From Fashion to Furniture

I love Fashion. From the Runway to the Shopping Mall I love to see what people are wearing.

One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is to sit down with a cup of tea and a magazine. The other day I settled into the sofa with a gigantic fashion magazine (you know the one I mean - it has about 400 pages). I was trying to find the beginning of the magazine, sifting through literally a hundred pages of ads trying to find the contents page. As my mind started to wander I noticed how beautiful some of the pages were. I began to tear the advertising pages out of the magazine.

I never read the magazine. Instead I spent the next two hours tearing out pages and looking at the fashion layouts. The obvious link between Fashion and Interior Design made my head spin with new ideas.

The pictures that tended to have the initial shock value were the ones that were more eclectic. These tended to be filled with a mixture of color and styles. For example red leather shoes, yellow cotton pants with a ruffled purple blouse, bohemian necklace and a fedora! On a feminine shape this worked. Yes, it was eclectic but the styles were all so bold that they coordinated into an interesting and appealing picture.

The other layout that tended to dominate the fashion pages was the monochromatic look. Layers and layers of clothes and accessories in the same neutral color palette. The key to this look was to use different textures. An example of this would be a brown and cream houndstooth skirt, brown leather boots, cream t-shirt, gorgeous layered scarf and a tiny caramel colored cardigan.

As I looked through the torn out pages I finally understood why photographers and fashion designers were also artists. It was all about symmetry, shapes and color.

These ideas are so easy to translate to our decorating lifestyle. If we want a more monochromatic look we should remember to layer the color with different textures. Similar textures of the same color can often look harsh and one dimensional but opposite textures create a subtle richness that makes it beautiful to look at. For a more eclectic and carefree look use different patterns and colors; pair unexpected items together but make sure they have some character to them.

Fashion is just like decorating. Choose something you love, apply basic design principles and create the look around that item.