A friend of mine used to cover fashion for a colour supplement. She said the key to covering the couture shows—in addition to carrying Smarties and plasters at all times—was to view the garments not as clothes but as a key to unlocking the code of what we’d be wearing several seasons hence. Gowns with skirts so wide two models could barely navigating a runway together? Expect voluminous, but wearable, dresses to be hanging on every rack next year. That’s an oversimplification, but you get the gist.
The same applies to decorator show houses.
All photos are by Nickolas Sargent from the 2024 Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach. This one by McCann Design Group is titled “Le Tropical.”
Case in point: This year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach, which was open in February and March. With a few exceptions, these space were… a lot. But taken as a whole (and you can see the gallery here), the showcase displays three elements that will remain a focus of designers, their clients, retailers, and the like for the next few years at least. Personally I’m delighted by all of them.
1) Texture. Layers of texture can make up for a lot of sins, particularly sins of omission regarding colour. Designers have long known this, of course, but at least in my experience, laypersons don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about texture as they do about palettes and where to place the TV.
The room shown above and below, by Rinfret Ltd., is very subdued, colour-wise. But oh, the textures! The floor alone has four: stone tile, a ribbed rug, and atop that a natural-fiber rug with an overlay of coral-shape cutouts. The duvet cover and the settee upholstery are embroidered for a sense of depth; seashells abound on the bed, the cornices, and the wall fabrics within the picture-frame mouldings; seashell-shape sconces are crafted of rock crystal; a wicker canine stands guard next to a smooth wood desk. Introducing even just a few of those textures into a humble room would elevate it to extraordinary.
2) Curves. Curvaceous furniture has enjoyed a resurgence during the past few years, and thank goodness! Most rooms are rectangular, as are most tables, beds, storage furniture, and the like. But along with round tables, bucket chairs, semicircular sectionals, and waterfall kitchen islands, the show house flaunted curves in other ways. One example: the scalloped “wainscoting” in McCann Design Group’s room seen below, complemented by the rounded corners of the millwork.
In the room above, “Golden Hour” by OBMI, the curves are both symmetrical (the tables, the urn) and asymmetrical (the mirror, the wall art, that amazing chair). And let’s not overlook the organic, undulating stripes of the wallpaper.
3) Looking up. Aside from haint blue veranda ceilings in the Southern U.S. and new parents applying glow-in-the-dark star decals on the ceilings of their little ones’ bedrooms, white or magnolia ceilings have been de rigueur. This is much to the dismay of designers, who typically shake their head when clients overlook the decorative potential of the so-called fifth wall. I think many people fear that anything but a white ceiling will make a room feel smaller. Yes, that can sometimes be true. But not always.
Granted, the above dining room by Tristan Harstan & Company is far from small. But that golden ceiling would give a visual lift to even a bog-standard-height room. The statement-making chandelier also draws the eye upward.
Above is another spectacular ceiling, courtesy of Phoebe Howard.
And one more, in Redmond Aldrich Design’s “Peony Pavilion.” This room hits the tricast of texture, curves, and statement-making ceiling. Would I live in it? Not any more than I’d wear Robert Sun’s “Bleeding Love” spring/summer 2024 couture creation. (In fact, I’m not really sure what trend I’m supposed to parse from that ensemble; I’ll have to ask my friend.) But this room, and the other rooms, show us what we’ll be seeing more of and, more important, provide inspiration and a-ha moments as to how we can make particular elements our own.
This is the Robert Wun design, btw.