World of Interiors 8: Get the Look

The home-owner loved it!

It’s got that country feel but it’s got that contemporary thing we were talking about. (Escape to the Country on the usual hideous lab kitchen with a useless island)

“Why did you go for colour blocks?” (burgundy and brown)
“I wanted to be edgy! I was thinking Mark Rothko!”
(Great Interior Design Challenge Never “It’s an Arts & Crafts house so I studied Voysey and William Morris.”)

Mood boards “help the home-owner visualise the design” – but they don’t actually show how the design will look, which is why the home-owner is sometimes shocked and horrified by the result. (GIDC)

A modern Victorian terrace with East End charm (theartofbespoke.com A nice Victorian terrace house has been given a vast glass extension on the back, and the entire interior has been turned into a trendy, hard-edged “living space” with roof lights.)

Why is interior design so backward-looking without being properly revivalist? Americans go for “Colonial” or  “Mission” – it's kind of Arts and Crafts. They also have a “craftsman” style. Jacobethan furniture is still being made as Old Charm (brand) and "priory style".

Vintaged Bohemia (Joss & Main): Interiors stylist and author Emily Chalmers’ look was once described as “eclectic floral bohemian”... From the vintage dresses that adorn her walls, to artful arrangements of retro furniture, her space is breathtaking in its originality.

And why does furniture always default to Louis XIV? Why not 1800s Greek revival? Louis XIV may be what designers mean by “French”. If it’s been stripped, repainted and distressed it’s “French farmhouse”. Stripped, painted white and “antiqued”, it’s “French provincial”.

Or is “French provincial” really Provençal? (“You’re something with a French provincial office – or a book of press-cuttings – but you’re not a woman”, as Margo Channing says in All About Eve. I always wondered why an American businesswoman would have a satellite office in rural France.)

Ahoy there. This weekend in @TheSTHome the interiors feature is how to do coastal chic like a grown up. No beach hut cushions, no bunting. (Katrina Burroughs ‏@Kat_Burroughs)


Choose from the following:

beachside chic
seaside modern (tongue and groove, Farrow & Ball “stone”.)

1950s Chalton (Victoria Wood on a tea-planter’s bungalow)
80s lobby chic (Mirror80.com who wants a whole flat in that style)
Call it Dynasty chic! (mirror80.com)
bordello chic
alpine surgical (kitchen)
Hollywood Regency
hippie deluxe (What hippie fashion became in the 70s. A downmarket version – hippie deluxe cheap ripoff – quickly hit the high street. It was ghastly.)

"Rustic" is now a catch-all term that has drifted a long way from its roots in clothes and furniture actually made by genuine rustics.

le style shabby (shabby chic in French)
Pacific Northwest cheesy
institutional chic (wired glass panels, two-tone walls – pale green/dark green, beige/brown)
French farmhouse (As somebody said, French farmers wouldn’t recognise it.)
witch kitsch
industrial scrape’n’reveal vibe (Hugh Pearman)

More here and links to the rest.