For keeping track of this fall’s decor trends, you might want your GPS handy. We’re headed into the urban jungle, then off to the Great Continents. Designers have also set the Wayback Machine for the 1970s.
A look at what’s ahead:
Metropolitan chic
Designers are using city streets as both literal and figurative inspiration this fall, with pieces that have urban edge. French designer Philippe Nigro’s Tu table for Ligne Roset is a sleek wood slab anchored to the floor with industrial, leggy, steel clamps in white, ebony or red. Target has a steel-based accent table with a faux concrete top. CB2’s fall collection includes a stoneware bowl etched with a tire tread pattern; Matthew Lew’s striking black and white prints of Chicago architectural details; and the Bingo rug, with a black, white and yellow graphic resembling city lights at night. Ted Boerner’s Reverie media cabinet, crafted of blackened steel and textured glass door panels, evokes an urban warehouse facade. Rare Device stocks Ferm Living’s cool map-of-Paris wallpaper. Brooklyn-based Haptic Labs embroiders quilts and throws with neighborhood maps of New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Bespoke Global co-founder and lighting designer Gwen Carlton enfolds a light bulb with a silvery sculpted branch to create her Urban Forest pendant.
Silk Road style
From Indian bazaars, African souks and Asian markets we’re seeing a feast of colors, patterns and style elements. Homegoods has floor poufs in vibrant cerise, lime and lemon hues in a riot of patterns. Watch for sequin embellishments, elephant and tiger motifs, homespun kalamkari prints, and metallic embroidery on cottons, silks and voiles from retailers such as Urban Outfitters and World Market. Pottery Barn goes Moroccan with mango wood carved wall medallions, and stitched leather poufs. (Poufs, those pillowy versions of the ottoman, are popping up all over this fall.) Wisteria has African kuba cloth pillows featuring graphic patterns woven from raffia-palm fibers. And at Anthropologie, indigo-hued bedding, pillows and notebooks in Old World and Japanese Shibori-style prints. Mumbai native Reeta Gyamlani uses intricately carved camel bone and resin to craft gorgeous consoles and side tables for her Farrago label, also available through Bespoke Global.
That ’70s Show
Before visions of macrame plant hangers and foiled wallpaper start crowding your brain, remember that the late ’60s and early ’70s also saw a lot of terrific design. Design Within Reach has reproduced several of Danish-born Verner Panton’s pieces, including the System 1-2-3 chair, a swivel-based, cantilevered ribbon of coolness, upholstered in orange or gray. There’s a tufted lounge version in chocolate leather. Panton’s Barboy is an ingenious ebony mobile cylinder of pivoting components. It’s not all serious chic, though — ’70s style accessories are affordable fun. The Marimekko collection at Crate and Barrel is the era at its best, with clean bright colors and prints that pop. Look for retro Bargello flame stitching, paisley prints and granny squares on rugs, toss pillows and other soft furnishings at Target and Pier 1.
