or antique Etruscan pottery brought back from a trip to Beirut. However, this book does make one reconsider one's own home, and see the accidental splash of color, the bike helmet perched on a coffee table book, the bewildering collection of Ganesh statues, say, the giant clamshells on the mantel, in a different light. The idea of an accidental aesthetic, of the things that you pull together for private reasons, gives you a new perspective, and liberates you from the more rigid dictates of good taste. Take the orange striped Moroccan rug you bought after a break up out of a sudden desire for color and warmth and an exotic new something, along with the forest-green Art Deco couches, which some might say clash in both color and style. Instead, according to these principles, they now give your living room a certain undecorated panache; they are expressive of a moment, a private history. The fantasy of the undecorated house is Tuesday morning as it is actually lived, not as we would like other people to imagine it; it is the idea of energy, of chaos, of motion, of mess (well, mess within very circumscribed and aesthetically pleasing limits: children lying in a pile of books, artfully unmade beds, one piece of clothing strewn across a couch).

This "democratic" impulse in design, of course, is not entirely new. Periodically there is a design revolution that imagines itself in opposition to the formal, overly polished aesthetic of the previous generation. Take for instance Roger Fry's Omega studio, founded in London in 1913, where Bloomsbury artists designed fabrics and furniture in venetian reds, salmons and lemon yellows, to reflect the fresh air of the changing times, in direct rebellion against the formal antiques and heavy draperies of Victorian interiors. One of the newspapers of the day called the studio's creations "immoral furniture," and that immorality was an early glimmer of the impulse to "undecorate."

The cynical among us might imagine that if the movement toward "undecorating" truly takes off, this will simply mean enormous amounts of effort poured into looking effortless; that a whole new breed of undecorators will be spawned, who will scour Parisian flea markets to unearth that perfect, quirky, idiosyncratic expression of their client's innermost self—and, in fact, there already are some hard at work doing just that. The cynical might even argue we are simply creating a new rigorous set of standards—Eclectic! Personal! Quirky! Casual!—for the average individual to live up to. But even those hardened cynics will have to admit that they would rather go to a dinner party at one of the splashy, inviting, inventive houses featured in "Undecorate" than step into one of the daunting interiors on the cover of Architectural Digest, where you are very likely to be quizzed on obscure Renaissance artists and will almost definitely spill red wine on the impeccable expanse of white couch.

WSJ-By Katie Roiphe

Spring Garden Plan

What will make the cut?

BARe It!

This Holiday Season, leave the bar open to guests...some garnish & drinks placed on a tray & butler stand...the dark tray for a cozy, intimate gathering & the white tray for the elegant set...Cheers!

 

www.catwalk2couch.com

April & The Abbey

Kate Middleton & Prince William will be married April 29, 2011 at Westminster Abbey! A modern, fresh couple closely watched & promising not to disappoint...a breath of fresh air into the Abbey & family!

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

Bergdorf Goodman 2010 "Wish You Were Here"

 

Princess of Fashion

 

Associated Press

Princess Diana of Wales, in her wedding dress

Christmas came early for the fashion industry this year. Le tout le monde was a-Twitter over the splashy news that Prince William had proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Kate Middleton. Along with the accolades, came the dress speculation: Who will Kate choose? Will she pick a non-British designer? Will she go with a giant puff of a dress like the famous one worn by Princess Diana in 1981?

More likely, Middleton, a woman of understated elegance, will opt for something refined. Tabloid photos reveal a young woman with classic, even preppy taste, who doesn’t wear garish makeup or too-short skirts. At the press conference announcing the news, Middleton wore a flattering slim-cut navy dress by London label ISSA; the blue dress matched the sapphire engagement ring, which was originally Princess Diana’s engagement ring.

Associated Press

Princess Grace Kelly marries Prince Albert.

For a fashion house, there can be no event bigger than a royal wedding. Millions of people all over the world tuned in to watch Princess Diana descend from her carriage and enter church with her 25-foot antique lace and silk taffeta train. Her silk taffeta dress, by Welsh designer David Emanuel, was embroidered with sequins and over 10,000 pearls. When Grace Kelly married Prince Albert of Monaco, in 1956, she wore a dress designed by Helen Rose, MGM’s star costume designer. Rose dressed Kelly in “High Society,” Lauren Bacall in “Designing Woman” and Elizabeth Taylor in “Butterfield 8,” among others.

If this were an American wedding, we imagine the top list of contenders would be heavies like bridal queen Vera Wang, fresh off designing Chelsea Clinton’s and Ivanka Trump’s gowns, or Oscar de la Renta, who has dressed Madison Avenue princesses and actresses for decades. Throw Carolina Herrera and J. Mendel’s Gilles Mendel in there and it could be a design fight to the finish. But we don’t think Middleton is that much of a non-traditionalist to go with a non-British designer.

The question is: does Marchesa count?

The regal label, an Academy Award and red carpet standby, is headquartered in New York, sure. But designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig are British. Few houses can balance drama and femininity like Marchesa. The Spring 2011 show, for example, featured hand-painted gowns, yards of tulle and laser-cut panels. People were actually moved to tears during the most recent presentation.

And look, this will probably never happen…but there are dark horses that could steal the spotlight.

Consider the house of Alexander McQueen. Designer Sarah Burton won accolades this past fall for her first collection after McQueen’s death this past winter. Dresses were dramatic and bold, likely too bold for the next Queen. But the closing look of Sarah Burton’s spring collection was a feathered gown that suggested both the strength of a warrior and the ethereal lightness of a goddess. Besides, we imagine there are vast reserves of affection for the McQueen name in the U.K., and not just among the fashion flock. A McQueen wedding gown could play towards sentimentality as well as patriotism (even if it is owned by Gucci Group.)

Britain is currently overflowing with design talent, which only complicates things. We know Vivienne Westwood could turn out a dreamy wedding dress, such as the featured gown in the “Sex and the City” film. Don’t discount John Galliano, who may be designing for Dior, but is British to his core. Then there’s Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo, two designers whose minimalist aesthetic may suit the future Queen’s taste in non-flashy style. Of the newer generations, Matthew Williamson, Alice Temperley and Jenny Packham have dressed their share of stars in pretty gowns. And just for fun, let’s toss in Victoria Beckham. No snickers, please. The ex-pop star has earned a fair share of admiration in the industry for her structured ladylike dresses.

And then, there’s a very good possibility that the Princess has a friendship with a talented but unknown designer and may choose him, like when Caroline Bessette wore a dress by Narciso Rodriguez to marry America’s version of a prince, John F. Kennedy Jr.

(Elva Ramirez, WSJ)

Shimmer, Shine & the Unexpected

 

The Indian high fashion industry, which began to burgeon with pioneers like Mr. Tahiliani in the late 1980s, started with a strong indigenous element, even as it was always a blend of east and west. That is changing, the old hands observed.

“We’re moving away very quickly from traditional or Indian clothes. It’s becoming only occasion wear, like the Japanese kimono,” mourned Sumeet Nair, who founded the Fashion Council of India about a decade ago.

Designers like Mr. Tahiliani still make and sell the traditional Indian outfits—but it is their more westernized garb that flies off the retail shelves, says Mr. Nair, who runs a branding and licensing consultancy.

The western trend was evident in the dresses and skirts of the nubile models walking the ramp in flowing tan ensembles though theree was always an Indian touch, be it the embroideres or the combination of traditional materials like muslin and khadi of Gandhian handloom fame.

But Mr. Tahiliani still also won points from those lamenting the loss of the Indian heritage in the industry at large for continuing to experiment with traditional Indian styles. Among his collection there were saris, churidars and ghagra cholis—although almost always with a creative twist, an unexpected fit or belt or ruffle.

(Geeta Anand, Scene Asia)

Bring some of that Indian shimmer into your home...

 

 

(photos: Arch)

A dose of the unexpected...some candlelight adds shine to a beautiful framed Patachitra...

An annual ritual in the famous Jagannath Temple of Puri, a beach town in the State of Orissa, has given rise to one of India's most treasured folk art form, the 'Patachitra'. The origin of the Patachitra paintings can be traced back to the 8th century AD and it is considered as one of the earliest forms of indigenous paintings. Each year, the painted wooden images of Jagannath, Balabhadra, and Shubhadra in the Jagannath temple of Puri are ritually given the holy bath. This cleansing leads to the discoloration of the images. Hence, they are removed from the 'garbha griha' (the Seat in the Temple) for re-painting. During this period, the temple images are substituted with three paintings, depicting the holy trio, on specially treated clothes or 'Patas' prepared by the temple painter. Thus the name 'Patachitra' (Sanskrit: Pata = cloth, Chitra = painting). Organic colors are used in the Patachitras. The leaves of plants, flower petals, fruits (like mangooes), ground rocks contribute to the production of a variety of shades and hues.

The predominant gem like colors that are used are vermilion red, brick red, yellow, blue from indigo, green from green leaves, white from conch shell and black from lamp black. Once, the colors are extracted they are combined with gum resin and then used in painting. The brilliant play of these colors produce stunning effects on the cloth. The brushes used to apply the paint are prepared from plant fibers or animal hair.Originating as a ritual, the Patachitra is regarded today as one of the most cherished collectors' items. Although several centuries old, Patachitra continues to be a living art form practiced even today.

Rough Luxe

Here is another go-round of this great WSJ article about the new trend in home luxury...published in 2009, it is timely today...

Rough Luxe

Photograph by Bill Jacobson

 

The Rough Luxe movement’s embrace of imperfection is exemplified in the kitchen Bill Sofield designed for a Hudson Valley house, with its Aga oven and reclaimed chestnut floors.

As movements go, it may be too early for this one to have a name, much less a manifesto. But if every new era is at least to some extent a reaction to what came before, then the one now taking shape shows signs of being antiminimalism and antiperfection—a repudiation of the old notions of luxury and the mindless accumulation of more stuff. Rough luxe is, at first glance, a study in Contradictions, an attempt to reconcile the antique or the just plain old with the contemporary, the accumulated with the newly acquired, the decrepit with the pristine. It’s artful dissonance. For those who have come to think of luxury as smooth, shiny, polished, refined and expensive, rough luxe will undoubtedly come off as unfinished, unplanned and somewhat chaotic. But that’s judging by the standards of a Gilded Age that’s officially over, and though the economy will rebound—seems, in fact, to be rebounding as we write—it is doubtful that the culture of bling will be back anytime soon.

Courtesy of Rabih Hage

 

The lobby of the Rough Luxe hotel in London with its photo of artists Gilbert and George by Jonathan Root.

Already, in its place, something else has taken hold. You see it in the fascination with found objects and conditions, the race to use unexpected materials in unpredictable ways, and the hunger for vintage and the poetically juxtaposed clothes sent down the runways for fall. Last spring, at Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the design industry’s leading fair, the rough luxe notion was celebrated in pieces such as Piet Hein Eek’s chairs and cabinets made from a patchwork of salvaged—and then highly polished—wood. At Design Miami/Basel this year, all four recipients of the Designer of the Future awards, Nacho Carbonell, Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny, Peter Marigold and the duo Raw-Edges, used irregularities to draw attention to the maker’s hand. In fashion too, the extraordinary was played off the utilitarian: Miuccia Prada’s plush velvet dresses paired with workaday thigh-high waders; Giambattista Valli’s high-drama, floor-length skirt entirely covered in peacock feathers with a staid nubby black turtleneck.

Bill Sofield, best known in the ’90s for his sleek overhaul of the Gucci boutiques—a seamless universe of plush carpeting, chrome and lacquer, with nothing out of place—has lately found himself playing spokesman for rough luxe due to a sudden surge of interest in two interior-design projects that could act as case studies for the style, mixing immaculate finishes and raw surfaces, judicious intervention and existing conditions. In one room, in a wealthy artist’s house, a quilt-covered daybed is nestled in a corner, where a wall, covered in pristine ivy-patterned wallpaper, meets another, its paint job splotched and faded. The wallpaper was Sofield’s contribution; the adjacent wall “looked like a painting, so we just left it,” he says.

François Halard, a photographer specializing in interiors, whose own homes in America and France qualify as prime examples of rough luxe, says that he finds homes that are immaculate, in which the selection of the furniture and paintings is perfect and the placement is just so, “a little bit dry.” Murray Moss, co-founder of Manhattan’s store Moss—itself a showcase of high-priced, cutting-edge design items in an interior stripped to its original materials and structure—believes that Americans no longer feel so obliged to decorate by the book. “I think we’re confident enough now to mix different styles and periods,” he says. Both Moss and Halard use the word “autobiographical” to describe the kind of home they admire—“a reflection of the soul,” Halard says, “not what the owner can afford.”

Courtesy of François Halard

 

Photographer François Halard’s guest bedroom

Elements of rough luxe aesthetics have been brewing for years in one form or another. A catalog of examples could run to several volumes: the apartment where Cy Twombly and his wife live in Rome, first photographed for Vogue in 1966; Maxwell’s Plum, the New York restaurant outfitted with the trappings of defunct saloons; ’70s exposed brick; the colonization of Soho and Tribeca, with manufacturing spaces mildly renovated for residential use; white wallpaper introduced by Gijs Bakker in the early ’90s, with holes in the panels to allow what’s underneath to show through. Since they began designing in the ’70s, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto have both played with overwrought artifice and stark simplicity. Today, Consuelo Castiglioni, for Marni, and Dries Van Noten—two fashion designers who work in a style that comes across as both deliberately haphazard and coolly measured—are front and center after years in which their work tended to be eclipsed by carefully orchestrated outfits and the handbag of the season. Referencing the past has always been “a necessary component to understanding the present,” Castiglioni says.

In America, rough luxe would seem to be the latest installment in a long tradition, with each generation breaking with the style of its parents and asserting its own identity. A new wave of young people in their twenties is championing rough luxe as a rejection of the minimalism that dominated the world they grew up in—a style that began as industrial and makeshift and gradually progressed to extravagant and precious, with multiple coats of polish on a cement floor and living rooms indistinguishable from hotel lobbies. Rough luxe sounds the death knell for that perfectionism. “I think there are two camps in fashion,” says fashion designer Thakoon Panichgul, who created distressed “everyday” silver fox furs dyed saffron yellow and cayenne red for his line Thakoon. “One is people who love the idea of looking theatrical and perfect—I think that’s dated. More and more, designers from my generation or younger look for the imperfection.”

More Home & Garden

The American preference for the brand-new, the impulse to raze history and start all over is understandable when you consider the circumstances, with large swaths of the population living in suburban houses built in the style of their owners’ fantasies. In which case, Murray Moss says, preserving someone else’s French provincial makes no more sense than imposing your own preference for early Colonial.

If rough luxe has a mantra, it’s “authenticity.” Gil Shapiro, founder of Urban Archaeology, built a business on random acts of historic preservation, rescuing mantels, chandeliers and architectural ornaments from Park Avenue dumpsters. He can be a zealot about it: He once made casino mogul Steve Wynn sign a statement promising that he wouldn’t polish the pair of municipal lampposts Shapiro sold him for a hotel in Atlantic City. Crystal ball–gazers who forecast changes in our patterns of consumption have been predicting for some time that authenticity would be the next big thing. Caroline Till, the design trends editor at London’s The Future Laboratory, says the brand strategy firm was tracking a trend among designers that by spring was spreading into the broader marketplace. Their April 2009 trend report, called “Inspire: Rough Luxe,” stated, it “celebrates a heavy rawness erring on the artisanal.” Till doesn’t believe the timing is coincidental: “Because of the downturn, consumers are taking a bit longer to think about a purchase,” she says. “And they want to buy into a story.”

Old things are used in their capacity to disrupt the smugness of the new, while new things pierce the weighty messages of the old. It’s cheeky to expect travelers accustomed to heated towel racks and pillow menus to spend the night in a room that looks as if its renovation was halted before it was done, but that is what Rabih Hage, the architect who designed London’s Rough Luxe Hotel, did when he left much of the building, an undistinguished Georgian townhouse, as he found it. Gilbert and George photographs hang against walls with peeling paint and obtuse Kelly Ryan chairs sit in halls with cracked plaster. “The different layers and types of wallpaper were the witness of every family and every era that has come through, from 1827 until today,” he says. When Halard outfitted his loft, he collected 18th-century tiles and shipped an old tub from Europe, to ensure that not everything would match or look as if it had been minted that week. “So I actually spent a lot of money to make it look imperfect,” he says, laughing. “Which for me was the ultimate luxury.”
Rough luxe may not have been occasioned by the current economic recession—the movement was on a roll before November 2008CHK—but it does seem to resonate with it. “I think especially now, when we don’t have a sense that we control our fates entirely, maybe there’s something a little bit easier about the idea that every single surface of your environment isn’t polished,” Sofield says. “There’s a friendliness to it, maybe an egolessness—just letting certain things be.”

Summer's Mellow Yellow

 

The Colors of San Jose del Cabo 

  
  
    
  

 
   
 
  
  
 

photos from Patricia Gray's Blog

Help Yourself...

not sure if it is just summer casual or a new culture of hospitality but lovin the help yourself concept...welcome & enjoy...

grab the markham console bar at pottery barn!  happy guests see everything within reach, no need to open the cupboards ;)