What’s Good Enough for the Couch Is Good Enough for the Closet
Sometimes, blending in with the wallpaper is a great way to stand out in fashion.
This spring, apparel and home furnishings trends merged with such speed that the gap that once separated the two became nearly imperceptible. Suddenly, trendy scenesters and hip interior designers were of the same mind. Toile de Jouy, an almost fussy print of 18th century scenes, got hot.
“The environment of the body and the environment of the home have totally converged,” said Fran Sude, creative director of Design Options, a Los Angeles-based color and trend forecasting company. About three years ago, Sude noticed that “not only are the colors crossing over, but the prints and the trends are.” Sofas and skirts of late have shared everything from chambray and chenille to chalk stripes and tapestry.
New York designer Miguel Adrover illustrated the high-fashion potential of castoff upholstery in his fall 2000 debut collection, which included a coat made from neighbor Quentin Crisp’s mattress ticking. Though high-fashion designers have marched on to new prints for fall, namely 1960s Marimekko, mainstream fashion collections and many more home furnishings makers are fixated on the toile prints of the 1760s.
This fall, many more affordable versions of toile will be showing up on skirts and handbags, as well as home furnishings from such companies as Anthropologie and clothier J. Jill. Though some of the finest examples of the print can cost more than $200 for a yard of upholstery material, a range of makers offers it for less than $30 a yard, not a bad price for a piece of history.
Toile de Jouy was named for the town near Versailles, France, where Christopher Philip Oberkampf created single-color prints with finely engraved copper plates. He introduced scenes that represented the time period, such as groups of aristocrats or peasants in activities associated with their 18th century lives. The storytelling quality of the scenes derived from the printing process, said Brunschwig and Fils company archivist Judy Straeten. “This was a technique that was coming out of books,” she said. “The first use of copper plates on fabrics was on toile.”
Today, those scenes of hunters, historic moments or simple pastoral pleasures have become both quaint and hip. Then and now, the fabric was used mostly for interior decoration, and some for apparel. Its latest resurgence began last October when designers Suzanne Clements and Ignacio Ribiero put toile in their first collection for the French sportswear firm Cacharel.
They not only launched a 21st century revival of the print, but also of the fashion house, which will likely make toile part of the new corporate image. The British designers updated the antique print by cutting it into slim hip-hugger slacks, zippered skirts and cheery accessories that mixed with ginghams, Oriental prints and even western shirts. Now the look is coming to your local mall.
A longtime staple, it was easy for the home decor market to seize upon toile almost immediately. Shelter magazines from the homey Country Living to the hip Elle Decor and House & Garden promoted it in ads and editorials, often mixed with ginghams, checks and plaids. Nationwide, interior designers have witnessed a renewed interest in patterns once reserved for the most traditional homes. “Just the last couple of months, several people have asked for it,” said Torrance interior designer Ellen Cantor.
Though the prints are most often on plain cream or white backgrounds, they are nevertheless fairly complex and intense, making some of them unsuitable for small spaces. No problem. Pillow makers sometimes feature a single scene or offer them as powerful accents. With subjects that can range from floral bouquets to Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, the patterns of all sizes also have long been popular for papering walls, covering windows or adding an arty, European feel to home decor.
“Many new homes are very large, mega-mansions,” said Cantor. “With lots of architectural details, a lot of them look like they are French or Italian villas. In order to decorate them properly, they are looking to period patterns.”
Cantor client Susan Tyssee of Huntington Beach chose several toile patterns for her new Redondo Beach home. “It’s very crisp and fresh looking,” she said, “but it also has a kind of vintage feeling to it at the same time.” Her husband has vetoed any all-toile rooms, so Tyssee and Cantor are using the patterns mostly as accents. “It becomes too heavy when the whole room is done in it,” Tyssee said. But she likes the look: “I wouldn’t mind having a skirt in it.”
Consumers this spring were of the same mind. “It was one of the few things that sold well this season, in terms of apparel, accessories or home,” said David Wolfe, creative director of New York-based trend forecasting firm Doneger Design Direction. Toile prints are continuing for fall, he said, though often with nontraditional, darker backgrounds. Toile’s sudden acceptance illustrates how easily trend information is shared between different users of textiles.
“I think home furnishings are moving at the same speed as apparel,” Wolfe said. The proliferation of fashion designers with their own lines of home fashions has aided the crossover. “In the past, Bill Blass apparel had nothing to do with Bill Blass home furnishings,” Wolfe said. “Now they make sure that the home furnishings relate very closely to the image the apparel projects.”
Having designer labels outside the closet appeals to many consumers. “People are having more fun with their homes, and home fashions always fit,” said Wolfe. “You don’t have to worry that your couch is going to gain weight.”
What’s more, a designer suit can cost as much as a leather couch, causing people to refocus.
“The clothing industry is downsizing,” said Sude. “Clothing is becoming secondary as more people invest in homes, kids, cars. What is interesting is that the same culture that used to go out of the home to entertain now are entertaining in their homes. They want the home to be like what the outside environment used to be.”
Once inside, the line between clothing and sheets often blurs, a trend that mail-order firm Garnet Hill has explored as its designers swap print patterns for sheets, pajamas, dresses and more. Their cooperation isn’t so much “a strategic calculation of matching this sheet with that sweater but a cross-pollination of the same sensibility and design approach,” said Sarah Santa Maria, Garnet Hill’s fashion designer.
“If a piece of artwork is gorgeous and we feel it is special, then the design can look beautiful on a sheet and sophisticated on the right piece of fashion.” The company’s bestselling linen dress this spring featured a passion rose pattern that’s slated for flannel sheets this winter.
Tying trends into the fickle fashion market poses some risks for home furnishings makers, who still have a slower turnaround and often more conservative customers. Garnet Hill skipped toile this season and next because they already offered toile flannel sheets four years ago. They weren’t a hit with consumers, who had yet to benefit from fashion’s latest endorsement. Their python-print sheets got a cool reception, too. Seems no one really liked the idea of crawling under the covers with a snake.
