apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

SISAL.
Wenge.
Ebonized.
Wenge-lookin'.
Mirrored Furniture made to look like French '40's.
Crown Moulding.
Bad 60's and 70's "chazzserie".
LavaLamps.
Brown (Developer) Speckled Granite CounterTops.

It's a good article, over all.
Personally, I'm tired of seeing the obligatory "Barcelona" chair alongside the "Nelson" lamp and "Naguchi" table.... tired of the "literal" rehash of MCM. YAWN!
It lacks interest and personality. Why do people feel the need to match everything? It all ends up looking like a store display or a DWR catalog.
Besides, aren't there modern things out there that weren't first produced 60 years ago? Why the hang up on that period of time?
Where is OUR ECM/MM (Early Century Modern/ Millenium Modern)?

It's "jumped the shark" from when the Fonz went water skiing.

ManOfSteel: "Brown (Developer) Speckled Granite CounterTops." You speak for me. I've got em. I hate em. But I rent (and I'm stuck with em).

FLIPPING WALL DECALS! No one mentioned the flocks and flocks of BIRDS!

Um, I'm going to assume that linking to the Design Sponge home page as your "cleared the shark" link is an error.

Personally, I find these compiled lists of what's "over" really tiring. The real problem with any of these trends arises when they are used within a specific, dictated context. That's true for antlers and bamboo as much as it is for teak credenzas and Eames shell chairs. You can take any object and put it in a new environment and it can be totally fresh and transformed.

That said, I'd be alright if I never saw another "For Like Ever" or "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster in a home tour...

Anna -
I fixed the shark link and I agree wholeheartedly with the tiresome pics of "For Like Ever" posters.

I've finally saved enough money for a Louis Chair... and now they are out?! Oh well, like my clothes, I don't buy the things in my house because they are "out" or "in." I buy them because I love them. If you go with that thinking, then your place well "in" regardless if it's "out."
So Louis Chair, welcome home!

I thought the article was a bit odd and got off on an antler/Art Basel-Miami tangent never to return. Where were the trends that have legs? A red leather chair brought forth by hypnosis? It's also annoying to read quotes from people like Deborah Needleman who is sooooo sad that those of us who don't get our apartments decorated for free have to resort to West Elm overlapping circle chairs. And where was MGR's quote? Did I miss it? Or once Penelope Green discovered he had bamboo cabinets (horrors!) was his expertise discounted? ; )

I have a wall decal from wall concept (pin up girl) love it. Fuck the trends. Buy what you love and youäll always be in style.

P.S. For Like Ever posters must be banished For Like Ever. And Anna at D16, ita that it's all about the context.

And another thing: Isn't the message that's being sent by these "out" lists that you should never really invest in so-called "protein" furnishings for your home, because they may be "out" in a few years? It's such a wasteful, sad attitude to have about the things in your personal environment.

Buy what you love, and you will love it more and more over time. Isn't that the kind of relationship you should have with your surroundings? My home and its contents are not static, but they aren't disposable, either.

My thoughts exactly Ana. Well said.

Birds! Birds everywhere! The NYT article about etsy commented that birds are inexplicably popular. Sure, birds are lovely, and symbolize lots of good things. But geez, they're so bland and overplayed, and I'm really disappointed to see etsy completely choked with bird-themed art. Can we pick a new animal to be obsessed with? Like, um, wombats or something?

Ditto on the For Like Ever and Keep Calm and Carry On posters. They're great, but every hip person in the world seems to have them. They've become cliche.

I'm surprised they didn't include stainless steel appliances in this list or is that already pre-historic? But Anna at D16 has a good point that this emphasis on "in/out" design trends leads to the kind of disposable consumerism that is unhealthy in so many ways.

I found parts of that article sort of mysterious. It sounded like "Ms. Needleman" was pissed that everyone had suzanis now because she put them in Domino a bunch of times. Um, isn't that the whole reason behind magazines like Domino? People look at them, they see things they like, and then they incorporate them into their houses?

Also, what Anna said.

Of course the trendmakers want to be sure we all get tired of trends. Otherwise, how would they ever sell us on new trends? Yawn.

(Not that I'm not sick of antlers, too...)

Trends fuel the industry and all the professions devoted to spotting them, writing about them, manufacturing them and so on. I like to see homes that are deeply personal and unique to the person who lives there, even if that person is out of "style." What 's "in" or "out" is silly to most people. Does anybody want to send me their tired old Keep Calm poster? I still don't have one but repeat the motto to myself several times a day. I can't think of anything more relevant to my life at this stage.. it has a lot of resonance for me personally, though the other posters strike me as pointless. Jennifer and Anna, yes. It is the trends that define the time... how will we ever say that's so 00, except for the trends that came and went.

I'll agree with the "Keep Calm" posters. I walked into a new restaurant here in Vancouver last weekend called "The Cascade" (with it's 50's starburst style logo). While the space is really cool and the atmosphere is great, I couldn't help but be annoyed by a giant floor to ceiling vinyl of the "Keep Calm, and Carry On" graphic plastered onto a glass divider in the entry. They even had a reproduction of the graphic on the 1st page of the menus.

I wonder how long it'll be before the owners realize their mistake and peel it down?

I disagree however, with the wall mounted TVs over the fireplace. I live in a tiny apartment that was built in the 1940s and there was really nowhere else to put it. A bulky CRT would look even more out of place in here. Granted, my fireplace has been bricked in and is now just an empty hole with great moulding.

Link...for reference. http://www.thecascade.ca/about.htm

Hollywood Regency. Wearstler style. Arrrgh. The last four or so years of home decorating trends seem to have been less about finding a voice for the home that accurately reflects the person who lives there and more about "costuming." I mean, antlers? Does anyone here actually shoot deer? Over the top chandeliers? Is there a butler around here somewhere? I won't even go into the weird twist things took when skulls started popping up everywhere. These things have nothing whatsoever to do with the way 99% of us live our lives on a daily basis. They are pure artifice.

When this whole HR trend launched 6 or so years ago, it went into commercial spaces - spaces people visit, like restaurants and hotels. It made for a fun break from reality. Two hours, or a night or two of fantasy living and then back to our lives. But then people started carting this idea into the home and thats where it got weird. Its a bit like someone dressing up as a pirate for halloween and then deciding they wanted to wear their pirate costume. Every. Single. Day.

Its a little strange.

This " Flash in the can" article was more than just a list of what is now "out".
It was a pretty obnoxious and elitist look at the rest of us poor people who are so tasteless as to buy some crappy reproductions and render the original design ideas obsolete. They scoff at magazines and choke over CB2. I didn't realize that only the wealthy should decorate their homes well.

I will admit, I click through house and apartment tours on this web site and find myself repeating, "Eames, Eames, Eames..." more often than is comfortable or necessary. As many posters here have suggested, personal style often trumps manufactured style and Eames furniture continues (sometimes) to look stylish, and yet while the tasteless (read: trash with cash) and the tasted (read: fashion snobs?) may appreciate the form of an Eames LCW chair, for example, I suspect they also appreciate what they think it represents, i.e. they've made it. Well... not necessarily. Maybe you're just another robber baron in training. A second-rate MCM Rockerfeller Jr.

Interior design is not so different from music, really, and I think the following diagram indicates everything wrong with the arbiters of fashion--don't let the title give it away:

http://pandagon.blogsome.com/images/music_snob_Venn_diagram.jpg

I found the article kind of obnoxious, too. It's one thing to acknowledge that there is an upper design echelon that is largely out of reach for those who are not well off, and that exclusivilty plays a big role in keeping a look desireable in that realm. That's just reality. But some of the comments were over the top. Like Ms. Kemble's "rant" about direct mail and DWR. Am I supposed to feel sorry for her exclusive clients whose cow hide rugs have been tainted by accessibility? Cry me a river.

In the end, if you're putting things in your home just because they are trendy, then your home may end up looking dated. But if you proudly display a pair of pink resin antlers because you really love them and they make you happy, then more power to you.

Yes, I thought Celerie's rant was pretty obnoxious and she should have complained to one of her friends, not the NYT. You can pretty much garauantee I will be looking at her stuff now as if it will be a flash in the pan...the trash can.

Actually I just realized how obnoxious my last post was, so I'd liek to recant. Sorry. I guess I'm just irritated at having to work today!

chris_94131 you hit the nail on the head. I was selling a spectacular 1960s Bovirk chair on Craigslist and had a couple come to see it; they hemmed and hawed about whether it would go with the Barcelona chairs and the Noguchi coffee table. And because the Bovirk was so unique and they'd never seen it before, they took a pass on a fabulous chair at a fabulous price. In the end, I was the winner because I've found a new home for a chair that I truly love. But I was so struck by this couple's lack of personal style. For them, if it hadn't been publicly sanctioned and absorbed into the mass culture, it was too risky, too individual. Exactly the opposite of my own sensibility.

Man of Steel,

Did you make that fireplace front on that Portage Park Bungalow on HGTV's, "What's my House Worth?"

Back to the subject:

It's interesting how natural objects like cowhides and antlers and man made objects like Eames furniture are being discussed as played out. Just hold on to them and in another 20 years they will be in style again. And they will never be considered played out in the hands of a good designer.

My cowhide may look like everyone else's except for the fact that it has my wife's Uncle's brand on it. So there.

More disturbing however is the idea that granite, crown moulding, "wood like" floors are tired. These are the selling points that realtors use to try and push units these days. Like other trends that were once luxuries, the demand has resulted in cheaper methods of production to turn luxuries into standards.

Are things "out" when they reach the masses, then?
It seems that as our world keeps getting smaller and smaller, thru the web and our global economy, it gets increasingly harder to stand out, to be unique.
Standing out is important for those that can afford it. It's sad but true that trends usually start with the affluent and those that cater to them. While in bygone days it could take years for said trends to trickle down to the common man, now it can take weeks, if not days. Find something cool and different, post a picture on a blog such as this and, you can bet that by tomorrow a factory somewhere in China is making millions of affordable replicas....
While, 50 years ago Balanese masks, for example, were the realm of the few that could afford to travel there and bring them back, now you can find any number of them on Craig's list or some import store for next to nothing. Have they lost their "value" in the process? Maybe. If, one buys something as a momento and you derive pleasure from that memory every time you see the object, then, no. But, if you bought something because it was the "it" item and now everyone has one, then, probably yes.
The funny thing that has happened to this democratizing of design is that the affluent are now constantly having to upgrade in order to continue to differentiate themselves from the rest of us... Such a lovely trap...

At any rate, what other thing irks me to no end?
One word: Tuscan.
It's time for it to go.
I declare "Tuscan" dead.
From now on "Umbrian" is in.
The difference you say?
None whatsoever, except that Umbria lies a few miles south of Tuscany. From now on you must all say things like, "my Umbrian Villa" in (fill in the blank) gated community, "Umbrian kitchen", "I want the Umbrian look".

You must all promise to take the Umbrian pledge and scoff and sneer at any reference to "Tuscan" as being beneath you. Even the common man has standards and now "Tuscan" has fallen bellow them.
Go forth and spread the new gospel of Umbria.
Amen.

Personally, I am also tired of the sunburst mirrors and the bentwood anything, but I do agree that that article is obnoxious. And the Domino mag editor should get off her high horse and realize that her maganizine is hugely responsible for trivializing so many of these trends. If they weren't putting them in issue after issue (and instead came up with original material for a change), we wouldnt be all so sick of them.