As the Fall 2014 High Point Furniture Market opens this week, the international design trend winds have already been stirring at the renowned Maison & Objet Show held in Paris last month, giving a preview of what we can expect in home fashion introductions in High Point this season and beyond.
Our friend Michelle Lamb, Editorial Director of The Trend Curve, who trend spots all over the world and is an authority on design directions, attended the recent Maison & Objet and also is here at #HPMkt, where she just gave the presentation, “Ten Top Trends for 2016” in the Retailer Resource Center today which I attended.
According to Lamb, there were three “big headlines” from Maison & Objet with implications for home and furniture fashion.
1. A warming trend that affected every single color and thrust greens into the spotlight.
“The warming trend affected every single color and style,” Lamb said. “Pastel values gave way to cozy midtones infused with livability. Even the blue family, that you think of as cool, was touched by this warmth.”
As shown in the Marie Daage plate above, gold metallic tones or other yellows got into the mix, even with blues like this Mediterranean Blue, which was a popular blue, along with Marine Blue, a slightly green cast navy.
The star of this warming color palette? “The most diverse collection of greens in memory was front and center,” Lamb said. “The mints that initially emerged are now backing off a bit in favor of a more sophisticated and slightly silvery green in the pastel range. It’s pistachio.”
The pistachio vase above is from IVV. Along with pistachio, other darker greens with hints of brown such as Dark Olive and Hunter Green were visible, and green was notably paired with black. “We see the green family building all the way through 2015 and into 2016, going quite strong,” Lamb said.
2. A new take on innovation: Abstract and distorted patterns, forms and geometrics.
As these wooden planters from Deesawat show, angularity, along with uneven, abstract and even distorted forms, was a prominent trend in Paris.
“We saw a 3D aspect we have not seen before,” Lamb said. “There were pieces that lean and pieces with an abundance of sides, uneven lines, colliding design elements – parallelograms and geometrics were prominent. It was impossible to attach a name to these inexact geometric figures,” she said. “We believe this is coming from a craving for innovation beyond technology and processes to pattern and form. Millennials especially especially are craving innovation since they have grown up with constant innovation.”
The dining table above, from Boca do Lobo Fortuna, is based on an elegant composition of scaled brass tubes supporting wavy-lined brass log rings, an allusion to the lifetime “rings” of a tree.
3. Mixed Media in Unexpected Combinations of Materials
The Serax lamps above mix concrete, glass and wood. “One vendor had a candleholder that mixed marble, wood and metal that looked fabulous,” Lamb said.
“We have done the mixed media story before. The last time, it was just before minimalism took hold. And last time, we saw a mixture of wood, metal, glass, wicker and rattan. This time the combinations are more unexpected, things like stone, concrete, stone and penshell.”
Michelle and the Trend Curve team have put together a detailed report now available, the Maison & Objet Trend Album September 2014, if you are interested in this fascinating report featuring over 130 images.
What a dynamic forecast that bodes exciting home fashion trends to be revealed at the #HPMkt this week!
Kim Darden Shaver
for
Leslie Hendrix Wood
Founder,
Editor In Chief
Hadley Court
Gracious Living. Timeless Design. Family Traditions.
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