Evolution of Personal Style

I was fortunate last week to be able to hear Alexa Hampton speak at the Michigan Design Center. She runs a successful design firm in New York that was started by her father.

One of her points was about how the personal taste of clients evolve. I have found that to be true also. I have now been in this business long enough to see trends repeat themselves. Of course, the new trend is always an improvement over the old trend. But you can still recognize the ties to the past.

Take the dark brown stained woods that are so popular thanks to Pottery Barn. Didn't our parents have some of that wood in furniture pieces from the 70's? I am sure that my mother's hutch in dark pine is the same color Pottery Barn has been showing in the past few years. Therefore, you will not see the generation that already had that dark wood gravitating towards it again. They have been there, and are done with that. But to the younger clients that color is fresh and new.

It will not surprise me if the pickled wood comes rushing back into fashion within the next five years. And I have a designer friend who says that biscuit colored plumbing fixtures "Are the next avocado green waiting to happen". Therefore, I am sworn to only specify white plumbing fixtures!

I do find that people have a fairly strong tendency to either lean towards the style in which they were raised, or to purposefully lean away from it. For years I leaned away from the style my mother espoused, and now I am finding pieces of it drifting back into my home. ( I even recently admitted to a friend that I like brass.) I have a friend who is selecting a sofa, and she told me about the color she wants to avoid, because it is the color of a sofa her mother has that is still floating around her family.

One of my friends is cleaning up the lines of her style, moving away from the traditional to more transitional. It is interesting that she is also an empty nester, and her life is evolving as well as her taste.

I would imagine that my tastes will continue to evolve, and yet still maintain a relationship with the style I like today.

These are some of my thoughts, share yours.

-Marybeth