Ruthless Criticism and Losing Friends
Increasingly Expected Interiors
“Good design is in no way dependent on money. I like to spend the minimum of money and yet gain the maximum effect. Style is not what you do but how you do it.” — David Nightingale Hicks
In recent years interior design has become increasingly dull, formulaic and expected, with countries around the globe developing particular “looks” seen ad infinitum — many of which share the exact same colour palette, fabrics, furniture and finishes. Indeed a well-decorated, photogenic interior is becoming a prerequisite to a generation weaned on social media, who don’t know anything pre-internet and who want to ensure that every aspect of their lives — both in the real world as well as the digital — is seen as “on trend”, au courant and curated to within an inch of its life. This is something that can be seen reflected in the accounts of numerous “fashion influencers”, who are featuring their interiors as a backdrop to paid posts and collaborative marketing campaigns, with the holy grail of desirable furnishings being #pierrejeanneret (1896-1967) — and in particular, the Swiss architect’s iconic cane-back chairs and “pigeonhole” desks. In itself this is a phenomenon bolstering a healthy trade in mid-century fakes, as lesser rung “content creators”, or those desperate to emulate their online idols, and with insufficient funds to acquire an original (one might easily expect to pay upwards of £7000 for a Jeanneret “Office” chair at auction) are settling for knock-offs that to the uninitiated look just like the real deal. With a plethora of interiors-themed Instagram accounts catering to an audience baying for the latest trends, one sees the work of those who successfully capture the zeitgeist crop up again and again, for e.g. the various homes of super-collectors Emmanuel De Bayser and François Laffanour, as well as those created by the likes of Jacques Grange (b. 1944), Peter Marino (b. 1949) and Alexandra and Michael Misczynski, the husband-and-wife team behind Atelier AM, to name but a few. The reason so many of these images circulate on repeat is that they are the brainchild of individuals with a particularly refined sense of colour, scale and proportion, and who are able to create an overall atmosphere that is uniquely their own. On the other hand, some are nothing more than gaudy, attention-grabbing, editorially pleasing interiors that are easy to shoe-horn into advertiser-driven articles about wallpapers and soft furnishings. The problem, as with fashion, is that people en masse tend to want what they see, as, after all, there’s safety in numbers and accordingly, everything in interiors is starting to look very much the same.
An interior by American decorator Billy Baldwin, who, whilst inspired by the European interiors, disdained the florid, baroque and rococo in favor of the clean-cut, hard-edged and pared-dow
An elegant eighteenth-century duplex on rue de Verneuil, Paris, once home to Jean-Michel Frank, with interiors elegantly re-imagined by French interior decorator Pierre Yovanovitch
Of course, it’s not only clients to blame, there’s a whole new generation of “millennial” and “Gen Z” interior designers, not to forget those working in FF&E, who rely far too heavily on Pinterest, Instagram and mainstream interiors magazines such as Elle Decor, House & Garden and Architectural Digest as barometers of what’s hot and what’s not. It wouldn’t hurt once in a while for them to open a book, or for that matter, for design firms to invest more in creating well-appointed libraries, and even to provide more in terms of on-the-job design education, whether that be in the form of workshops or visiting speakers (as is commonplace for e.g. in the legal sector). Equally, numerous, more established designers are just plain lazy, regurgitating the same things seen again and again rather than making any real attempt to push boundaries or to give their patrons something a little more unusual and unexpected. That needn’t mean an interior so outré and avant-garde that it scares off bread-and-butter-clientele, but perhaps a more nuanced and clever use of pattern and colour, à la David Hicks (1929-1998); a designer who broke away from the staid and stuffy English style seen dominating town and country, eschewing the prevailing trend for treating stately houses with kid gloves, and instead, having the audacity to do something a little more daring. Into the antediluvian matrix of blue-blood interiors, he introduced geometrically patterned carpets, clashing colours and creatively composed compositions of curios and artworks — for which he coined the phrase “tablescapes”. Hicks’ bold, modern interiors were the acme of jet-set chic and entirely reinvigorated the knocked-about English country house “look”, which in the “swinging sixties” already seemed outmoded and stale; pioneering instead a new take on eclecticism, where he juxtaposed eighteenth-century English and Louis XV furniture with chrome and violet leather upholstery — advocating that “the more shades of a particular colour you put together the better the result will be”. At the same time, Hicks’ work was ordered and harmonious, embracing classical principles of regularity and harmonic proportion, so that nothing ever seemed vulgar or out of place.
An wonderful red-lacquered hallway by Alexandra and Michael Misczynski, the husband-and-wife team behind Atelier AM, demonstrating their inherent ability to create extraordinary, eclectically curated interiors
“He killed every flower in his soul,” said Min Hogg (1938-2019), the now-iconic founding editor of The World of Interiors magazine, in reference to Hicks’ entirely understandable hatred of chintz. “His was a rigorous, very tailored look. So much of it was about control. There wasn’t a wrinkle or crease anywhere.” Perhaps most importantly, he was outspoken, he wasn’t afraid to have an opinion, or to go against the grain, his oeuvre so extensive, in part, because if he found something ugly he would redesign it himself — whether that be houses, hotels, restaurants, gardens a nightclub, and once, even a hairstyle. “I never sit in a chair, choose a fabric, admire or criticize my family’s clothes, without being intensely aware of what I’m looking at,” Hicks once explained. “Dedication to design means ruthless criticism and losing friends.” Similarly, Veere Grenney (b. 1949) manages to infuse such classic interiors with a contemporary edge, in a way that is at once serene and exciting. Yet by and large the UK interiors sector seems pre-occupied by rehashing the sort of “shabby chic” interiors made famous by Hogg in the early nineteen-eighties. Whilst British architects continue to fuse traditional materials and craftsmanship with unapologetically contemporary design, as can be seen for e.g. in the work of David Chipperfield (b. 1953), John Pawson (b. 1949) and Meredith Bowles, founder of Mole Architects, the interiors industry seems somewhat more confused.
At one end of the spectrum are the traditionalists, steadfast in reproducing cliched period interiors, replete with William Morris wallpaper and rush matting, and at the other, those catering to that bracket of the 0.01% who seemingly lack any degree of subtlety or refinement, and desire homes clad in acres of marble and chrome (NB executed well, such glitzy, mirror-clad attention-seeking interiors can be a perfectly wonderful thing, as seen in the work of numerous Art Deco designers, for e.g. René Herbst (1981-1982), Marc du Plantier (1901-1975) and Paul Dupré-Lafon (1900-1971) — but there’s rarely the same eye for detail and certainly never the same budget). The late, great, André Leon Talley (1948-2022) once said, “It’s a famine of beauty, honey! My eyes are starving for beauty!” On that note, and in terms of interiors, it would be wonderful to see something new, or at least an original take on an existing stylistic genre. To do so means more than merely combing through design monographs and knocking off pre-existing architectural details, such as fireplaces, panelling and architraves, as well as, often, furniture and fixtures, with the ambition, presumably, of duping an audience with little or no design knowledge into believing such copy-cat interiors are, in fact, original and inspired creations. By no means is it to suggest that every great designer needs to reinvent the wheel — and in essence, a building, an interior or a piece of furniture is often very similar to that which has gone before, it’s just the spin and the way a designer reinterprets the original for a contemporary audience; which might for e.g. mean subverting or distorting architectural orders, elements and motifs, as can be seen in the work of numerous Baroque architects, who essentially put a theatrical spin on classicism, in a way that felt exciting and unexpected.
As it happens both Hicks and Grenney were heavily influenced by masterful American decorator Billy Baldwin (1903-1983) who had the unique ability of always remaining “of the moment”, whether in a more traditional or contemporary sense. Indeed American designers often did a far better job of modernising, reinventing and re-invigorating classic English style, and indeed a great deal of that produced between 1940 and 1980 is far better than anything being done in the UK today. Markedly, Baldwin understood the importance of the correct architectural detailing complementing the best decoration; something which, in contemporary design is often eschewed in favour of bumping up the FF&E budget as a superficial means of garnering magazine attention. Of course, every country is heavily inspired by its design “heyday” and whilst in Britain that perhaps explains the obsession with pastiche Georgian and Victorian, in the US there is a strong focus on mid-century modern interiors of the sort seen in Slim Aarons’ (1916-2006) seductively stylish and cinematic photographs. This physically manifests itself in an over-reliance on furniture by twentieth-century greats such as Jean Royère (1902-1981) (and in particular his whimsically rotund and over-stuffed Ours Polaire sofas), Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) and Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999).
One may as well refer to it as the “Ellen DeGeneres” effect, as the serial flipper’s multiple homes have been the subject of so many magazine spreads that they have, to an extent, come to define contemporary American style; resulting in myriad designers regurgitating the same white-walled, eclectically furnished, Kilim strewn interiors for a skittish and insecure client-base desperate to fit in, and adverse to anything that might rock the boat (excluding those who gravitate towards the hyper-camp Aarons-on-acid design style of Martyn Lawrence Bullard (b. 1967)). There are of course a number of designers with a more nuanced understanding of design c. 1920-1970, producing masterful contemporary re-interpretations of such period interiors. However, whilst, undoubtedly far more sophisticated, they are still not all that original, and stylistically speaking, rely very heavily on the past in terms of materials, detailing and proportion. Of course to a general public who en masse know very little of those designers frequently referenced, the likes of Djo-Bourgeois (1898-1937), Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1942) and Ward Bennett (1917-2003) it might all seem terribly original, but one has to wonder when we’re going to see a greater degree of innovation and originality.
An interior by English Decorator David Hicks, with the rooms simple shapes and moody colours serving to emphasise the graphic pattern of the floor
France and Belgium differ somewhat in terms of their approach to interiors, with the overall aesthetic being more of the moment, especially when it comes to embracing contemporary designers and makers. Vincent Van Duysen (b. 1962), Pierre Yovanovitch (b. 1965), Charles Zana (b. 1960), Axel Vervoordt (b. 1947) and Joseph Dirand (b. 1974) have made an enormous contribution in terms of what if anything can be considered a twenty-first-century style, which has, in turn, influenced designers around the globe. However, certain stylistic signifiers have become so identifiable and desirable that they are at risk of becoming almost cliché in terms of overuse by interior stylists, “up-and-coming” talent and furniture manufacturers desperate to cash in on editorially pleasing magazine fodder. In particular, there’s an overabundance of white boucle, Venetian plaster, curves (both in terms of architecture and furniture), Kagan-esque sofas, brushed brass fixtures and crittall. Indeed over the past year, there have been a number of widely publicised interiors, both in France and the UK that for all intents and purposes look as if an office junior was asked to make a mood board of every single French interiors trend, which were, in turn, shoe-horned into a single space with little or no thought for whether or not any of it actually works together. The result is confusing, to say the least, with a conflation of disparate design styles — for e.g. Art Deco, 1950’s Italian and Moroccan — sitting awkwardly alongside one another, offering little more than an interesting backdrop to Instagram “selfies” — which in the case of bars and restaurants might perhaps be the desired outcome. Eclectic interiors can be a wonderful thing, and some of the most celebrated collectors of all time, Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008), Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018), Henri Samuel (1904-1996) and Roger Vivier (1907-1998) to name but a few, are famous for juxtaposing pieces from different eras and epochs. However, in each and every example the shell, ie the fabric and architecture — which is essentially the glue that holds such varying, diverse collections of art and objet together — was consistent, continuous, well-detailed and well-conceived.
There is of course absolutely nothing wrong with taking inspiration from the past, but it should be with the aim of reinvention and making it relevant to a contemporary audience, and not merely the lazy regurgitation of detailing and architectural elements that are the work of another designer. Instead of plagiarism, there should be a more analytical approach to design, with those in the profession asking themselves what it is that makes an interior desirable, whether it be the colour palette, materiality, lighting or even the proportion of architectural elements, and to use them with the aim of designing something which is unmistakably of the moment, and not merely a rewrite of that which has gone before. It needn’t necessarily mean the avant-garde space-age design style of Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) or Daniel Libeskind (b. 1946), as inevitably this isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but for e.g. taking an eighteenth-century panelling, stripping it back and using those same proportions and materials in a contemporary interior, or using a colour-palette associated with Georgian architecture so as to instil a similar sense of classical calm. Complete pastiche after all seems a bizarre thing when one considers the evolution of design from Elizabethan and Jacobean to Georgian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and International Modern, each celebrating advances in technology and materials to create works of architecture and art previously unattainable. Some might argue that during this evolution, after hundreds of years, and especially following the radical and profound change of thinking following the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars, everything has already been done; but isn’t it part of human nature to challenge, to stimulate and to seek out what’s new? It would be a truly depressing prospect to suppose one can look forward to nothing more in architecture, art and design than a clever juxtaposition of that which has already been done. Coming out of a pandemic that prevented us from meeting new people, seeing new things and making new connections, surely we should embrace whatever possibilities might come our way and the idea that something new and exciting, a new chapter, a new design style, might, with any luck, be just around the corner.