above image courtesy of Rumour PR
January has been a whirlwind for the Trend Bible team, as the team broke off to cover the major interior trade shows in Europe and the USA to report back on the latest trends in home interiors on behalf of our clients.
First up in our busy UK schedule was home, London, a new trade event for homewares and interior accessories, running alongside the existing Top Drawer show at Earl’s Court.
Our Senior Trend Researcher, Jill Hawkins shares a snapshot from the show. To access our full reports, please contact us about our consultancy subscription services.
“The home show fills a gap in the trade show calendar in London, and provides an opportunity for buyers to shop for new products and see the latest trends. As well as the more established home interior brands, it was great to see some of the newer, up-coming brands we’ve featured in our trend publications there at the show,” explains Jill.
“There were really two main directions at the show; the first was for a cleaner, simplistic design led by strong colour, and the other was for nostalgic references within design,” said Joanna Feeley, Trend Bible Director. “Back in 2009, we published our forecasts for Spring/Summer 2012, with two key stories reflecting these two contrasting design angles; Visionaire, which has a clean, minimalist vibe, and Sentiment, which picks up on the nostalgic British references.”
New Minimal
We first spotted REThinkThings’ beautiful powder coated metal bird feeders at Design Event back in October 2011. With so much strong colour for summer, expect to see materials that take colour well trending heavily, like powder coated metals and glossy glaze ceramics.
Stackable, connectable components were also seen in abundance at the show, a trend we forecast would be big news for 2012. “This trend for stackable objects comes from a broader theme around saving space in the home, ” explains Trend Bible founder Joanna Feeley. “Products that can be easily stored to save valuable and limited worktop or floor space are on the rise, with homeowners getting creative with space in the home instead of moving up the housing ladder and buying more space. With a stagnant housing market, comes an incredible creativity for storage solutions and design.”
Jansen’s colour-blocked ceramics hit the right note this spring, balancing the traditional with a cleaner, slicker aesthetic set to influence tableware. As predicted in our Spring/Summer 2012 trend report, we’re seeing a riot of colour for the home and garden this summer, carefully underpinned here with black, grey and white.
Above is a spread from our Spring/Summer 2012 trend Visionaire, which began to look at this new minimal aesthetic influencing home interiors, blended with rustic, traditional elements.
Nostalgia
Ferm Living have been featured in our Kids Lifestyle Trends publications in the past and strike a clean balance between nostalgic and fresh. We loved their quirk, robot character cushions, above, at home.
Seletti’s presented patchworked and montaged traditional pattern for their tableware collection this season, keeping the traditional British tea party story alive for 2012.
Snowhome‘s collaborative prints with John Green Designs also referenced the ongoing love affair with all things British. 2012 is a pivotal year for Britain, with high profile events including the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee expected to influence design trends.
This print is a fresh interpretation of modern British patriotism with words describing traditional British industries, pastimes and products making up a map of the UK. You can check out our own interpretation of this patriotic trend in our Stationery trend feature at the adjoining Top Drawer show.
Abigail Borg presented her latest homeware collection at the show, above, which referenced beautiful oversized garden florals like chrysanthemums and hydrangeas. We included English garden florals as part of our Sentiment trend for our S/S 2012 home interior trend publication, below.
One of our newest trend panelists – also featured in our trend books – is ceramicist Andrew Tanner who exhibited his latest collection at home. It received rave reviews, and you can read Design Week’s right here. We loved this collection which delicately referenced nostalgic and traditional bone china tea sets whist still managing to look contemporary. Pattern appeared on the underneath of plates, handles of tea cups and spouts of teapots.
Andrew also launched his Augmented Reality plate, above, which truly captures technology and brings it to a new medium. You can see a video below.
Coming soon is our round-up of home’s co-located show, Top Drawer, where we created bespoke trend features. We also thought this report by Rumour PR was a pretty good round up of the show too…
This is gorgeous. thank you so much for your hard work. MJ