Awaiting us on each white-draped round table is a design quiz. "Decifer [sic] the trend," reads the first challenge. The designers and I confer. What is the symbolism behind this graphic of a flag showing a white cross on a grey background? Are we in for a spell of Swiss Army Knife kitchens? Let's get serious here. Switzerland is neutral. The colour is grey. By George, we've got it-and if we hadn't, we would know very shortly because we are gathered together at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel to hear House & Home Media president Linda Reeves and her colleagues forecast trends, design and otherwise, for 2006.
Canadian TV's best-known interiors guru, Reeves is very enthusiastic about Vancouver. "It wasn't until this year I realized how forward you are," she tells her audience, explaining that she is now "so ready" for the minimalism she found overly cold some years ago when she observed it in local design wiz Martha Sturdy's house in West Vancouver. Reeves visits hundreds of homes and she talks to a lot of people, which gives her more than a passing acquaintance with the Zeitgeist. Currently, she says, "Everyone is editing. Nobody wants to be a pack rat. Purging is the new therapy." She's right on that. Those flying the nest are leaving the stuff behind and furnishing pads with one trip to IKEA. Empty nesters are calling in professional declutterers. Reeves reports, "Someone said, 'I want to have less and be more.'?" Luxury is redefined, she continues. "Now it means only having the best of what you can afford. Having one perfect towel."
What do you do when it's in the wash, I wonder while I remember that being on the cusp of style is not as simple as chucking almost everything out and living with what's left. If it were, all the elegant interior designers here would be moping around the streets of Yaletown begging for old copies of Wallpaper*. What Reeves is setting her audience up for are the top 10 new trends, as defined by Canadian House & Home magazine and presented by editor Cobi Ladner. Interesting, but what enquiring minds want to know is how these trends will play out in Vancouver.
In the lead is a look called "the Paris Apartment". Typifed by oversize damask patterns, it's "a new take, a blend of feminine and bold together". Fire up the Edith Piaf but, joking aside, the popularity of local stores like the Cross (1198 Homer Street) and La Petite Maison (4439 West 10th Avenue) suggests this one fits some city tastes like a crystal shoe. The next trend, "Playful and Contemporary", translates as whimsical accessories and art. "I've got one of those," I say, nudging the designer sitting beside me, when, on the screen, a traditional English garden gnome appears reformatted in green glass as a toothpick holder. A lamp base shaped like a giant thumbtack, an ape-printed pillow-either could take the curse off a too-serious room. This trend looks promising, but I give two thumbs down to the threat of "neutral grey…happening like crazy". Maybe back East where vivid blue skies accompany wintry days. The vibe would be suicide-inducing here, and saturated fuchsias and oranges together, another design direction, may be too overwhelming for the watery West Coast light we suffer nine months of the year.
On we roll. Given how many Vancouverites are lofters, the trend toward wall art could have legs. Wall art? It doesn't mean your existing paintings or posters (when does any design trend ever mean anything you already own?), but "an installation" such as paper sculpture or a 3-D appliqué. As Ladner points out, this city is well out ahead with "?'the Eco Chic'…that makes us feel better about our consumerism." Think recycled glass plates, buckets made from old tires, and the resurgence of green as a décor colour. Next we go from "cleaning up the environment to messing it up again" with a trend for boho bedrooms that, cluttered and cozy, are the antithesis of modernism and the boutique-hotel look. Lost in bewilderment as to why anyone would want their bedroom to look like a hotel-got it: the minibar-I skip a few beats in the same way that I missed last year's trend for "Rustic Modern". Whatever. It's evolved, anyway, into western-not "cowboy desert" but "cowboy mountain". (Coming to your nearest multiplex, the genre-bending Broke ChairBack Mountain.) Meanwhile, the movie Capote encapsulates the tight upholstery, real crystal, and "New Formality" beloved of "young fogeys".
A trend that "came out of nowhere", says Cobi Ladner, is the urge to surround ourselves with the folkloric-not finds from India and Thailand but Eastern European objects. Prague is a hot destination, she says. Tempted? You know what to do. Or just pick up some of those nesting dolls from IKEA.
http://www.straight.com/node/11601
