The Design District

Posted By Lisa Radon on 10/01/2008

I should tell you that you are reading it here first. Doty Horn’s Color Pulse 2010 presentation debuted in Portland tonight at George Morlan to an audience of perhaps 300 interiors professionals, and will travel across the country in the months to come. Horn is Director of Color and Design for Benjamin Moore.

So what is Color Pulse? It’s Faith Popcorn meets Pantone. I won’t say you had to be there, but almost. The talk + slides was a quickstep hopscotch through international furniture fairs, fashion, window dressing, and visual art through which Horn teased out three overarching trends: Genesis, The New Luxury, and Ingenuity. Each of the trends had sub-trends/talking points, and after the barrage of free-associative noun and adjective (listening was seriously like riding a wave that was trying to get away from you) for each trend wound up, Horn moved into the color wheel, applying the trend info to each hue (+ naturals and greyscale).

And while the color trend info is important, the path Horn took to get there, suggesting a number of rising trends that span design disciplines has equally far-reaching implications, and is frankly fascinating.

Shocking to the audience was the return of the 70s palette (what Horn called , which came into focus through photos from the Euro Cucina show which elicited titters from the crowd. But titters turned to gasps when Horn announced, in the discussion of “yellow” that we should “look for oak to come back…it’s a yellow-based wood.” A collective and emphatic, “aww.”

But let me back up for a minute. Horn started with the word “authenticity,” calling it, “the new counterculture,” which starts feeling like the world is turning in on itself like a taffy pull, but anyway. “Authenticity is an extension of [the word] raw from 2009,” said Horn.

This lead to her Genesis theme and a montage of potter’s wheel, sprouted seed, honeycomb, rock, and so on. She talked about the root essence and this leading to eco-inspired themes. She noted the topographical map form of Thomas Heatherwick East Beach Cafe (above), the Icarus lamp she saw in Cologne, the shade of which is lined with a 2” layer of wax that melts out as the lamp is used to create a unique form, a couple of artists at the Milan fair who took the juice of several vegetables (and maybe fruits) and printed the colors on paper chips…talk about raw color, oh and Arik Levy’s Black Honey.MGX bowl. See also: clay, recycled cardboard and paper furniture (the Issey Miyake and Nendo collaboration: cabbage chair), and felt. “Felt is the fabric,” Horn says.

Her New Luxury segment was more scattered, a nouveaux riche theme with repeated references to the assertion of wealth in Russia, China, and the Middle East, particularly Dubai, Qatar, and the UAE. This translated into gold…as in a goldplated dining room, and fine art as in one-off handpainted couture dresses (though she didn’t show any handpainted interior surfaces). But then she lurched back and forth between eco luxe and Swarovski crystal-encrusted snowboards…whoah…oh, and outdoorsy stuff like the notion of a quilted parka being applied to furniture, The audience enjoyed Horn’s use of the word “glamping” meaning the kind of luxe camping that’s been around for some time now (see Costanoa in California) but is apparently bubbling up.

Ingenuity was her final theme which translated to both tech and whimsy. “What box? Right brain. Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind,” said Horn, in the clipped list way she opened each segment. She showed us Tom Price’s Meltdown Chair, fabric-wrapped surfaces, a wall of 25,000 tissues at MOSS, and then started talking about sports and how tech fabrics developed for athletes are heading to furniture. Cartoons and bright graphic-y patterns on surfaces (like cabinet fronts), exemplified by some Karim Rashid work, wrapped that section.

The most important interiors theme she noted was that of monochromatic looks, colorblocking (borrowed from fashion), “different dimensions of the same color family,” tone-on-tone, and the near absence of pattern in textiles.

But what about color, you ask? Here are some of her thoughts:

Greyscale: carbon and whites that are creamy…”chalk, milk, alabaster.” Louise Nevelson textural black. And “stay tuned for ombre,” Horn says, obviously expecting it to move from fashion into the home. But wait, I think I just saw Martha Stewart article on dip dyeing producing a DIY ombre effect. Scooped! Clinically white kitchens and Valentino laser-cut white surfaces.

Naturals: “beige competes with grey.” Parchment, cardboard, muslin, and hay (no kidding, she saw hay “all over London.” Cool.)

Yellows: fresh, citron with carbon, banana, mustard, gold, sheer, gilded.

Orange: copper, pumpkin, clay.

Reds: from pinks to crimson, brick, and a red so orange you aren’t sure if it isn’t perhaps orange. “Rouge with blue-ing, blacking. Russian red.” She called the blackened reds the most “livable” (and “wearable”) and we know just what she means. Strawberry.

Purples: “periwinkle, grape (almost shocking), aubergine, and lilac,” the lilac neutralized so it almost reads as grey.

Blues: soft, celestial blue, and deep “worker” blue, ink and indigo (“reflecting denim lifestyle”). She called out the deepest midnight blues for special attention (which takes us back to when we wore down the midnight blue Crayola to a nub when all the other crayons were hardly worn at all). Oh, and she showed us a patched reclaimed denim “rug” of a pattern called “Lawrence of La Brea.”

Green: (I almost typed “greed”...hmmm). “fresher, truer, less sage, cleaner greens to yellows. Grass is vibrant. Menthol green.” Oh and here was where she talked again about the 70s kitchens calling them “succotash colors: peas, corn, carrots.”

So where did Horn look for trends? Runways in Paris and Milan. Euro Cucina show, New York Design Week, ICFF, Zona Tortona, the Tent London, the IMM Show in Cologne, and more.

And it is worth noting that many of the trends she called out are not mainstream (I almost want to say, pre-commercial, but as they’re at fairs, we’ll just say they’re for early adopters. Fair enough?). I think it’s safe to say that much of what she presented was pretty adventurous for her audience, but I’d like to think I’m wrong. There was some pretty exciting stuff here. I for one, am into the clay and hay direction. Genesis, anyone?