What's really behind the latest hot style trend
Gary Evans, Senior editor -- Furniture Today, November 11, 2002
Man, do style trends blow by. Take upholstery. It really wasn't that long ago when everything was sort of like your great-Aunt Grace's living room, tied up in fringe and tassels.
The operative word was opulent, with subwords like luxe, lush, deep and cushy. Vintage chic, so to speak. It was the magic style potion that, in the wake of 9/11 and vanishing retirement funds, was supposed to give us comfort and peace.
The luxurious direction was so strong, in fact, that The Wall Street Journal devoted a good bit of ink to it, saying it was affecting everything from sofas to silverware.
At the October market, things took a different turn.
Instead of the well-tailored formal look, the market went laid back and down home. Leading the parade was the "cottage" look — a new "country" with uptown aspirations. Have you ever seen so much white paint, so many flaking, peeling surfaces, so many quilted cushions, floral patterns and so many pictures of fish and creels on walls? How many cottages need filling in this great land of ours?
And what about all those slipcovers? They were everywhere. They used to be just a tiny piece of the market.
This is not to say there wasn't a great-Aunt Grace look in upholstery showrooms. There was. But there just wasn't very much of it. There wasn't room.
Showroom after showroom was filled with the cottage look. Those that weren't were full of the country cottage look. Or the garden cottage look. Or the city cottage look.
Cottage en masse.
Don't get me wrong. Cottage is cool, comfortable and seems apropos to the casual lifestyle of many Americans, especially younger ones. And that seemed to be a demographic everybody was going after this market.
Have you ever wondered how so many manufacturers capitalize on the same style? Why there's so much of it at one time? Is it savvy marketing? Focus groups? Exit polls?
Maybe. But here is my theory as to what really brings us a tidal wave of styles like the cottage look.
My theory is that it all begins with a few major retailers, the big hitters that make the hallways of market buildings rumble when they walk. A manufacturer tells them about a new cottage collection the factory is working on. It has small florals.
The big retailer goes to the next big showroom. "Why don't you do a cottage look, only do it in large florals," he says. This is repeated in other showrooms. The buzz makes it into the "war rooms" of other manufacturers. The outcome, come market time, is lots and lots of the same product in showrooms.
There's comfort in this. Repetition can lead to validation and that, especially in these troubled times, is what everyone is looking for. There's comfort in numbers.
