THE SUPER ‘80s HOUSE

The 1980s became a "concept" era, one of consumerism and excess, with the prefix "super" omnipresent. We had "super-efficiency" in every respect — the first supermodels, fashion doyennes whose reputations were hyped by their devoted designers, over-the-top themselves; "super fitness" at the gym; "superstars," whose names only needed to be singular, such as Madonna and Prince; and "super-designers," the extroverts and individualists of design, most of whom possessed an abundant talent for self-promotion. For many, the 1980s was a period of playful vulgarity and excessive fantasy. It became a time when the role of intuition and emotion won over reason, where the artist was better known than the engineer, and where the seemingly beautiful challenged the useful.

French designer Philippe Starck, who enjoys his self-proclaimed bad boy image, became undoubtedly the ultimate "super-designer" or "designer’s designer" (to use another overexposed 1980s term) of the latter 20th century. A creative artist who applied his skills to mundane everyday objects, and unique in countless ways, Starck also represented an entire generation of French furniture designers, including Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti, Marie-Christine Dorner, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Their success was due not only to their rather unorthodox education (Starck, Garouste, and Bonetti all graduated from Paris’s forward-thinking Ecole Camondo), but also to the support of the government-formed Valorisation de L’Innovation dans l’Ameublement (VIA). With new design and architecture taking place, President Mitterrand envisaged that France would become renowned once again as a nation committed to high style. In 1983 Mitterrand proved his own commitment by commissioning five leading French designers, including Starck, to create a set of interiors for the Elysée Palace.

Philippe Stark was propelled to fame in 1984 when the VIA commissioned him to design a chair, following a Carte Blanche award for his "Miss Dorn" chair (1982). The new three-legged chair, with a rounded back and a single hole for a finger to lift it at the rear, was spotted by the owners of the planned Café Costes in Paris. Subsequently the owners commissioned Starck to design the entire restaurant. Until its closure in 1990, the restaurant’s ultra-designed interior became the focus of pilgrimage for the world’s hip and fashionable. The chair itself is still a status symbol in homes, offices, and public interiors everywhere.

Another French superstar designer who came to great fame in the 1980s was Andrée Putman. She was already well known in the 1960s and 1970s for her work on the magazines L’Oeil and Femina and for developing a budget range of home accessories for the French chain-store Prisunic. In 1985 Putman designed Morgans Hotel on New York’s Madison Avenue for Ian Schraeger and Steve Rubell. It was considered to be the first "designer" hotel, which in turn spawned many more before the decade came to a close. Apart from numerous hotels, she designed private homes, museums, and night clubs, as well as the interior of Concorde. The "goddess of design" will always be noted for being, as she puts it, an "amateur archeologist of modern times."

Through the company Ecart International, which she established in Paris in 1978, Putman single-handedly gave a new lease on life to forgotten furniture designs from the early part of the century. She researched original blueprints, sketches, and plans of pieces by Eileen Gray, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Pierre Chareau, Réne Herbst, and others, and then re-issued the furniture. Hugely different from reproductions, which tend to merely emulate prior styles and forms without the original technical virtuosity, these "re-editions" were staple pieces throughout all fashionable homes. Since Putman recognized its potential, the simple triple-slatted Mallet-Stevens chair (1927) has become virtually impossible to avoid in the most modern cafés on all continents.

Both Putman’s and Starck’s furniture, lighting, and interior designs, as well as their philosophies, found acclaim on a mass scale, earning them a places in the popular imagination, as did new work by a band of highly talented radicals in Italy, headed by the flamboyant Ettore Sottsass. From the late 1970s, an entirely new vivid, brash look had been heralded by Sottsass’s Memphis group of designers.

A resurgence of the 1920s, the 1980s witnessed matte black and chrome again, although stainless steel became a sturdy replacement at times for the less durable chrome. Films such as Nine and a Half Weeks helped affirm the matte black and white minimalist interior; the Mickey Rourke character possesses the ultimate in high-chic with his Le Corbusier chaise, minimal bedroom closets, and, memorably, the "designer" kitchen. Retailers Terence Conran, Joseph Ettedgui, and Paul Smith all introduced matte black elements into their stores and newly wealthy bankers fitted their loft spaces with the most masculine sleekness. The decade had become a period for collecting – either re-editions or wholly contemporary pieces of furniture. The work of Israeli-born Ron Arad, whose One-off company produced singularly fascinating sculptural furniture, and the Tunisian-born Tom Dixon are examples of highly collectible furniture, as is that of the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata. As a foil to this rather more stark approach, the Memphis group was playfully creating Post-Modern designs in bright contrasting laminates. Yet, for many, the new "ethnic", a streamlined translation of the 1960s and 1970s naturalistic style, was still the most comfortable way to live.

As early as 1965, Albert Kornfeld, one-time editor-in-chief of American House & Garden, commented in his book Interior Decorating and Encyclopedia of Styles: "Changes in decoration mirror the changing pattern of our daily lives. Less frequent and far less drastic than changes in fashions, they occur often enough to give rise to distinct trends, or ‘looks’. Popular among the contemporary looks are the Potpourri Look, the Far East Look, the Provincial Look..."

He goes on to say that, as the fashion-conscious look to couturiers in Paris and New York, so the design-conscious look at the current trends in home decoration by leading practitioners. Twenty years later, naturalistic styles remained the most popular choice for home-owners due to their ease, comfort, and adaptability. They mirrored the changing pattern of more ecologically concerned daily lives. The work of top interior designers adopted an almost Zen-like approach. California-based decorator Michael Taylor (dubbed the "James Dean of decorators" by Diana Vreeland) said: "My creed is simplicity." His naturalistic approach made use of fossilized stone, Yosemite slate, logs, and wicker. From 1984, French designer Christian Liaigre took inspiration from the East, as did Taylor, and he was also fascinated by African and Polynesian cultures.

In the 1980s, London store owner David Champion consciously adopted the Potpourri Look for his own London home, which has retained as much rustic charm today as when it was originally coordinated. His decorating vocabulary – earthy tones, neutral hues, natural materials, and use of colourful patterned fabrics and rugs – can easily be adapted to suit many homes, and with the individualistic approach can become highly personalized. Many ethnic objects of the greatest aesthetic value prove inexpensive to buy, whether found in import stores locally or sourced abroad. "Found" objects are always the most personal additions, relying purely on opinion.

Ethnic was just one style prevalent in the 1980s. Apart from the minimal monochrome look, a third, brighter force arrived by way of Memphis. Although having first emerged in the 1960s, pop art and culture influenced the 1980s, as did classical architecture and 1950s kitsch. Some of designer Ettore Sottsass’s early inspirations came from travel to America in the 1960s, which translated through to his later work with the Memphis design group. Formed in 1980, with Sottsass’s young friends Michele de Lucchi, George Sowden, Nathalie du Pasquier, Marco Zanini, and Aldo Cibic, the Italian Memphis group dictated the new direction in color. After the browns, plums, sludge tones, mirrored surfaces, and neon that were so pervasive throughout the 1970s, primary color became an integral element in 1980s interior design.