I am not one for practical jokes, but as a designer I do love  a good visual trick or two.  That’s what I am seeing lately -trompe l’oeil (French for “deceive the eye”)  looks from fashion to decor that marries whimsy and humor with style and design.

I’m seeing trompe l’oeil looks in :

Walls

Piet Hein Eek’s wallpaper  makes scrap wood gorgeous!

Koziel’s antique shutter wallpaper doubles your fun.This paper gives you pause- is there or isn’t there a window there?

What can a say?- Christain LaCroix for Designers Guild. LOVE.LOVE. LOVE

Need architectural detail? Berard has it.

Doors

Shelving

Deborah Bowness is a Genius with fool the eye looks

Everyone loves books Right?

Textiles

Windows

I ♥ Bauke Knottnerus’ trompe l’oeil curtains, they can be on a window in a doorway fooling the eye into believing there’s more space thanks to the perspective.

Koziel’s Decorative film provides the view and the ornate ironwork.

Fashion

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The Shade Store Via House Beautiful

With Tangerine Tango the Color of the Year-why not try it at the window?

So if we start embracing color; could we , ( O heart be still) start to see bold dynamic pattern at the window? God, I hope so; I could use a little drama….

All shade images from The Shade Store

Naïve and Romantic sees the application of soft pastel colors. Coral and salmon shades freshen up  simple patterns  such as polka dots and stripes. Turquoise and lilac are combined in hand drawn checks, and hand painted patterns. Text, postcards, stamp motifs evoke memories Trees and tree trunks are used as decoration.

Dreamlike florals and blossoms are the most important subjects, in all possible variations, but especially watercolor looks and hand painted florals. Old-fashioned roses and birds are applied in new ways with a touch of golden details. Flowers of importance are roses and orchids. Oriental influences are present in blossoms, birds and flower patterns Old cupboards recycled and decorated with Japanese blossoms and 3-D branches add for a fairytale effect. Florals  and botanical motifs can also take on a refined effect. We see huge wallpaper with a flower photo print. Flowers, birds, butterflies, branches and botanical subjects like mushrooms. We see a 3-D flower motifs for pillows.

Shine, metallics and a touch of silver and gold are indispensable. Glass tiles,  Swarovski crystal effect and materials with the iridescent effects are  found in small details. F homey atmosphere is evoked by recycling and patchwork effects in the carpet. Multicolor effects are visible in stripes, and the fresh retro inspired combinations of pink and turquoise. Colorful patterns are mixed freely for a bohemian effect . Also here gold is important. Home accessories are pleated and folded for 3-D effects. Different shades of blue  are combined. We see how handcrafted designs play an important role in the prints. We see blots, spots and stains, but also ikat prints. Ombres, degrade looks, chipped paint add to the romance.

Milou Ket – Trend Forecasts, Home Colors, Product Development

Maison and Objet’s Observatoire says, “Enough of gloom and doom in this crazy world! A pinch of folly and caustic humor can let your imagination take the wheel. It’s time to champion the right to a breath of mental fresh air, to have fun. Quirky, festive creativity is turning to whimsy and humor. Insolence and irony, extravagance and outrageousness are sweeping away things we’ve all seen before. Now is the time for sweet delirium and highly euphoric abnormality. In the offbeat bazaar of our contemporary cabinet of curiosities, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and it feels crazily good.”

M&O’s Observatorie is made up of three style agencies along with  other mover and shakers that come together before each edition and bring their  discoveries, their emotions and their intuitions about emerging lifestyles. This   brainstorming helps define a topic as the running theme of that season. Emotions, Desires, Secret, Luxuries, Use, Intensity- the themes refer to major, all-encompassing trends and not the whims of fashion. They have chose Crazy as the trend theme for the January 2012 edition of M&O. Here’s a peek…

Sweet Freaks | Monstrous beauties by Vincent Gregorie for Nelly Rodi

Eccentricity is energizing our imaginations. Wild flights of fancy and offbeat whimsy are shaking up a world caught between being too orderly and unhinged. Supercharged design is experimenting with curious overlaps combining the unusual and the refined. Juxtapositions, accumulations, and subversions are creating a dizzily psychotropic style. The home is mutating into a cave of wonders

Artketing | Mad about art by Francois Bernard for Croisements

We are all trying to proclaim our uniqueness, but sometimes it seems  pointlessness. Unique pieces draw out nothing but the boredom of the commonplace. Hyper-personalization is now designing our décors. So it’s time for the unexpected to leap into a scattershot yet elegant jumble that is both ironic and luxurious. Anachronisms, colliding materials, collusive colors… The home is becoming a work of art, and you are its creator

Dream Box | Gentle madness by Elizabeth Leriche for Elizabeth Leriche

A disconcerted, disconcerting age is exploring the strangeness of imaginary worlds. Dreams and nightmares are teleporting us into disturbing parallel realities in which our desires and fears are transformed. Optical illusions, losing our bearings, outsized objects, an upside-down world, distortions and other black magic… a phantasmagoria that enchants and bewitches. The house is experiencing the ready-to-dream.

“Pimp my Home” is one of imm cologne’s trend mottos for the coming season. When it comes to creative scope, there’s no place like your own four walls. And there are plenty of accessories and decorating ideas for “pimping” the place up, even on a small budget. There are sure to be plenty of new and exciting ideas to discover at the imm cologne 2012. This trend is:

* Layouts and functional zones are breaking up

* Modern living stands for: anything goes, no musts!

* Above all, furniture has to be flexible

* Furniture is getting smaller

* New materials are making their way into the home

These days, furnishing a home means breaking down the old, traditional boundaries, putting the television in the kitchen area, turning the dining table in the live-in kitchen into command central complete  and putting the bathtub in the bedroom.  As people’s requirements of their homes have changed, the arrangement of the rooms has undergone fundamental changes as well.

The clearly delimited areas of the past are merging with one another – and have broken away from their old functions. We no longer ask themselves what belongs in our living room, but what we want to do in that space . The “either-or” model of old is being replaced by an emphatic “both-and” approach.

Bling bathtub

This freedom within our own four walls allows for a huge amount of creative autonomy. One thing is certain: people’s homes are becoming increasingly important to them. New studies show that the home is evolving into the focal point of our social lives. Communication tools like smartphones, netbooks and tablet computers are contributing to the trend to retreat home.  If you’re going to spend that much time at home, you want a habitat that’s good for the soul.

House of Habit's custom furniture legs

As a result, Modern furniture has to fulfill many functions. All in all, furniture is getting smaller again because it can be used for all sorts of different things. Sofas, for instance, can easily be adjusted to create bigger seating surfaces. Desks only need a small work space because the technical equipment is getting smaller, display cabinets can be narrow because the LED lighting doesn’t take up any space. Poufs that can be carried around the home are flexible seating options that fit in anywhere. Tables can be extended in next to no time when friends come for dinner, and flatscreen TVs can be made to disappear into the sideboard at the push of a button.

imm cologne will showcase this trend and Visionary Design: “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” created by Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien. They will shake up the  conventional ideas about living.

Amanda McCalvour

“I am interested in the vulnerability of thread, its ability to unravel, and its strength when it is sewn together. I am interested in the connections between process and materials and the way that they relate to images and spaces.”

I am blown away with these embroidery installations.  Toronto textile artist, Amanda McCavour moved from drawing fibers and cloth, to actually using them to make her work. Thinking that it would be even more interesting to make a drawing out of thread that might exist in air, she started to experiment with water soluable fabric. It turned out to be the perfect tool.

Drawing on her memories of  an old apartment, the life size installation, Stand in For Home allowed her to re-visit, remember and re-create a space that was once called home.

Amanda draws out her images on the fabric before sewing; drawing the outline and then blocking  in areas that will be different colors of thread.  She treats the embroidery like a drawing, moving from light to dark, like shading with thread.  McCavour sews with a sewing machine on the water soluable fabric.  Sewing so close together so that the thread image begins to hold itself together; she dissolves the base, leaving just the thread image behind.

Daniel Kornrumpf

Massachusetts artist Daniel Kornrumpf uses embroidery as a medium for his portraits. Making it even more out-of-the box, he does portraits of people he doesn’t know, but have posted photos of themselves online.

Michelle Ann Mathews

Photographer, artist and graphic designer Michelle Ann Matthews is clearly multi-talented. A photographer that has become intrigued by the mundane and anonymous spaces in the landscape she started photographing the “negative utopia” of the urban landscape- the  in between places, that beckon to the past and the future.

Recently, she became equally enamored with embroidery and its relationship to photography which has resulted in an embroidery series of her photos she titles Urban Fabric.

“ I am intrigued by embroidery’s relationship to human culture, while also looking at a way to change our reading of photography by rendering a photograph into a tactile object.”

Works in the embroidery series feature snapshots of night construction, a stack of crates at a building site, , a park by the  freeway and an abandoned Kmart.

At first from a distance these works read as photographs. It is only when you look closely do you see the thread. The Urban Fabric   materialize in tens of thousands of stitches, and the thread replaces the photographic pixel.

Cayce Zavaglia

Cayce’s work is a nod to the tradition of tapestry and her love of craft. Using wool yarn instead of oils, Zavaglia creates a dialogue between portraiture and process as well as proposing a new definition for the word “painting”.  Although the medium is crewel embroidery wool, the technique borrows more from the worlds of drawing and painting.

Cayce explains her technique: “Initially, working with an established range of wool colors proved frustrating. Unlike painting, I was unable to mix the colors by hand. Progressively, I created a system of sewing the threads in a sequence that would ultimately give the allusion of a certain color or tone. The direction in which the threads were sewn had to mimic the way lines are layered in a drawing to give the allusion of depth, volume, and form. Over time the stitches have become tighter and more complex, but ultimately more evocative of flesh, hair, and cloth.”

Drawn to poster art by their vibrant dramatic scale and colors, I  also love them for the peek inside the world of Paris at the turn of the century. I own several  Cappiellos and have introduced art posters  to clients, used them as inspiration and decorated around them, but I hadn’t thought about them on a window until now. ( Don’t ask me why! )  Creatively Different Blinds suggests just that – why NOT chose vintage poster art imagery and print them on blinds, shades or fabric to give your clients an authentic edge using the bold designs of these famous prints. BTW, Texton and is another company working in the digital printing arena; working with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation . Adaptive Textiles and Spoonflower will print fabrics for you.

In the 1890s the buildings of every big city were covered by large colorful advertising posters. The poster movement played a major part in codifying, glorifying and perpetuating the ebullient period of La Belle Epoque.  Jules Cheret, the father of poster art, whose unique combination of artistic, technical and entrepreneurial talents paved the way for a true industry. The poster had not only caught the fancy of the public, but its best examples were already being regarded as works of art to be exhibited, reviewed in journals, collected and reprinted in a manageable form. During the poster heyday, Cheret also published “Les Maitres de l’Affiche” (Masters of the Poster) reduced lithographic versions, in authentic colors, of the best posters of Europe and America. There were 256 color lithographs in the collection, reproduced from the original works of ninety-seven artists in a smaller 11 x 15 inch format. The varied selection of prints were sold in a package of four and delivered monthly to subscribers. The collection was issued as separate numbered sheets and in the margin at the right was a blind embossed stamp of authenticity. Working in a dressing room or bedroom? Look at some of the great fashion illustrations and magazine covers for roller shades.

Game rooms, library, home theater, sophisticated man cave? Imagine liquor or wine ads, auto racing or sports and entertainment  themes as motorized window coverings on those windows.

 Focused on beautiful imagery and delicious typography, it’s a genre that works in so many different interior settings to inspire fabrics, textiles and accessories and mood through color and form. Plus, digitally printed on blinds or shades is a inexpensive way to start collecting.

If  you’re looking for patterns rather than figures, ads or depictions of events, introduce some art deco influences based around dress fabric prints from  F. Ducharne  or Arthur Sanderson and Sons.

So now I am thinking about where I can use the poster that has been haunting me lately…..

I’m forecasting textiles with a bright & youthful styling  and a new breed of intense, yet understated luxury that is meant to be admired rather than envied. Design studios at Surtex and Heimtextil said one of the strongest demands they have been receiving is for hand-painted designs, many noting that hard lines and computer-generated creations are less in demand. I concur that the free flow of the hand is growing in popularity and that artisan looks are  key.

What better way to do that than with florals. These florals are not the viney, mid size motifs from past years. Those have given way to large sometimes ethnic influenced full blown blooming florals in size, scale and motif.   

Pillow: Bluebellgray Fashion: Christopher Kane

Big blooms are making an impact in both fashion+ home. One of our favorites is Bluebellgray.

 We saw this new fabric collection at M&O introduced by two young gun Scottish designers influenced by a love of color and all things floral.  The designs are something unique and special; each design is painted by hand in the Bluebellgray studio before being printing onto natural cottons and linens using state- of- the- art digital printing.

 Digital printing enables every brushstroke and color to be captured, enhancing the feel of the hand painted design. The pieces above have a sense of provenance and the designer behind the product, adding to the feeling of exclusivity. (Hard to believe they are digitally printed!)

 Shortlisted for an Elle Decoration Design award at TENT London last month for their collaboration with Roger Lewis, the design philosophy behind the brand adheres to the ‘eclectic mix’ school of thought.  As Fiona says ‘it’s ok when things don’t match, if you love it- go with it!’ The designs are aimed at people looking for something unique and individual for their home, an antidote to mass production.

More Evidence:

Amrapali Fall/ Winter 2011 Designer’s Guild

Collier Campbell for Fabricut VPR 36"

Catalina for Duralee

Wall panels from Jakob Schlaepfer