Trend report from Paris: Out with banality, in with singularity!
Yes, it has been assaulting us for some time: The onslaught of mass uniformity and thought less conformity. A pre-packaged, functional “modern” look that makes our interiors feel like just another room in a hotel chain. It’s a phenomenon that has inured us to what living is really all about, eliciting a collective yawn after yawn after yawn, if not making us total zombies in our own homes.
To save us from this style limbo, the forecasters at the recent “Maison & Objet” show in Paris devised a trend itinerary of “Singularité,” an escape from the ordinary, a going against the grain of “the same for all everywhere,” a reaffirmation of every individual’s uniqueness and freedom of choice. Although social networks and other forms of community have never been so fashionable, they have created a need for recognition, which has become a worldwide groundswell. Individualism becomes practically non-existent and borders are disappearing, but in this world of inter-connectedness, there is an ever-greater urgency for the individual to shout out and be heard.
Hors piste by François Bernard
If the past seasons have set rigid rules on traversing the tricky slopes of decorating, Francois Bernard enjoins us to go “Hors Piste” or “Out of the Way.” His theme is based on the premise that our present age is based on performance. Optimum performance is required at every level, observes Bernard: “Foremost on a human level, we have to stay young, good-looking, live to be over 100 years old, and have permanent control over our life and living space. Performance is also required of the objects and consumer goods that surround us.” It is no surprise then, that sports, which have extreme performance codes, are a source of inspiration for the design. Bernard’s vision is the polar opposite of design based on repetition and memory, creating a hybrid of the semantic fields and techniques of sports to break away from a historical formal language.
The sports influence from horseriding, boxing and football to snow and surf sports give free rein for interpreting new style registers. Furniture and accessories are reinvented with carbon fiber, rubber and plastic netting. “Taut and supple, flexible, lightweight and toned, they give form a new, athletic feel,” says Bernard. He explains that a sport object’s primary characteristic is hyper-functionality: “Creating a hyper-functional furniture piece or object means creating an archetype of good seating, sleeping well and good cooking . . . And yet the result is greater than this obvious initial goal. The object transcends the genre and reveals playful poetry, luxurious innovation, serene well-being.”
Aside from accentuating the object’s visual tension, the sports influence improves its technical quality. “Suddenly it is behaving like a champion, a competitor, a specialist. It claims for itself the semantic field of sports objects which it both echoes and plays with.”
This sports revival also has a technological dimension. Konstantin Grcic adopts the ultra-light yet high-performance characteristics from windsurfing and paragliding to create the Waver armchair for Vitra: A supple, hyper-comfortable armchair suitable for indoor and outdoor use. Paola Navone, on the other hand, transposes industrial techniques from automobiles, ski and surf equipment onto domestic objects like her Eu/phoria armchair for Eumenes, thus creating a new graphic language. 3-D upholstery materials are revolutionizing the surfaces of chairs with visible protection through quilting, padding and topstitching that call to mind skiing and fencing protective gear. “They structure the form they envelope,” observes Bernard.
Couplicité by Vincent Grégoire for NellyRodi
Vincent Gregoire asks, “Is the couple the ultimate accessory for contemporary stylishness?” He notes that the figure of the couple is fodder for fantasy among the sentimental who long for love stories and celebrity pairings. But it also plays a more important role in putting together the broken pieces of a society fragmented by the Big Bang of change. “As they wait for consoling guide posts, people are saying yes to a return to ‘the two of us,’ which is far from kowtowing to the conformity of bourgeois codes.”
In this age of instability when many are breaking with solidarity, Gregoire believes that couples are a positive role model and commitment has become a desirable sign of uniqueness. “Two is better than one, human ties and complicity are taking their stand as a form of resistance to rampant solitude, building ramparts against hard times. Happiness is found in ‘coupledom’ and not only in love emotions. Creativity is increasingly important to pairs working as units of design and production. There are innumerable works created by duos for whom the combination of talents, the complementarity of views and a sense of cultural diversity give rise to innovative gestures.”
For Gregoire, objects also seem to be looking for their soulmates: “We are seeing many couplings of forms, materials, colors and textures which reflect this fascination with Doppelgängers.” On exhibit were Siamese or twin objects, mirror objects, glued objects, intertwined objects and objects mixing influences or design styles. “Things are pairing off like the metaphor of a new amorous order: German artist Valentin Loellmann has designed a furniture collection called “Mr. & Mrs.” while designer Jeroen van Laarhoven drew inspiration from the lovers’ embrace to design the Love Approach Together seat.” Perhaps like the embrace of hearts and minds, objects also join together and give birth to a wonderful hybrid. “It’s a two-way world,” declares Gregoire, “Because heaven is other people. It’s an aesthetic of encounters that gives rise to a singular harmony.”
Obsessions privées by Elizabeth Leriche
Nothing perhaps can be more singular than an individual’s private obsessions, best exemplified by the collector. What exactly is a collection? Psychoanalytic orthodoxy has long made collecting a problematic activity. Between “obsessive neurosis” and “compulsive pathology,” the urge to catalogue and possess things makes collectors a very eccentric lot indeed, according to Elizabeth Leriche:
“A collection is energy obsessively focused on cataloguing, both in a haphazard and methodical way, the heterogeneous and the unexpected, the ordinary and the strange, the commonplace and the rare. Because absolutely everything can be collected, accumulated and compiled. Collectors have the ingeniousness of giving value to the infinite variety of forms created and produced.”
Leriche observes, however, that humans are producing more and more, for target consumers who are increasingly diversified and scattered: “Today’s collections are the sign of a pathology of the contemporary production and consumption of objects. They are an attempt to catalogue, archive and order human creativity. They are a post-production undertaking.”
Her trend itinerary exhibit of emblematic “Private Obsessions” showcased the diversity and multifaceted characteristics of various collections which in the end, she says, “all share the same goal: Giving meaning to multiplicity and finding uniqueness among the identical, in order to create a body of work unlike any other. Whether because of a childhood memory or for some other vaguer reason, we all fall in love with unique, original items that are beautiful to our eyes only. Sometimes, to the point of obsession, of an accumulation so compulsive, that it becomes art. In the eyes of a passionate collector, any object -— no matter how banal or strange, how precious or prestigious — can attain a sentimental value. This unique art makes something singular from our private space.”
