Crossover: Dress Meets Drawing Room
When Scarlett O’Hara fashioned a dress from her mother’s green velvet curtains in “Gone With the Wind,” it was a desperate act. But she would be right in style today.
Never before have fashion and interior design seemed so entwined. Many fashion designers say the furniture, upholstery and colors in their homes influence their collections. And some big-name decorators say they are inspired by the latest fashions.
Tassels and fringe have emerged as important details on women’s belts, jewelry, sweaters, suits and eveningwear.
Animal print upholstery and carpets, a staple of chic interiors for decades, segued into women’s apparel last year. Now, fashion designer Ralph Lauren is completing the circle: Zebra stripes embellish his new bone china for Waterford Wedgewood.
Fashion designers have joined the antique craze and it’s showing up in their clothing collections. Valentino embroiders evening dresses with Etruscan vases; Yves Saint Laurent fashions a jacket bejeweled in patterns that resemble a crystal chandelier; Karl Lagerfeld designs costume jewelry in the shapes of antique chairs and tables; Bill Blass affixes drawer pulls to evening dresses.
If there is a messenger of the trend, it is the fashion and home-decorating magazines, each battling for the other’s territory. In March, Elle spawned a monthly, Elle Decor, dedicated to architecture and interior design. And last summer, HG magazine (formerly House & Garden), an early believer in the fashion and furniture connection, hired New York magazine’s fashion editor, Wendy Goodman, to track the phenomenon.
For fashion and interior-design enthusiasts who hope to keep up, it’s just as important to study Paris couturier Christian Lacroix’s new apartment, pictured in this month’s HG, as to view his collections on the runway.
“The design concepts for home and fashion are running neck and neck,” says Wilmer Weiss, senior vice president of communications for I. Magnin in San Francisco. Weiss believes that the stopper in Lacroix’s new perfume, C’est La Vie (officially due out in September), which looks like a branch of coral, as well as a coral handbag handle, were inspired by the designer’s love of exotic home decor.
The crossover has become so pervasive that I. Magnin executives now dispatch interior-design magazines to their buyers.
Conversely, Los Angeles interior designer Frank Austin, who has designed houses for Diana Ross, Hugh Hefner and A&M; record co-founder Jerry Moss, advises his clients to study fashion magazines for ideas on color, texture, even accessories.
“The best one out there is Elle,” he says, referring to the fashion publication.
It’s no accident that the fields feed off each other. Milanese fashion star Gianfranco Ferre, known for his clean lines, was trained as an architect. Giorgio Armani studied architecture, too.
In Los Angeles, Mark Eisen designed strip malls before opening a women’s apparel company.
“I have an architectural mentality when I look at something,” Eisen says. “When it comes to suits, it’s all about lines.”
Los Angeles interior decorator Mimi London, a former fashion model, often works with highly textured fabrics made by Japanese weavers. Similar fabrics show up in fashion houses, including Commes des Garcons, Issey Miyake and Yoji Yamamoto.
In New York, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi decorated his apartment with the same fabrics he used to glorify his women’s collection. A wing chair covered in tartan plaid recalls the kilt dresses in his fall ’89 line; oatmeal canvas curtains are circa spring ‘89; slipcovers in paisley velvet resemble fashions from his first fall collection.
The blurring of fashion and home furnishings may have taken root in the ‘70s, when women’s-wear designers Halston and Pierre Cardin began signing their names to household items such as sheets and towels. Some designers still do, among them Adrienne Vittadini and Bill Blass.
Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren created a line of furniture, upholstery fabrics, wall and floor coverings, and dinnerware and crystal that coordinate with themes in his ready-to-wear collections.
All lines converge in his advertising campaigns, the latest of which centers on a safari motif: an artful amalgamation of creamy white linen pantsuits, carved mahogany furniture, zebra-striped china and a fragrance called Safari. Last year, sales of Lauren’s home collection reached $155 million.
“The correlation is definitely there,” says Van-Martin Rowe, a Los Angeles designer who switched fields, moving from fashion to interior decor. “The two areas aren’t separated, but they never have been. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the first decorators were upholsterers who were the dressmakers and tailors of the previous generation.”
“We do very much want to expand into home furnishings,” says Marina Sturdza, vice president of development at Oscar de la Renta. The designer’s New York apartment and his houses in Santa Domingo and Connecticut have been photographed for interior design magazines.
De la Renta already designs flatware and silverware for Mikasa. His china collection is carried locally at Bullock’s and is used in the restaurants and banquet rooms of New York’s Plaza hotel. He also has a licensee for sheets and towels in Japan.
New York’s Jhane Barnes, who designs men’s wear and upholstery fabric for Knoll International, said she is considering requests from two companies to make furniture.
Los Angeles fashion designers Claudia Grau and Leon Max say it’s only a matter of time before they enter the fray. Like most fashion designers, Max uses his own home--an Italianate estate in Beverly Hills--as his laboratory.
“I already design 90% of my (apparel) fabrics,” Max says. “I often look at them and say, ‘Wouldn’t that be great in someone’s home?’ ”
In her Melrose Avenue store, Grau sells pillows and patchwork comforters made from her trademark Guatemalan and Japanese fabrics. And she recently took on her first professional decorating job.
Los Angeles’ Bill Whitten, famous for costuming rock stars, has a new clothing store on Melrose. And his furniture of wood, granite, steel and semiprecious stones (“sometimes all together”) will be unveiled this year, he said.
If he stocks them in a separate store, Whitten could become the city’s answer to New York fashion designer Norma Kamali. A year and a half ago she opened a home-decorating store, OMO Home, in the SoHo district, where she sells her furniture designs, bed linens (made with Lycra, like many of her women’s clothes) and accessories, such as sequined “furniture scarfs” to toss over a sofa and throw pillows embroidered with seed pearls.
Kamali says she found her customers were spending money on items for their homes. “I was doing the same,” she adds.
“The home is now the status symbol,” Mizrahi says. “I know couples who go through house renovations and it’s like having a child.” Because so many of his customers are involved with the look of their homes, Mizrahi’s clothes reflect it.
“All of my favorite clothes for women are sheer and stay-at-home. The intent is to imply a relaxed-ness. Whole parts of my spring and fall collections were inspired by kimonos--if you shrug your shoulders they fall to the floor.”
