Mad Maximalism

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CONTROLLED CHAOS This richly rowdy family game room, designed by Marks and Frantz, exemplifies the emerging aesthetic that is making minimalist spaces seem tired and barren. MARCO MARCO RICCA Mad Maximalism

After decades of formulaic and easyontheeyes interiors, design is giving way to a luxurious riot of color and pattern. Here, guidelines on pulling off this seemingly lawless, toomuchismore style

tor of Christian Lacroix, the French fashion house Indeed, the controlled crazy that is maximal- BY JULIE LASKY with a mile-wide streak of flamboyance. The col- ism, a layered décor style packed with delightfully orful, pattern-mad brand, which six years ago be- disparate elements, is taking hold. Chinoiserie, SACHA WALCKHOFF, a Paris-based fashion and gan producing home décor, has always appealed tassels and zebra prints share space. Ornate in- product designer, was astonished when the to people with courage, but in the last two years, herited furniture is rehabilitated. Design websites wildly floral wallpapers he introduced in lime Mr. Walckhoff noted, public appetite for his visual help readers diagnose a state of excess. (“Your fa- green and fuchsia two years ago became big extremes has grown—at least, judging by the vorite color is everything,” reads one sign you sellers. “Even me, I would think twice about us- number of interiors on Pinterest tagged with Lac- might be a maximalist on design website Apart- ing them,” he confided. roix textiles, tableware and furniture. “People are ment Therapy. “You went to Versailles and That says a lot. Mr. Walckhoff is creative direc- really getting wild,” he said. Please turn to page D4

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Continued from page D1 until recently rooted in sedate thought it was a little under- modernism, released an extro- whelming.”) verted collection by British fashion The look is luxe, manic—even a designer Matthew Williamson, in- bit Auntie Mame. (Marie Kondo- cluding a $1,400 brass-legged sofa style purging be damned.) It takes covered in a florid blue tropical notes from midcentury Los Ange- print. Mr. Williamson’s pieces are les decorator Tony Duquette, who “by far the most colorful and pat- filled homes and movie sets—it tern-heavy we’ve ever done,” said was hard to tell the difference— CB2 managing director Ryan Turf, with Venetian gondolas and 28- “but once it came together, it felt foot-tall sculptures of archangels. sophisticated and very fresh.” He Also a progenitor: Yves Saint Lau- reports the collection sold 15% to rent, who paired art deco club 20% above expectations. chairs with leopard and tiger pil- In November, Herman Miller lows in his Left Bank duplex, and opened its first North American whose mid-70s “Russian” fashion retail store, in Manhattan. In collection brought purple velvet, room-like tableaus, dozens of new folk embroidery and pattern-on- and vintage objects—wooden dolls, pattern ebullience to the runway. primitive masks, spools of thread, Then the poles reversed. In the house plants—warm up the classic 1990s, minimalist décor flourished pieces by George Nelson and alongside Apple Computer’s pale Charles and Ray Eames. The maxi- streamlined products. Frosty white malist arrangement worked like a rooms housed spare modernist shot of adrenaline to invigorate furniture, reissues or knockoffs. what many consider tired, ubiqui- Just picture serial killer Patrick tous designs. The knickknacks Bateman’s art-gallery-meets-corpo- were meant to look organically ac- rate-waiting-room apartment in cumulated rather than installed, the 2000 film “American Psycho.” said Jennie Maneri, Herman But winter can’t last forever. Up Miller’s creative director for con- burbled more-personal styles like sumer business. “We want to teach Bohemianism and Domino maga- people that there’s this different zine’s eclecticism, which favored kind of modernism,” she said. “It the flea-market find. Warmer, can be personal.” woodsier midcentury pieces edged Even the 2017 catalog for IKEA, out stainless steel Barcelona that temple of bare-bones func- chairs. The Brooklyn aesthetic cel- tionality, shows a dancer with very ebrated rooms with rough indus- Ornate but Not Overly Feminine un-Scandinavian ruffled sleeves trial finishes and the hand-hewn. “This is a look that can turn granny,” said designer Michelle Nussbaumer of the chockablock design of her Dallas twirling in a moodily lit space Maximalism takes these alterna- home’s library, as seen in “Wanderlust: Interiors That Bring the World Home” (Rizzoli). Masculine gestures avoid that pit among patterned curtains and tives to minimalism and throttles fall. Large grouped porcelains, rather than a diaspora of trinkets, fill the table. An antler chandelier, male portrait, leopard floral-upholstered seating. “If you them up to a whole new level of ottoman and black 1940s Italian chest balance femininity. And the three upholstered side chairs hang together because want your living room to be a fla- complexity and splendor, much as they are covered in Ms. Nussbaumer’s Sulaman fabric. “The repeat is so big, each chair looks different,” she said. menco club, then do it—fearlessly,” Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, the god- the copy advises, an exhortation father of the fashion world’s take on one’s downstairs neighbor might this movement, has glamorously, ec- not appreciate. centrically mismatched patterns and Brooklyn designer Starrett Ring- color since his acclaimed 2015 col- bom, of Starrett Hoyt, blames the lection debut. Milan-based Cabana torrents of home images on social magazine, launched in 2014, simi- media and in design catalogs for larly raised the design scene’s ap- creating this thirst for the unique. preciation of old-world sumptuous- “I think it is hard for anything to ness, a key factor in the mix. feel special or luxurious when Maximalist spaces reflect their you’ve seen the same living room, occupants’ travels, pasts and or a variation thereof, 100 times quirks. Claire Bingham, author of before.” And though New York de- “A Beautiful Mess: Celebrating the signer Alexa Hampton appreciates New Eclecticism” (teNeus, April), the democratizing of design that describes them as “ ‘follow-your- retailers like Restoration Hardware own-path’ interiors.” The rooms, brought about, she also admits she writes, “are far from precious. that “after having the same coffee They are about having fun.” table, or sofas with the same arm, New York designer and antiques we all get the urge to shout, ‘This dealer David Duncan lauds these is my room!’ ” and create a space interiors as an antidote to “sterile like her purple bedroom, at left. hotel-like” home environments: The internet has also globalized “Nothing says ‘I didn’t know what the marketplace, making accessible else to do,’ like a monochromatic Hewed to a Hue the vintage Iranian rugs and Mo- room with a ‘pop of color.’ ” After 15 years of working professionally roccan tiles maximalism calls for. This March, Bergdorf Goodman with neutrals, designer Alexa Hampton Might the web threaten to overex- will begin carrying collections from decided she had to have fun with her and pose this look as well? Perhaps, London’s five-year-old House of her husband’s Manhattan bedroom. “My but the idiosyncratic combining of Hackney, founded by Javvy M. version of maximalist is to have a lot of personal collections and beloved Royle and Frieda Gormley, a mar- the same color, which allowed me to mix objects seems less in danger of ho- ried pair of recovering minimalists. disparate elements but have a veneer of mogenization than beigeness was. The duo reacted to the digital rev- similitude.” All purple are: custom Gracie In any case, maximalism suits olution much as William Morris re- suedelike wallpaper, velvet exterior and our era. We’re uncertain about the acted to the Industrial Revolu- paisley interior bed curtains, a textured economy, the climate, the future. tion—by championing nature- headboard and the carpet. The orange Our instinct is to retreat some- themed local manufacturing. Their mirrorwork bedspread, from the previous where soft and protective, not company, which sells furniture, ac- mostly white incarnation of the room, Scaled Up and Down stark and uncompromising. “With cessories and fashions, some with worked in the purple version and provided In the dining room of this New York townhouse, the wide color palette in all the terrible news these days,” patterns adapted from Morris, has a second color. “You need some contrast,” cludes green, pink, gold and red. “But mixing different scales makes it har said designer Jessica Helgerson, in become a hunting ground for maxi- said Ms. Hampton, who added an orange monious,” said designer Kati Curtis. The needlepoint rug is a largescale Portland, Ore., “it probably feels malist lovers of floral prints and rug so the bed doesn’t disappear against floral, the banquette a more compact, intricate stripe and the moth motifs better to burrow into a cozy den.” fringed lampshades. the carpet. Pink in the bedcover appears on the Timorous Beasties wallpaper are so widely spaced it acts almost as Is there anything Ms. Helgerson This yearning for color and or- in the lamp shade and bolster on the bed. a solid backdrop for the patterned plates. Neutrals, such as the offwhite considers a drawback to maximal- nament hasn’t been lost on bigger Said Ms. Hampton of the room: “It de side and arm chairs, give the eye somewhere to rest, as does the transpar ist rooms? design companies. In October, CB2, lights me because it’s so wacky.” ent glass and Plexiglas table, which also lends the room some edge. Indeed. “More dusting!”

WALL OF PROFUSION Framed 16th and 17 THE MAXIMALIST LIST century tiles, a fragment of Ushak medallion carpet and antique Martina Mondadori Sartogo, editor and founder of Cabana, African vessels contribute enumerates 10 key elements of the magazine’s lush and layered aesthetic, a visual to a densely layered floral display. vocabulary credited with bringing maximalism into the mainstream

Pass on pastels. Bold colors such a vintage embroidered suzani), hang look immaculate. By stuff, I mean: 1 as burgundy, royal blue, saffron, it on the wall as an art work or use books (tons, please), collections, flea terracotta, magenta and bottle green it as a curtain to separate two market finds, curiosities from an are more in keeping with this untimid rooms. tique shops. look. Provoke with pattern. Play Always add flowers. Any Embellish the walls. Hand 5 with different prints. Apply a 8 room looks better with them 2 painted decoration and stencils mix to sofas, perhaps one pattern on but not a manicured bouquet. Go for inspired by centuriesold Turkish and the sofa fabric and another on the the wild bunch. Russian structures and Renaissance cushions. Do the same with walls. Italian palazzi add richness. See the gold in old. Use an in Start a collection. And become 9 herited chest of drawers next to Look down. As shoes are im 6 obsessive with it. A few ideas: your bed or in the dining room to 3 portant in defining both women’s vintage books, handpainted ceramics, store linens. A family piece immedi and men’s style, so is a carpet in a wicker objects, marquetries, tiles (have ately gives a sense of a livedin room. My favorite styles are the them framed and then hang them), home, as opposed to a house where straw and leather ones made in Mau drawings, boxes. There is more than every piece of furniture has been ritania, Bessarabian rugs made in just contemporary art out there, and made new. Moldavia and Eastern Europe, and older pieces are often much cheaper. kilims. It is hard for a collection to look like Be patient. Rome wasn’t built hoarding because once you display the 10in a day. Homes develop over Seek out the unique. Vintage items together, they look good as a years, as you layer in your collections 4 textiles, for example. Source “family” of objects. and antiquemarket finds and mem pieces at specialized boutiques, flea orabilia from traveling. It is that pa markets or auctions. If you are lucky Fill your rooms with ‘stuff.’ tina of time that creates personality

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MELANIE ACEVEDO, ERIC PIASECKI/TRUNK, MIGUEL FLORES-VIANNA, SCOTT FREIHON SCOTT FLORES-VIANNA, MIGUEL PIASECKI/TRUNK, ERIC ACEVEDO, MELANIE TOP: FROM CLOCKWISE enough to find a large piece (maybe 7 You don’t want your house to and charm.