High Contrast
By Raye Rudie
NEW COLLECTIONS OFFER A BROAD RANGE OF STYLES TO MIX AND MATCH FOR INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSIONS
A traditional look but with a modern twist. Casual cottage but also opulent and embellished. With no rules in home decorating, consumers feel secure and bold enough to combine contrasting styles for an eclectic look.
Covington Fabrics presents its collections in lifestyle categories. With the growing market for coordinating packages of prints and wovens that can be combined and used for pieced ensembles in furniture, Christine D'Ascoli, vice president creative services, reports that its cottage style has had an early success.
"Vintage pieced furniture upholstery is a growing category, and so we are expanding with the appropriate wovens and prints," says D'Ascoli.
Formal and casual are presented in Robert Allen @ Home's Point Judith Collection. Dressy and elegant prints and wovens team with cozy cottage plaids, florals, and seersuckers. The company also has expanded its line of printed stripes on a variety of basecloths, including herringbone textures and outdoor fabrics. Colors range from traditional to fashion forward.
Resources
Ado 800-845-0918 American Decorative Fabrics Corp. 212-689-3579 Arte 800-338-2783 Bernhardt Textiles 212-997-6600 Big Kahuna Fabrics 847-647-7300 Chris Stone 323-583-9957 Claridge Textiles International 619-407-7111 Classic Cloth, a Dessin Fourier Co. (Jerry Pair) 800-909-7247 Covington Fabrics 212-689-2200 Dedar (Jerry Pair) 800-909-7247 Donghia Furniture/Textiles 212-925-2777 Doral Fabrics 631-694-1570 Duralee 800-275-3872 Edgar Fabrics 631-435-8989 East India Company 212-874-6316 Highland Court 800-387-2533 Krelan Fabrics 978-777-6868 Jane Shelton Inc. (Jerry Pair) 800-909-7247 Jim Thompson (Jerry Pair) 800-909-7247 Joan Fabrics Corp. 978-649-5626 Lafayette Interior Fashions 800-480-6368 Laura & Kiran 510-559-7260 Marvic (Jerry Pair) 800-909-7247 Regal Fabrics Inc. 978-777-6868 Robert Allen @ Home 800-333-3777 Romo 800-338-2783 Softline Home Fashions 310-630-4848 Swavelle/Mill Creek Fabric 212-532-8670 Waverly 212-213-7900 Textile Fabric Associates Inc. 212-798-5166 Weave Corporation 201-646-1500
Waverly introduces Romantic Overtures, a new vintage collection that is casual and traditional in design to appeal to both masculine and feminine decorating styles. Florals and paisleys on Circa, a new linen/rayon basecloth, mix with more tailored damasks and stripes.
Big Kahuna expands its signature casual tropical prints by adding new fabrics, such as woven-leather look solids and tweeds that update and broaden the look
While there is a strong interest in the cottage look, resources are also offering extravagant embroideries on all kinds of fabrics from silk to faux suede. This is the home décor equivalent of mixing designer clothes with Gap tees and flea-market finds.
Claridge International highlights embroidery on a variety of grounds from taffeta to jacquards to faux suedes. Motifs range from simple, small, spaced medallions to intricate allover florals.
Natural fibers are important, and when combined with embroidery, the look is truly extravagant.
East India Company presents elaborate embroideries on organic linen, cotton, and silk. Textile Fabric Associates' C'est Moi features embroidered lush florals on taffeta while Highland Court presents a simple fern-like leaf design on silk taffeta. Laura & Kiran use silk in the stylistically important woven ikat motifs.
With the importance of natural fibers, there are lots of fabrics that have the look of natural fibers but are man-made.
Softline Home Fashions presents a variety of fabrics that are silk-like and are designed to coordinate; they range from sheer organza to embroideries to tweeds.
Leathers and suedes are also presented in man-made fiber versions. Edgar Fabrics is excited about its suede-like fabrics that are in elegant paisley and foulard prints. Lafayette Interior Textiles embroiders suede-like fabrics.
Some of the designs that are shown this season are similar to apparel, for example the continuing interest in skin motifs.
Jane Shelton, an upper-end resource, presents a reversible, silk-and-rayon chenille, leopard-patterned jacquard. Lafayette Interior Textiles prints an allover leopard motif on both cotton and polyurethane fabrics.
Patchwork is another design that shows up in a variety of interpretations. American Decorative Fabrics presents an elaborate jacquard with a monochromatic patch look. Lafayette Interior Textiles offers the look in a mosaic-design jacquard of strong colors in a variety of textures.
Chris Stone takes a young approach to two new introductions. Best Friends is light and colorful featuring '70s mod florals and stripes, while another group of prints is inspired by youth-oriented retailers such as Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters.
Regal Fabrics covers all areas with woven offerings from traditional to bright contemporary to more masculine designs in its Northern Exposure Collection of moose and bear designs with coordinating stripes, plaids, and solids.
There is an interest in recycling products for ecological reasons. Bernhardt Textiles highlights its Homecrest Collection of 100% recycled polyester, which has been introduced to architects and interior designers. Terri Figliuzzi, director of design, points out that this polyester performs the same as virgin polyester.
Technology continues to add benefits to home textile fabrics. Joan Fabrics introduces its Vibrant SP collection featuring American Fibers and Yarns Company's Innova fiber, a synthetic fiber with a natural cotton-like hand and luster.
The collection of 22 patterns is stain and mildew resistant as well as fade and UV resistant up to 2,000 hours. According to Suzanne Claus, Joan's vice president of advanced design and development, several leading furniture manufacturers have picked up the collection.
Duralee Fabrics presents its Crypton V collection in its contract division. While originally designed for use on contract upholstery, this sophisticated collection works well in family rooms that get a lot of wear. The patented upholstery fabric system is engineered to make fabrics resistant to moisture, stains, flame, abrasion, and bacteria.
Color continues to be subtle and easier to live with than the brights of recent seasons. Still, it is a colorful season. Neutrals range from natural to camel to the increasingly important grays. Orange is toned down into brick, rusts, sienna, and pumpkin shades. Reds are warmer and span the spectrum from pinkish tones to burgundy and even purple. Browns continue in all shades from café au lait to deep tones. Greens and blues that follow nature are still strong. A pale, watery blue that was very popular at Maison&Objet in Paris remains an important color and looks particularly good with brown.
For the future expect the electric cobalt blue and navy featured as new directions at the recent Spring/Summer 2006 ready-to-wear collections shown here and in Europe. The neutrals of the season were skin tones and gray, the paler the better. It's safe to assume that they will make a natural progression into the home.
Aqua-cize
Mud Bath
Seaweed Wrap
Aromatherapy
Clay Mask
Natural Glow
