WHAT'S NEW IN HOME FABRICS?
TRACKING MULTIPLE TRENDS

By Arthur Douglas Thayer

The multiple trends in the rug business are mirrored by what's happening in the home fabric business.

For all the bright colors awash at the recent High Point market, there were increasing numbers of showrooms that were oases of earthy neutrality.

Along with the trendy new shades of apple green, kiwi, spa, robin's egg, paprika, orange, pink and plum, neutrals such as our old friend beige were being re-incarnated with refreshing results.

Finer and tighter textures: Cone's space dyed polyester and cotton jacquard.

Textures in fabrics continued a trend to finer, tighter constructions. That meant less chenille, which has enjoyed several seasons in the limelight.  The chenille that remained was finer and more tightly woven.

Rayon boucle from Home Fabrics at Norwalk.

Texture did remain important, however.  Replacements for chenille ranged from boucle, space dye yarns to fabrics like velvets and freize.

We all knows that what goes around comes around.When chenille yarn was initially introduced in home furnishings in the early 1970's, it was touted as the poor man's velvet - much cheaper to make and not quite as fancy and high toned as velvet. The opposite is true now. Most innovations in fabrics are chenille-based jacquards and every bit as pricey as European velvets.
 

Weiman Silk plaid taffeta, plain woven in India.

The natural fibers such as  silk and linen, along with cotton remained major factors at this market. Prints on linen and linen blends heralded yet another hopeful return of printed fabric to the market. For the last 11 years, prints have been in steady decline in home furnishings. Some say it's because patterned rugs have come into their own at all levels of the price spectrum.

Cotton and the faux natural rayon continue to be hot in medium to high-end wovens because they both drape well and feel good.

Silk is the current luxury fabric, interpreted in  plaids, stripes, jacquards and especially embroidered florals from India.

 "For us, silks are increasingly important, especially in quilted, channeled and embroidered fabrics,€VbCrLf commented Ron Fiore, design director of Hickory Chair, a high end upholstered furniture maker.

RE-EMERGENCE OF SYNTHETICS

Circa 1801 at Highland House is a jacquard faux silk that combines rayon, acrylic, polyester and cotton.

The antithesis of the silk trend is the re-emergence of synthetics as a fashion statement.  Consumers want easy care furniture. In addition to treatments and finishes like Crypton, Microban and Teflon, new developments in technology are giving man-made fabrics built-in high performance and easy care qualities.

 Glen Raven has taken its branded outdoor Sunbrella acrylic fiber, softened it, restyled and re-colored it to work comfortably inside the home.

Norwalk Furniture features independent designer Joe Ruggiero's collection of Sunbrella fabrics.  California designer Richard Grenier launched his Arts & Crafts period outdoor collection at Century using Sunbrella fabrics that have the look and feel of  indoors as they perform outdoors. In the rug category, Capel introduced a new indoor-outdoor sisal-look polypropylene collection bound in Sunbrella fabrics.

In addition, polyester, with excellent cleanability and durability, is the market's  fiber of choice in faux suedes, microdenier plains and  terry cloth plush that looked and felt like a finer version of your favorite bathrobe.

Polypropylene, the work horse of the machine made rug business, has been the most under-rated fiber in the fabric business. But that is about to change. 

Poypropylene is getting a much needed shot in the arm by being marketed by both American Fibers & Yarn and Pliana as the only fiber with inherent stain resistance and virtual indestructibility.

There are two simple reasons for the phenomenon of synthetics: Consumer demand and technology.

 Consumers want less stressful lives. They want furnishings that take little maintenance and are easy to clean when pets and kids stain them. Consumers are  sophisticated and knowledgeable about trends, pricing and what's available.

Consumers want and demand low maintenance, high performance fabrics on their upholstered furniture AND they refuse to buy it if it feels like a surfboard or looks like Ernest Borgnine.

MORE ABOUT COLOR

Bright colors - blue, green, orange, pink, yellow, purple - continue to move  in the cleaner, clearer direction.

Susan Brehm, vice president of sales and marketing of Bomar Trim, put it this way, "Fabric colors continue to get prettier each season.  Crisp and clean, and not overly bright.€VbCrLf

At the same time,  neutrals, especially the extremes of dark (chocolate) and light (ecru, sand, stone), are increasing  in importance.

Let's pin-point the shades that were popular this Spring.

Alexander Julian uses neutrals and soft blues and greys in this rayon-polyester faux silk fabric for Weiman.

Blue.  Forget denim, indigo and wedgewood. Thjis season, it  was robin's egg blue, aka spa blue. Grayed off and light blues will be next big blue story. We saw the beginning of that trend in Barbara Barry's collection at Henredon.

Green.While blues were going to the green side, greens were shading to yellow. Variously called kiwi, apple, spring green, celadon and celery. Greens were becoming warmer. The warmer greens work extremely  well with cool blues.

At the launch of his contemporary furniture collectionNew York-based ceramic artist and retailer Jonathan Adler dubbed this color palette "happy chic."

 He added, " This collection can't be snobby and unfriendly, it's naturally inviting.€VbCrLf

Lurex is back. The metallic look, another friendly, tongue in cheek look  from the 50's, is back. Perhaps it's only momentary. Subtle metallic threads accent tweedy fabrics from Quaker. It's  featured in Adler's collection, among many. Lurex is also seen as minimal outlines in high pick geometric jacquards.

Orange and Red. Orange is the new red, so red becomes mainstream. Orange replaces red as the accent color of choice. A few seasons back, orange was the shocking accent in prints, jacquards and upper end contemporary. Now it's muting down. As a main color in solids and backgrounds, it is called paprika, pumpkin, terra cotta.
 

Yellow and Purple. These colors weren't directional at the Spring markets,  but they are key.

Yellow is a natural upper. You can't be sad around it. As it becomes more middle market, it becomes less chrome and can now be used as a cheerful neutral mixer.

As purple goes mainstream, it also softens with more brown and red, becoming more red than blue.
 

Pink. No color can be truly new, but pink is the new fashion color, both as accent and major shade. Just look at women's clothing this Summer.

Used mostly with other warm colors, including orange and chocolate, we predict pink  will become an established and mainstream color in home furnishings.

Neutrals. With oceans of bright color all around this market, neutrals were welcome and calming resting points.

Barbara Berry provided an oasis of neturality.

Charles Designs, Thayer Coggin, Milling Road, Hickory Chair and Barbara Barry were some oases of neutrality in the rainbow maelstrom in High Point.

Neutrals and brights often intersected in patterns and furniture frames. Most often chocolate, mixed with robin's egg blue, pink, orange, red or apple green.

However, tone-on-tone neutral fabrics were more often the norm this Spring.
 

MERGER OF CONTEMPORARY AND TRADITIONAL


Linen cotton print at Norwalk

We are seeing an interesting new development in design preferences, the merging of contemporary and traditional styles. It's a trend that is creating a new synergy. Modern becomes less cutting edge and easier to live with. Traditional furniture relaxes, becomes less stiff, less intimidating.

Michael Buskirk, president and general manager of  Weiman/Preview calls this "trans-contemporary. "  It  is the blending of stark contemporary with more mainstream transitional, he explained.

 At Century, Kelly Hoppen blends the two styles. In one collection, he  takes a classic sofa form, and modernizes it by adding metal mail fringe trim and mother of pearl.
 

Ever since the beginning of the  Industrial Revolution, the paradigm for many machine made textiles has been to mechanically create the  look of a  hand woven fabric. Conversely, production hand weavers have struggled to make yardage as flawless and evenly woven (machine made) as possible.  After nearly 200 years, this is still true.

Weiman Preview Zensilk collection is a delicate Indian
 hand-woven fabric of silk and silk ribbons.

Hand made fabrics are still hot, especially in accessory and accent pieces. Linen and silk are a part of this. These fibers, woven in tight constructions, tonal plain looks are the newest alternatives to the ocean of chenille we've been swimming through the last few years.

A hand crafted look of note was introduced at Janus Et Cie: chair pillows adorned with squares cut from mature coconut shells.

PATTERN TYPES

Valdese chevron design for Norwalk is jacquard woven of polyster/acrylic/cotton/rayon.

Finally a few words about pattern types. Traditional formal looking  stylized florals and geometrics such as Victorian, Regency and even Renaissance patterns  are becoming   more tone-on-tone and much larger in scale. If woven as a jacquard, they have minimal texture. If printed, done on grass cloth or crepe background. Simple fabric types like houndstooth checks, twills, herringbones are so blown up in size that they have  become mega-patterns.
 

Milling Road blown-up plaid woven cotton.