apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

love the old majolica dishes!

I adore this place. I don't notice any date-specific trendy decor. It's personal and refreshing.

Emilie, your excellent suggestion is flat-out the easiest way of learning to distinguish between what's good design & what's merely trendy crap.

Sometimes beauty & trendiness overlap, and sometimes they don't, and unfortunately, when things are brand new, it's often hard to tell the two things apart. That's because the wonderful glow of freshness--good in itself, like the sparkle of dewdrops glistening on a piece of garden-fresh fruit, or the rosy bloom on a young child's cheek--can obscure what would otherwise be obvious to everyone: that the apple's rotten & the kid's a brat. Clever marketers know all about that little trick. They use it against us all the time.

There were some amazingly handsome interiors done in the 197Os, and there were some that were awful--see Lilek's hilarious but cautionary volumes if you don't have a shelf full of vintage Better Homes & Gardens & Family Circles around--but back then, most people couldn't tell the two things apart, simply because both were equally new. For a lot of people, New = Good.

Of course, if you had shown the same people comparable rooms from, say, the 193Os--when those rooms were themselves 'new'--almost everyone, even people with no eye for design, could easily tell the good & bad pieces or rooms apart, but the same analytical eye that works so well when we're looking at old pictures is seldom as dependable when we look at more recent stuff. It's that seductive aura of newness that throws people off. The good news is that the ability to look past the sizzle and tell the two things apart can be developed, and that one of the best--not to mention easiest & most amusing--ways to sharpen the eye is to look at old books.

Age has a wonderful way of stripping away the illusory appeal that comes from mere transitory freshness, and it reveals things for what they really are, and for what they were all along to people who know how to see through the marketer's rosy mists. Like Jesus said "There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed." That has a broader application than is generally supposed.

Can you say "country geese?" Are they really as hideous as most people say they are nowadays? If so, how is it that so many millions of women thought they were adorable back in the day? Has mass taste really improved that much? Or how about whitewashed cutouts of howling coyotes? Or flouncy pillows in hunter green & burgundy? Or sun-moon-&-stars on everything in sight? No, those things were always cheesy gimmicks straight off Madison Avenue, but when people saw those geese & those coyotes in the glossy magazines, all primped & powdered & lit up like stars awaiting their big closeups, they fell in love. But not with the things themselves, only with their wonderful g-l-o-w. But that glow doesn't last forever. Open up an old Home Decorators catalog from a while back and you'll see what I mean. It's like a chamber of decorating horrors in there.

And why should that be? The poet said "A thing of beauty is ajoy forever." So why aren't we joyful? Is the wooden coyote any less cute than he was then? Is the gigantic tassel-wrapped seeded-glass lamp any less elegant? Are the strings of faux chili peppers any less festive? Is the fat chef any less laugh-inducing? Is the big iron star any less striking? They're exactly whatever they were then. And yet, somehow, the thrill is gone. It's like watching a rerun of an old Ed Sullibvan Show: you wonder what you ever saw in that stuff. It's so predictable. So embarrassing. But it's a never-ending cycle--unless you get off the merry-go-round. One of these days, a lot of folks will look up at the dusty plastic curlicue doodads hanging on their walls & wonder "What was I thinking?" Their daughters will look at the ghost of some hackneyed saying peeking through the paint on their twenty-foot high wall & wonder "Why didn't somebody stop me?" But a lot of those same people will turn around & hop on whatever bandwagon comes along next. To each his own. It's a wonderful thing, the circle of life.

Anyway, looking at old books is quite the education. It sharpens your eye, and, in time, it will render you less susceptible to buying a piece of gimmicky, derivitive junk, simply because it's new. But you won't have to avoid buying new & trendy stuff, either, simply to avoid buying something crummy. Remember, if new doesn't necessarily mean good, it also doesn't automatically mean bad. Trends are neutral. It's what's behind the trend that matters, and looking at older publications--even ones as recent as Emilie's example above--will, in time, allow you to tell at a glance which trendy new things--or looks--will appeal to you for years to come & which are doomed to sit unsold at the yard sales of 2010.

magnaverde's comments (manifesto?) on trendiness are well taken, but was citing jesus really necessary?

Um, sometimes people trend up stupid stuff from the past just because it's old. Old stuff isn't inherently good either, and some of it in fact is arbitrarily decided to be good or hideous. You could look at a much older magazine or book and find something that hasn't been tapped in a while and decide it looks new, and in fact, that's how it happens. I remember being young and thinking something from the past was cool, but somewhere along the way, I notice youth more fascinated with awful things from the past. Things that are the epitome of awful are seized for irony or mock irony in design (or amusement). I see it on this site frequently enough. Shabby chic is no longer in as a movement, so we'll be sure to mention this is very French, for peed-on French things are classy while shabby chic is shrill and tacky. IKEA is a brand, not a style, yet it is the hardware store of home design, based on how people scope the catalogs and plan/dread trips and learn how to conquer the "usuals." Never stops being bizarre to me how that one store fascinates so many people all hours of the day, changes all the time and yet doesn't seem to change at all. Etsy. I've seen some good and bad examples of artisanry, but it seems like the whole culture conglomerates around a base aesthetic, or so it would seem by the design blogosphere, and people just need cheap art of owls and big-eyed children, just like in the 70s but with some sort of internet empowerment. I'm just making examples over popular themes here.

So yeah. Good taste should be evident, but you never know. It's a topsy-turvy world there. The internet seems capacious and expedient to spread and kill all trends simultaneously. This is not news, but you can't dismiss the internet and the blogosphere and cable tv explosion as avenues to define what is and isn't "trendy," what is over, what we're all calling adorable, etc. I see so much love and hate on the comments here that seem quite arbitrary to me. I mean, how can you love that?? How come everyone can't wait to say how much they hate this? I also feel love and hate and yet it's boggling how different my taste is for things that please or offend a lot of other people!

Just, like, remember, this is not the real world. When you expose yourself to too much stimuli, you burn out, and hate things your "normal" friends have decided to renovate on the tail end of this fascinating new thing they just discovered. It's a little less natural, and we just tell them their unironic geese with aprons are so heinous that they are cool. They will say, "um, thanks... I think." I'm not knocking nerdfolk with this analogy, but you know if you love everything about Star Trek beyond belief and you know that the average culture thinks you're a little more fanatic than there is cause to be.

Such it can be with design - there's a professional degree of knowledge and taste, and then there's a personal degree: everyone has a home and needs to shop and hunt and feather their nest, but not everyone is capable of or desires to discern things that are bad from things that are good, things that are old from things that are new, things that they like from things that they are told to like. They still like what they like, hate what they hate, hate things they used to like so much just because everyone else likes it now, get bored, and have an unquenchable desire to absorb anything new. What can I love next? What can I see one too many times and throw mine in my outbox? What inspires me? How do I know it's love or just a moment's infatuation? Who is taking bets on how many more times they will post the phrase "landing strip" or the word "smitten" by December 31? When do we firmly decide as a design contingent that a trend has died or has wormed its way into the classic rulebook, and while we're here, why do the rules work, and why does breaking them in a particularly well-executed way intrigue so many?

Yeah, I agree with KTG (I think) that there's no such thing as a classic that is always in style. Tastes in historical pieces change with the times. Like in the 80's arts and crafts movement was very "classic". Today, while I'm not selling my little journey stand, but I searched "arts and crafts" and "mission" and cound not come up with a single example on your site featuring this style.

I don't speak for magnaverde, but I don't see what's wrong with citing Jesus. It may seem to some that this is lowering the standards of or misusing sacred teachings, but it was my understanding that religion is for applying to everyday life, not for some peaceful space and time aside from it. You don't have to cite the bible to come up with handy phrases, which turn out to be handy clichés. I think it just means time will tell. I guess you would say, that's not fair to take that time he said something important out of context because he wasn't talking about shag rugs or "wall art."

I, on the other hand, in the short version, think time doesn't tell! While the apartment featured above is only a few years old, many of its more dated elements are dated by a decade or more, things people were ripping out because they were considered awful and tacky once before. They were revived recently, over time, and somewhat arbitrarily grew in popularity as we decided as a majority to accept this as valid, and most of the world isn't exactly tired of them yet, but they will be. The rest of the world just doesn't like it, or is old enough to think it's hideous and kind of fusty.

"Even though 2005 wasn’t that long ago, we’re pretty sure there were trends you wouldn’t want to see again. This apartment, featured in Australian Vogue Living September 2005, still looks great nearly 4 years later and is..."

It wasn't even that long ago.

what's wrong with citing baby jeebus?

These rooms look better than most of the ones featured in the current decorating magazines I have at home.

i liked magnaverde's thoughts, but thought the biblical reference was a little self-serious. perhaps my comment sounded more harsh than it needed to be - my bad.