Where all the world’s a chaise
If the Claes Oldenburg-style chest of drawers on Hamilton Street doesn’t make it perfectly obvious what kind of company town this is, the sidewalk on Main Street does. Set in terrazzo, like a star on Hollywood Boulevard, is a legend that reads, “The Heart of Furnitureland, USA.”
Every April and October, this quiet town doubles its population at the world’s largest home-furnishings market. Manufacturers, retailers, decorators and celebrity spokesmodels spend a week traipsing through 11.5 million square feet of exhibition space in almost 200 buildings. Priced for the first-apartment generation as well as the second-home set, the furniture and accessories on display last week came in every shape, size and style -- from Rancho Rustic to Palm Beach Ornate, kick-your-feet-up casual to take-your-shoes-off Zen luxe. In other words, something to suit every taste -- including no taste. There were chaises, chaises everywhere, but not a minute to lounge.
These are not particularly relaxing times for the industry. According to the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn., the total value of shipments is down, and unemployment among U.S. furniture factory workers is heading toward double digits. The dispute between retailers and manufacturers over low-cost Chinese imports is becoming divisive. Even the building that looks like a dresser bears a “For Lease” sign.
The good news? Cable TV and a flood of household-name designer goods have unleashed home makeover mania across the land and, consequently, consumer spending is ever so slightly up.
So was the mood at the market. Embracing the needs of the modern multi-tasking family, manufacturers offered designs with gee-whiz innovations. American Leather’s Duo collection featured upholstered chairs and sofas with wooden arms that pull out to become trays, plus a convertible Hip Hop lounger by pioneering 20th century designer Vladimir Kagan that transforms from a full-length chaise to a two-sided conversational settee.
You don’t have to embrace modern to get convenience. At Star Bay, a French company that produces wood and fabric safari furniture, a coffee table trunk with leather belt straps has hidden drawers on every side. In Henredon’s Vineyards line, a Tuscan take on California Casual, the tall wooden Artisan chest (tagged just north of $4,000 wholesale) hid a wide-screen TV that rises majestically with the push of a button on a keychain remote.
Echoing the Jet Age, a whole genre of designs dubbed Retro-Politan by the trade publication In Furniture looked light on their tapered wooden and chrome feet. For young buyers, two foreign firms channeled the ‘60s and ‘70s. Palliser, the largest manufacturer of furniture in Canada, has created EQ 3, easy-to-assemble Mod modular pieces with IKEA prices that will be sold at EQ 3 stores (The first of which opened last fall in Torrance) The Danish design firm Innovation concentrated on versatile seating units in bold black-and-white patterns, including Op Art designs created by Verner Panton and sleeper sofas in wild colors and prints.
Hollywood glamour, circa the 1930s and ‘40s, continued to build on the Regency revival of the last year, incorporating French, Asian and Deco influences with mirrored, gilded and lacquered furniture trimmed with brass, bronze, nickel and silver. Designers such as Amy Howard of Memphis and Barclay Butera of Los Angeles, who named caned club chairs and other luxe pieces after movie stars and moguls, and San Francisco’s Eric Brand, who updated X-shaped bases in gleaming metal and stitched leather, capitalized on this fast-growing trend. Julian Chichester of London, described by one of his reps as “aristocratic, but a bit of a hippie at heart,” took it up a notch, producing an elegant line of vellum-clad homages to Jean-Michel Frank.
A new design aesthetic also seemed to be emerging at High Point, one that invigorated classic shapes, mixing vernaculars and materials in a freewheeling fashion without losing sight of proportion and scale. “The world is becoming so much more eclectic, and people are becoming so less purist that you can really play with design,” said Ken Devol, a partner in the Chico, Calif., firm Red Egg, standing in a booth with Pennsylvania Dutch floor tiles, glossy black Chinese chairs and Hepplewhite breakfronts constructed in Asia and painted in pink or green with white accents. “We’re so A.D.D., you never know where we’re going to go.”
This new buoyancy can be attributed to a response to market forces. In an uncertain political and economic era, the long-touted concept of nesting, even for the most chicken of manufacturers, has finally come home to roost.
Although High Point may be ground zero for the wholesale market, the design and manufacture of furniture has become an intensely competitive international business in which price and provenance influence purchasing. As a result, the goods we buy tomorrow are as likely to be as branded as the clothes in our closet and the sodas in our icebox.
You don’t have to be a designer to make furniture anymore; you don’t even need to have hands. You can be a magazine like National Geographic, which had out-of-this-world “Out of Africa” furniture in the Lane showroom and accessories at Palacek. Or you can slap the name Maxim, the lad mag about beer and babes, on glass entertainment centers that are so cheap (less than $300 at Circuit City) that their buyers won’t care if they get trashed at the next kegger. You can even chisel some Elvish around the side of an oak table to cash in on the “Lord of the Rings” craze, as the Middle Earth Furniture Co. did.
All you need is a name that rings a bell. This accounts for the line of Schwinn club chairs featuring armrest lights that look like the ones on old bicycles. Produced by William Alan, a High Point firm that also makes stainless-steel and wood furniture for Airstream trailers and western leather sofas for the Double D apparel firm, the Schwinn line is an example of the growth of licensed home-decor products.
Take Tommy Bahama, for instance. He has a square jaw and gray hair, and in pictures, he looks like just like a model because he is one. He doesn’t own stock and, many attendees of High Point joked, can never be indicted because he doesn’t even exist.
As an extension of the Tommy Bahama clothing line, however, tropical patio seating and dining sets that bear the fictional fashionista’s name make perfect sense to Brown-Jordan International, the outdoor furniture maker, which is going head-to-head with Laneventure’s line by Cabana Joe, the real-life alter-ego of Joe O’Brien, a model-handsome surfer who began his empire of Hawaiian-influenced rattan furniture and accessories in Venice Beach.
A similar contest is heating up in the kitchen category. With the heat on Martha Stewart, whose accessibly priced lines for Bernhardt feature only a few additions this season, Home Styles has positioned the Teflon- and nostalgia-coated name of Betty Crocker on a collection of functional homespun kitchen furniture. For Laneventure, the Food Network’s Rachel Ray has cooked up a program of casual dining pieces that can be customized with different finishes, seats, backs and legs on basic chairs and stools.
Other television personalities were also well represented at High Point. “Charlie’s Angel” Jaclyn Smith, who has had a line for Largo since 2002, described the Spencer Margaret bedroom set (named for her little girl) as “one that every mother wants for her daughter and every daughter finds in her dreams.” Which may be true, if her daughter dreams of being in a Barbara Cartland miniseries. Similarly, Christina Ferrare, a former model, Slim-Fast spokeswoman and ex-Mrs. John DeLorean, betrays the title of her book “Realistically Ever After” with Bel Canto, an over-the-top Italian interior group that hits all the wrong notes.
Surprisingly, supermodel Kathy Ireland, hyped as “the number one brand in home furnishings,” has a sturdy sense of design. Among her many licensees, Martin’s home office and entertainment pieces offer versatile pieces with a genuine feel for vernacular architecture such as Mission and Craftsman.
The fusion of fashion and furniture design does not always produce blue-ribbon results, however. Lexington Brands, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers, which unveiled the clunky Tommy Bahama Rumba line, also debuted Liz Claiborne Home.
The collection turned out to be as generic as the designer’s fashions, with orange-toned wood finishes, rounded sofas upholstered in dull fruit tones and oversize satin-finished drawer pulls that looked like something Janet Jackson might put through her nipple. By contrast, Lexington’s Woolrich furniture seemed as country cozy as one of its hunting jackets, and the Nautica beds -- dark wood with navy and white fabric -- looked like the appropriate place to put your Topsiders under.
The hook-up between pop-cultured designer Todd Oldham and La-Z-Boy was also inspired. He lends the company cool, it offers him the manufacturing capabilities to produce high-impact, low-price modern furniture with his signature eye-candy prints. On the other end of the scale, Henredon’s new Ralph Lauren styles -- Modern Penthouse (Deco Redux in rosewood, chrome, suede and Lucite) and New Bohemia, which has a lush “Gangs of New York” vibe --were as aspirational as Chatsworth, the new outdoor furniture that Oscar de la Renta has designed with his close chum, the Duchess of Devonshire.
For buyers, however, nothing beats the pedigree of the decorator-designer, be it home fashions televangelist Christopher Lowell or the late Long Beach-born Milo Baughman, the modernist whose 1953 classics were exhibited alongside his final collection, Studio MB, at Thayer Coggin.
Following the lead of international fashion houses that have revived brands with young designers, the top furniture companies are also turning to established names and fresh talent. David Easton, who worked with Edward Wormley and the decorating firm Parish-Hadley in the ‘60s, has revitalized Henredon, a company best known for producing Frank Lloyd Wright furniture. Easton’s At Home collection brings mid-century finishes -- cerused oak, antiqued stainless steel, glazed linen -- to traditional European forms, creating furniture that is timeless. At Hickory Chair, a manufacturer of traditional 18th and 19th century classics, Thomas O’Brien, the young buck behind Aero in New York’s Soho, joins venerated interiors queen Mariette Himes Gomez. O’Brien’s collection, inspired by his home in Bellport, Long Island, exudes an English classicism with modern proportions and embellishments such as silver-plated handles.
In his first collection at the huge Baker showroom, which had designs by Bill Sofield and Barbara Barry, Paris designer Jacques Garcia staged a triomphe. Hailed for his interiors at the Hotel Costes, Garcia installed a French apartment (on the Left Bank, of course) that revealed a couturier’s eye for tailored forms, lush fabrics and simple but extravagant crystal lighting fixtures.
