For some very luscious rooms done in pink, head on over to Style Rumors.

It’s hard to say which take on it is my favorite, but I’m loving this soft pink made even softer with the dove grey, and that retro look–very cool.

Great post all about pink!

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Form-fitting, removable, washable, universal-sized slip covers for lampshades, FROCKZ allow a consumer to transform an existing lamp into a design statement by simply slipping a FROCKZ over their lamps existing shade. FROCKZ saves lampshades otherwise destined for landfills.

“As long as the frame is good,” says co-inventor/founder Shelly Dick, “it doesn’t matter if the fabric has long since rotted or if it’s torn, faded or dented. If the frame is OK, Frockz will give new life to it.” The idea was born out of a friendship between Ms. Dick, an attorney, and Wanda Guadarmud, a business manager (now the other half of the Frockz team) for a network of physical therapists and their shared frustration for a lack of contemporary and modern lighting resources near their homes in Baton Rouge, La..

Frockz ™ patented stretch fabric process for covering any sized lampshade.

Available in 2 shapes, drum or cone, and three sizes each, small, medium or large the designs are basically divided into four categories: traditional, animal print, modern and fun. Made out of a special stretch fabric, the covers conform to practically any shape and at prices ranging from $26.00 to $34.00 are an affordable alternative to buying a new lampshade. For more info or to purchase your very own visit Frockz’s website.

It’s an innovative idea to be sure, and, I’ve seen first hand, they work. Very easy to use and very colorful Frockz definitely fulfils a need. Wonder where it falls on my theoretical Green Scale?

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Live blogging the Home and Housewares Show in Chicago, exhibitors have decidedly and overwhelmingly used color to offset these recessionary economic times.

The theory is manufacturers and retailers must give the consumer a reason to buy and color can immediately outdate a product and make it necessary to purchase on the basis of color.

Color has always been used, though generally cautiously by most housewares manufacturers and retailers, i.e., Target…Wal-Mart, but without question, color is now THE statement. Case in point is Whitmoor, above. They’ve taken an ordinary ironing board cover and used great eye popping colors to enhance its utility.

I can tell you I don’t need an ironing board cover, but this is an inexpensive (relatively speaking) purchase that is going to make me feel good. That dull green (that I purchased a few years back in hopes of updating my everyday routine) can now be replaced by a HAPPY COLOR.

Other show trends are focused on cooking (as a large percentage of consumers have decided fine dining is expendable); so celebrity chefs are here, and gourmet cooking utensils now rule.

Lauren Greenwood, my pr contact at the show, also pointed out when showing me through the media rooms selected products, that manufacturers have also responded to these recessionary times by creating products and offerings to enhance a new DIY sensibility…..where you may have farmed out the cleaning to a maid at one point in time, you are now doing it yourself and manufacturers are enhancing that everyday utilitarian product.

My favorite of these is ALICE Supply Co., a self described hip housewares company who is putting fun into home chores by using HAPPY COLORS and designs (stripes and camouflage) on plungers and hoses and dustpans and broom handles, oh my!

Maria Barnes and Raili Clasen are the brains behind ALICE Supply Co.. Friends since college, Maria and Raili both came out of the fashion industry having worked for Roxy and Quicksilver. Using those connections and those sources, ALICE Supply Co., now all of two months old, is bringing that same hip cool formula from the surfer world and making waves in a formerly staid part of the housewares industry. You can find their product currently at Fred Siegal in Los Angeles and Lisa Perry in New York. Their website is www.alicesupplyco.com but is in the process of being designed so is coming soon.

As to the GREEN category it’s still alive and well but it looks to have receded to some degree in importance (with the exception of water bottles which proliferate at this show) while manufacturers decide how best to define themselves in the green/sustainable environment. There is a focus on more durable long lasting product as opposed to throw-away disposable products. This in itself can be defined as part of the green movement. But I can tell, overall, the lingo of what is green and what is not or where a product falls on the GREEN SCALE (a term I’ve coined) is yet to be clarified.

In an effort to help not only the consumer but other manufacturers clarify their position on the sustainable movement, I’ll be using Aladdin and Eco Gen (I blogged about Eco Gen launched at last year’s housewares show) as the best of the best when it comes to walking the walk.
Check back soon for the details.

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Patterns In Design, Art, and Architecture by Petra Schmidt (Editor), Annette Tietenberg (Editor), Ralf Wollheim (Editor).

I do like coffee table books and this may be one, but one I’d recommend.

In starck contrast to a contemporary and minimalist movement came the New Baroque movement. Flourishes, leafy patterns, stripes, polka dots, and pattern all appear on bedheads, wall papers, lamp shades, chairs or entire rooms. This book shows how new looks at old ways can produce fresh alternatives to the minimalist movements.

Using examples of contemporary work by internationally renowned designers such as Tord Boontje, Michael Lin, Olaf Nicolai and Sauerbruch & Hutton, the diversity of colours, shapes and applications are laid out before the reader, illustrating the impact and influence of technical innovations such as laser engraving and digital milling on patterns and our perception of them.

Often humorous, very colorful, and rarely plain the movement may be showing signs of maturity but I think it’s always important to see where we’ve been to also know where we are going. Not to mention that the technology factor they bring out has been a tremendous feature to this movement and is probably just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we will be able to accomplish as a consequenc of new technologies.

The book is available in both hardbook and paperback at amazon.

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Do you love this look or not? This style actually satisfies my clutterphile tendencies and style yearnings at the same time (includes need for color and print)….can we pen the style clutterphilestyle?

Beyond that, I am quite excited overall about Pottery Barn’s latest fall (or should I say earliest fall) catalog. Just got it today. This is the most modern of homey statements I’ve seen yet. Well done. Bravo Pottery Barn! Their prints and colors are spot on, they’ve finally given some pizazz to their dark furniture by adding bold bright and graphic prints (some floral but very sophis).

Tell me they’ve got a new creative director, yes?

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Some combination of Asian, tribal and Victorian, designer Mei Hui Lui, makes reconstructed garments with raw finishes in which she uses Victorian lace and antique trimmings to make limited edition or one-off garments. Originally from Taipei, Taiwan, Mei Lui is 32 years of age and is now based in London where she recently opened her own boutique, Respiro.

The whole look including the henna type tattoos on the face matching the lace is such an inspired look; so much so it’s quickly become one of my favs. From Surface Magazine.

So, when I came across these…….

I couldn’t help but think how above girl and etched patterned glass lamps matched.

Outdoor hanging etched glass lighting holds pillar candles that lights gently for hours. From Domino online, look for a World Market store nearest to you @ worldmarket.com.

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Of course if you are a color, light, and texture junkie like I am, you’ll love the collaboration of Dupont’s Corian (known mostly as a wonderful and seamless kitchen countertop material) and Missoni Home (Rosita Missoni and her husband were the original founders of Missoni Fashion) introducing Corian’s five new translucent colors while the material itself is used for all manner of things around the home. In that respect, it was a brilliant pairing….Missoni known for their vibrant color and their unique patterns was the perfect choice to help introduce Corian’s new colors but to also show just how well rounded and fascinating Corian as a material can be….

To highlight the pairing, the above picture illustrates the many colors of Missoni in a giant spool of yarn, the “Spool” itself made of Corian using the color Nocturne (black and polished). The flooring beneath the “Spool” is also made with DuPont™ Corian® (Cameo White and Nocturne colours) and features a pattern designed by Missoni rythmically inserting in the “background colour” a series of small squares of contrasting colour (glossy background finish and white matt squares). In an adjacent space is a “Ball” of yarn, also made of Dupont Corian. Who knew you could bend it like Beckham?

A familiar theme throughout the exhibit, Rosita Missoni, the designer played with the negative space black and white can create by alternating and juxtaposing one black/white color pattern against another.

The “CORIAN® loves MISSONI” interior design project is a loft-style apartment (extending over the two floors of the “Corian® Design - Milano Store” showroom) with a series of functional “rooms” - an entrance area, reception, hallway, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor and living room, bathroom and bedroom on the lower floor. In the dining room, above, the table is made of Corian using MissoniHome’s Bolt pattern. Echoing the aesthetics of the table, the MissoniHome “Bolt” pattern is stencilled on the wall behind, in a larger scale. The chandelier was designed by Rosita Missoni, is made of Corian’s Glacier White and spells Missoni. The chairs around the dining room table are Moroso’s “Ripple” chair.

A hallway area dedicated to showcasing the five new translucent colours of DuPont™ Corian® - Glacier Ice, Strawberry Ice, Blueberry Ice, Mint Ice and Lime Ice – take on an enhanced luminosity when back-lit. The area features five cubic stools made in each of the five translucent colours of DuPont™ Corian®. Contrasting with tops featuring a smooth surface, the sides of these stools have been carved with “Onda” (Wave) pattern by MissoniHome, which is also repeated, on a larger scale, on the back-wall in pale green DuPont™ Corian® Mint Ice. The cubic stools are lit from within by an LCD system developed by Artemide, run from rechargeable batteries, making them totally wireless and mobile. On the wall, a backlit circular curved fixture made in translucent DuPont™ Corian® Mint Ice is engraved with Missoni’s “Esmeraldas” pattern allowing lights to elegantly diffuse with varying intensity.

So, let’s get to the living room……..

Descending to the lower floor, visitors find themselves in the living room area where they are surrounded by a combination of multi-coloured and monochrome forms. The “Relaxer” chair and “Wengen” rug by MissoniHome are set against a large backlit screen: a wonder in terms of both aesthetics and technology. Made in DuPont™ Corian® Glacier White and carved with the “Esmeraldas” pattern from MissoniHome, the four parts of this screen are slim boxes illuminated using Artemide’s “My White Light” system, integrating RGBs and LCDs, to give different coloured lights and varying shades of white light, from warm to cool.
The two low tables in the living room space feature bases in DuPont™ Corian®, created using a new assembling technique reminiscent of mosaics: small rectangular elements in DuPont™ Corian® in black and white colours (Glacier White and Nocturne) are jointed together with metal rods to create a sort of “flexible surface”.

In realising “CORIAN® loves MISSONI” exhibition, Rosita Missoni, Luca Missoni (Rosita’s son & the project supervisor) and their design team have worked in close collaboration with architect Massimo Fucci, consultant of DuPont Surfaces to the architect and design sector, who coordinated the whole project and the creative contents.

For more details and images, visit Corian’s website. For more about MissoniHome, visit missonihome.com.

Art Direction: Rosita Missoni; supervision: Luca Missoni
Organizer/sponsor: DuPont™ Corian®
General project: MISSONI
Project manager: Arch. Massimo Fucci, DuPont™ Corian®
Partners:
Artemide (lighting solutions)
Boffi (kitchen and bathroom)
Listone Giordano (flooring systems)
Moroso (furnishing)
Zehnder Group/Runtal (radiator technology)
Hasenkopf (fabrication of DuPont™ Corian®)
TechLab Italia (fabrication of DuPont™ Corian®)
Esarc Hi-Tech (invisible audio systems)
Antica Gelateria del Corso/Nestlé (decorative ice cream compositions, served throughout the showroom and during the show)

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Midwest Living “Future Thinker” trend room

If you read my post on the Meredith Corporations trend rooms for the National Kitchen and Bath Show, then you also saw images from these rooms corresponding to the stages women go through during the course of their lifetime.

To clarify my own thoughts on the Idea Center, while these may not be the most exotic kitchens or even contemporary kitchens, say for instance like what Trendir features in their online publication, for what is happening in most of America I think Meredith Corporation and their designers and trade publication editors got it right….for the most part this is the way Americans do live and they do experience each one of these stages.

I did like how they (Midwest Living) emphasized the baby boomers choice aging in place and theirs is oddly enough the most modern of the rooms represented (left and above image).

Even if style-wise I may not have agreed with everything they did, there were two overriding trends to take note of and that is the built-in dining table (or even built-ins in general) and the office/mudroom/laundry room additions off the kitchen or in a galleyway. It does make the kitchen a more practical place to function from with all of these extras, built in or easily accessible from the kitchen. It leaves less shelving to purchase from the home centers, but more baskets or accessories to purchase to support the built in. A representative of the Meredith Corporations brand magazines said that customizable storage solutions were one of the most sought after additions to housing these days, particularly in the kitchen and bath.

When it came to sustainable solutions, the Better Homes and Gardens room tended to focus on this aspect more so than the other magazine titles. It wasn’t that other lifestyle stages weren’t interested in sustainable solutions, it is just that it was a particular focus of that title publication and their designer. In fact, Better Homes and Gardens has a completely green home that is traveling throughout the United States….to 15 different cities. More information will be coming about that tour, with the dates and places it can be seen. At the show, this Organizer-In-Chief lifestyle room had many sustainable ideas built into the fabric of everyday life, such as a compostable bin built into the cabinet beneath the counter, and access to it from the countertop as opposed to opening up a cabinet door or putting scraps into the disposal. There were several methods of recycling built in to make it more convenient to recycle as well as flooring by Armstrong that was a lineoleum made up of recycled wood chips, cork and linseed oil. Further, that lovely circle pattern behind the cooktop is actually recycled glass from beer and wine bottles. Bamboo had been worked into the counters at various places for cutting.

In the Kitchen and Bath Trends room, I really liked the cheeriness of the room with the yellow curtains and lighter blue seating mixed with yellow walls along with paring beigey double sinks and lighter cabinets with walnut or espresso cabinets. Looks like we are breaking a few rules here, a kind of anything goes design ethic.

But the real noticeable difference from years past would be how upscale the young savvy professional his and hers bathroom was. They’ve spared no expense here. Close-ups of this room reveals a customized tiled wall, his and her shower stalls, his and her dressing areas, built in shelving in the bathroom…just a flurry of customized touches that speak to how someone thinks this demographic is the one spending the big bucks!

his bathroom/shower

built-in towel warming drawer

As it was explained to me, the magazine responsible for representing this room, Traditional Home, has the most upscale demographic of all their publications represented and in terms of age that could span decades, and isn’t just confined to the late 20’s early 30’s female (who, as was represented as a lifestyle stage Young Savvy Professional, is single and either living with someone or about to be married), and in general luxury was heavily featured throughout the show. This of course follows suit with what many of the international labels are doing….going for the luxury markets, those that still have the expendable income during these difficult economic times.

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FIVE LEADING MAGAZINE BRANDS SHOWCASE NEW PRODUCTS AND DESIGN TRENDS AT the 2008 Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Chicago, Fri., 4/11-Sunday 4/13.

The 10,000 square-foot Design Idea Center features kitchen and bath designs from five of Meredith Corporations most popular consumer brands —Kitchen and Bath Ideas®, Better Homes and Gardens®, Traditional Home ®, Country Home® and Midwest Living®.

Titled “Your Kitchen. Your Bath. Your Way. Designs for Every Lifestyle and Life Stage,” each brand has created a fresh and unique look that addresses the needs of women as they progress through life. Whether she’s a young professional, a new mother, mom-on-the-go or an active empty-nester, this year’s Design Idea Center provides effective and useful spaces for her life, her way. Other trends include eco-friendly design, spaces to entertain, aging-in-place, indoor/outdoor living, technology, organization and storage.

Hostess Extraordinaire

The kitchen is often the hub of a busy household with teenage kids, and Kitchen and Bath Ideas has designed a space to fit this center of activity. Recognizing that a mother of teenagers is part chauffeur, part chef, part counselor, and yet, someone who also loves to entertain friends in her “spare” time, Kitchen and Bath Ideas’ teen-friendly kitchen has the ability to morph into an ideal entertainment space where adults enjoy gathering. With a functional mudroom/laundry room, butler’s pantry for serving, and banquette for ample seating near the prominent flat screen television, this kitchen can handle “teen central” and more.

Organizer-in-Chief

Better Homes and Gardens’ “Everyday Easy” kitchen is designed to help make life easier for busy families. This super-organized and eco-friendly kitchen helps make it easier to get dinner on the table, keep everyday tasks and clutter under control, and spend time together in a space that’s as much family room as it is kitchen. Innovations include a recycling center, recycled-content countertops and flooring, and a mudroom with customizable pullout cabinets for everyone’s stuff.

Savvy Young Professional

Traditional Home presents the ultimate bath suite designed for young professionals—a new generation of educated, affluent, and brand-savvy consumers who embrace a modern interpretation of traditional design and are confident investing in the creation of a home environment uniquely suited to their personal lifestyles. The floor plan, consisting of a central spa-like shared space flanked by two private baths, allows a couple to comfortably and efficiently meet their daily needs—both physically and psychologically—without conflict. Sumptuous appointments, such as a freestanding whirlpool/soaking tub and Murano glass chandelier, express this couple’s distinctive idea of luxury, while equal emphasis is also given to cutting-edge technology. A “fully loaded” steam shower in “His” bath and a “to the nines” dressing table in “Her” bath further underscore the theme of customization and personalization.

Mother Starting Out

Country Home’s kitchen, mudroom and laundry/multi-task room work hard for the young family without sacrificing style. Easy-living Corian counters take on the feel of marble and soapstone, laminate floors look like reclaimed wood, and glass front cabinets featuring a new “lace-look” pattern, make for easy organization. A technology station, flexible built-in seating, and an island with a second tier of countertops that doubles the work space, offer solutions for the woman balancing her growing family and her taste for beautiful surroundings.

Future Thinker

As 78 million baby boomers head toward new phases in their life journey, many are looking to stay in their homes for years of cooking, entertaining, and active living; and Midwest Living has created the ideal space. This kitchen and bath offers thoughtful conveniences for future needs through a design aesthetic that combines both comfort and style. Integrated wider traffic patterns, accommodating cabinet design, sit-down workspaces, and lever controls, along with other amenities, are all ideal design choices for the smart woman planning this new exciting chapter of her life.

Meredith Video Solutions will produce a half-hour syndicated television special, “Cool Kitchens and Baths,” featuring the 2008 Design Idea Center and related kitchen and bath trends from the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show to air nationwide in the summer 2008.
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Art glass is a beautiful thing. These glass lanterns from Marston & Langinger, available in clear, green or blue are blown into a metal frame. In two styles, the ‘Goccia’ lantern (top left) and the ‘Venetian’ lantern (middle and top right) in small or large give outdoor porches that extra touch. via April British House and Garden and marston-and-langinger.com.

But that’s not all. Style statements are being made with glass for kitchen countertops using both solid or recycled glass and depending on which one you use the looks are entirely different and specifications for handling are different. It’s hard not to see how different your counters can look with solid glass which can be formed into nearly any shape, texture, and color, and as noted by Taunton’s Fine Homebuilding and Rob Yagid’s feature article “Amazing Countertops,” the more elaborate, the more expensive.

Broken bottles, windshields, windows whatever are now being recycled into unique and durable countertops. Visit the Magazine Extras section of FineHomebuilding.com to see IceStone’s Manufacturing facility and how they combine recycle glass and concrete to make countertops. Or visit Vetrazzo’s showroom to get up close and personal with their recycled glass samples. It’s a new world for sure.

Back to Marston & Langinger, they also make these lovely cut glass scented candle holders in an array of colors and aromas, sure to bring the proper glow to your outdoor dinner parties.

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