Design Trend Report From Paris: Desperately seeking exotica

Is there anything exotic left? With global exchanges, mass tourism, and the reduction of local differences, what indeed can we still consider distinct, unusual, and a wonder of the Elsewhere? Hollywood is so humdrum that one can just access Bollywood with a click of the remote. Lavender from Provence is becoming too commonplace – ubiquitous in bedroom to bathroom products. Bali’s frangipani can waft in with a flick of that incense stick. Time to reconfigure energies in the house? Call the Chinese feng shui expert down the road to analyze and realign them while you de-stress at the hammam, and do offer him some sushi from the fridge or a tajine, perhaps. The French, in particular, have been so open to the Other, welcoming and embracing cultures from their former colonies in Africa and Asia as well as other countries that capture their imagination, making the exotic so ever-present and accessible.

The newly opened Museé du Quai Branly, President Jacques Chirac’s grand projet costing 238 million euros, houses a collection of 300,000 pieces of non-Western art which has visitors queuing six days a week so they can go on dream journeys to distant lands. The Philippines is represented there, not to mention there was a Philippine festival exhibiting art objects at the Museé de l’Homme and craft products for sale at Galleries Lafayette, adding tinalak and piña to the Gallic fabric vocabulary. Modern Philippine furniture and décor also became a staple in French homes when Budji Layug’s Movement 8 was introduced at the premier houseware show of Maison & Objet a few years ago.

Spoiled for choice, what exotica for the home can be offered to the worldly global citizen who has a constantly renewing quest for an elsewhere in a disoriented age that dreams of fleeing the everyday grind? Maison & Objet’s trend laboratory stylists and forecasters tried once again to woo the jaded shopper with "Exotic," a trend itinerary that explores the mysteries of the elusive Other. Not just a geographic ramble or cheap exoticism exemplified by palm trees and natives, this itinerary encourages a genuine curiosity and attention to diversity, ridding itself of the clichés and dejà vu of exo-kitsch. A vagabond state of mind results in a multifaceted home, a cosmopolitan attitude for living together at the ends of the earth or right next door.

Wild Experience

Elizabeth Leriche’s design map brings us to the exuberance of new Amazonias in a sensory experience that leads all the way to the tropics of the "supernatur-real": a new vision of luxurious, wild nature. The centerpiece is a virtual garden created by the plastician Miguel Chevalier with his work "Sur-Natures" projected onto a giant screen.

So you want exotic? Monsieur Chevalier will give you plants you’ve never seen before! What appears as video projections of graphic foliage and flora in vibrant colors are digital plants that grow in real time and have electronic captors that allow them to interact with human presence. Upon entering the virtual garden, the plants sway and greet you. Come close and they react by acting coy or pleading gently. Digital flora grows and multiplies as visitors come and go. A programmed "morphogenetic code" directs their birth, growth and death. It’s a laboratory of the unusual that calls forth a new way of viewing the natural by breaking into the confines of nature gone wild, turned artificial or hybrid. A feeling of serenity is somehow achieved through this electronica – a bit strange, but definitely quite an experience that takes you to the elsewhere. Could this be the garden of the future when global warming, massive deforestation, nuclear destruction, and all the sins of mankind have taken their toll?

Mirages, Mirages!

In search of the exotic, Vincent Grégoire of Agence Nelly Rodi asks, "Could a feminine, sensual vision of an Orient unveiling its mysteries be nothing but an optical illusion? And could this dreamlike, voluptuous elsewhere be just a mirage that evaporates right when you think you’ve attained it?" So he proposes to veer away from the clichés of folklore by conjuring modern odalisques, Queens of Saba and Princesses of the Sands in a reinvented, dreamlike, sublimated Orient.

Despite what the prophets of discord may claim, Gregoire believes that "style isn’t burdened by the clash of civilizations. The world of the home welcomes the carnal marriage of East and West with open arms."

Taking us somewhere between desert and oasis, "Mirages,Mirages!" is an ode to sensuality, an interplay of transparent veils and sensual tones – sugar crystals, pearls of milk, tears of gold, a rose of the sands, chips of amber – all celebrating the curving lines and languid shapes where absolute femininity and delicacy reign. But it’s an Orientalism stripped of exotic caricatures and folkloric fantasies, to give way to an aesthetics of softness and fluidity.

"The poetics of the curve and the art of geometric perfection feed into a formal repertoire where the arabesque calligraphizes places and objects with the stark grace of sand dunes,"notes Gregoire.

A multicultural pastiche and tacky exoticism is definitely the danger here, so one needs to exercise a certain discipline in selection, an inventiveness in composition and an emphasis on rich textures and luxurious materials. It has to be a dream place where you would want to be and one that you have never seen before, not an ersatz Las Vegas recreation of an oriental fantasy.

French Ethnic

If Nelly Rodi says exotic is there and Elizabeth Leriche says it’s elsewhere, François Bernard insists, "It’s right here – in France." "Why seek the archipelagos of our marvels ever farther off? The daily objects produced by France’s regional traditions can be transformed into objects of curiosity."

The fact that France has already localized the exotic by absorbing so many multicultural influences, their own indigenous culture has been de-localized, distancing the average Frenchman from his heritage. Thus Bernard assembles quotidian but quintessentially French objects that are familiar or somehow still so, and are fascinating because they carry with them a creative continuity. This comprehensive collection of objects is made for all of life’s rituals: from domestic rituals like upkeep, conservation, and protection to spiritual ones like purification, illumination, and offering rituals; and even rituals of inebriation, capture, and mutation.

Funny that traditional French products like porcelain and earthenware dinner service and wooden cooking implements are referred to as ethnic but considering the proliferation and influx of mass-produced items, these handmade, traditional pieces could very well have the rarity and exotic qualities of the ethnic. There is the risk of them disappearing in the future when they will be deemed too inefficient and expensive to produce, thus the call to preserve these crafts and treat them as the most prized exotica that the French could ever desire.

Analogously, it’s a call for all other peoples to preserve their heritage. Isn’t the Baguio of our childhood, with all its woodcraft and ethnic art objects turning into an ukay-ukay center of the world with craftsmen preferring to sell Gap and DVDs? We have to realize that these objects of memory are precious and irreplaceable. That’s why there’s a luxury to using these heritage pieces of our ancestors, lovingly handmade and used from generation to generation in the various rituals of life. There’s a feeling of uniqueness that comes from impeccable workmanship and quality materials in the face of today’s market of objects, which is quickly dashed off and reproduced by the container-loads.

Just as precious are the traditional skills and know-how like sculpture, painting, pottery, and embroidery, which have to be kept alive and made to evolve through updated contemporary incarnations and interpretations. It’s this realization and mindset that makes for an essential foundation before we sketch out new rules of a cosmopolitan hospitality, steering us to a distinct cartography of style and the creation of wondrous, imaginary geographies. Only then can we find the elusive exotic and maybe the even rarer exo-chic.