apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

orla kiely is beyond overrated, the designs are generic, i don't get it! i think alot of people like it cause they see it all the time on blogs and THEN decide they like it..

I like the flower table cloth a lot and the grey pairs and also the blue serving bowl.


:o)

this line was just too Brady Bunch for me - and not in a good way....

I think a big part of it is being selective about the bandwagon styles. Trends come and go and inevitably come back again, so a few pieces integrated into the whole work well.

I like a lot of Orla Kiely's Target line because it reminds me a whole lot of the mid-century designs from Finland (Marimekko, Arabia/Finel) that I already have in my home thanks to my lovely design-forward mom who worked for a Scandinavian home boutique in the early 70's. So the Orla pear motif canister looks perfectly suited to sit on the counter with my Finel mushroom pattern bowl without appearing too trendy.

As long as you don't oversaturate your whole home with flavor-of-the-week design stuff, and buy what you like because you intend on keeping it for awhle, I don't see any problem in finding styles attractive that lots of other people do, too.

I think liking what you like is ok, but I also think some people see the same thing over and over again (usually makes me sick of it after a while) makes them love love love it. Have to have. Like quiltmaster said, if it's a good band, by all means, hop on! Don't get caught up in the fact that I (for example) might hate this thing already - I probably never liked it that much to begin with if I hate something really fast. That's what's interesting is that if you use your personality and things you really like, things will look a lot better to almost everyone. If you are latching on to a trend and slapping up things you bought with some sort of herd mentality, and call that decorating, that will be evident as well.

Like what you like, ask yourself this question when you're shopping - do I like this, or do I just see it so often that I'm trying to copy something else I saw, am I trying to take home the atmosphere of this store by the bagful? Don't fill your home with empty purchases, it always looks worse than things you still like, from, so five years ago.