Defining an Era With a Soft Touch

Like a curator leading a museum tour, Katherine Bennett strolled through the merchandise displays at Crate and Barrel, singling out various objects for commentary.

“This stainless steel flatware used to be classically simple, and now look at these textured handles . . . notice how the square fronts of bookcases are starting to be curved . . . earthenware dishes that were stark white now are hand-painted with beautiful colors. . . .”

In the view of Bennett and others, such tidbits signal a new appetite for color, texture and sensual form that may have larger implications for the way we live our lives.

As a designer and teacher, Bennett has observed with approval the gradual blossoming of household objects from the stark, utilitarian lines of 20th century modernism to something much more decorative and expressive--something more comforting.

“Somewhere in the ‘80s, our perspective began to change,” she said, “and in recent years it has exploded. Where you used to see matte black and sleek chrome, with straight lines and occasional flashes of color, now you see warmth, high touch and richness.”

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This goes beyond tossing a needlepoint cushion onto the leather office chair, she continued. Look in any direction: Chairs and couches are plump and textured in cut velvets, failles, mohairs, denims and nubby chenilles. Bed and bath linens, comforters and towels are a puffy profusion of paisleys, floral damasks, checked Jacquards, abstract animal prints, swirls of polka-dots and vintage stripes. Even simple items like kitchen spatulas are turning up in beautiful birch wood with elliptical handles.

Bennett, a staff member at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, is a consulting product designer and research analyst. She’s also chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America, the people responsible for designing most of the objects we use in everyday life.

Given a choice, Bennett says, today’s consumers are picking warmer, softer materials simply because the contemporary world is an overwhelming place.

“I think the lush terrain we are now finding in residential interiors is an absolute response to the pressures of technology bombarding us.”

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Many designers agree. Surrounded with all those laptops and cellular phones and beepers, consumers are increasingly rejecting modernism’s chrome legs on the gray plastic table in favor of fine-grained woods and the rounded lines that industrial designer Katherine McCoy calls the “new lyricism.”

“People want to make emotional connections with their home,” said Suzanne Slesin, design editor for Conde Nast House & Garden, which devoted its September cover to design luxury, proclaiming: “In our search for calm and comfort lies a core hope: to recapture a time when the world was forever revealing its sensory delights.”

And Santa Barbara interior designer Douglas Bartoli now designs his own line of richly textured hand-screened prints for luxury pillows and wall coverings, because “the wilder the world gets, the more we need beauty when we come home.”

Whatever the underlying push, evidence of home enhancement is everywhere, from Martha Stewart’s ruffled empire to the CompuServe weekly online quilting bee.

“Housewares have become a form of fashion,” declared Chee Pearlman, editor of I.D., the international design magazine, whose current issue presents winners in the 43rd annual design review. This year’s contest drew 2,500 entries in eight categories, from computers to housewares to personal care products, giving Pearlman a bead on the emerging fashions in product design.

“From all the evidence we’ve seen, there is a trend toward softness and texture that is palpable right now. You can see it by walking into any housewares store or home appliance store,” she said. Pearlman and her contest judges were impressed both with expressive form and experimentation with materials, including plastics.

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And she liked the explosion of color--not slapped on, but thoughtfully translated into soft, translucent, candy-like plastics--in such simple items as staplers. With rounded lines and soft, fluorescent colors, the staplers make the point, she said, that a homely, black, square object can be made warm, soft-edged and playful.

“If you’re going to have to bring your office home, you might as well have something you can live with,” Pearlman said.

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How prevalent is this new opulence? Designers and decorators have different takes.

“We don’t have one look that defines ‘modern’ anymore,” said Slesin, noting that even technology is becoming less hard-edged, as young designers come onto the scene. Some note that design, like fashion, has many schools and the entrepreneurial imperative to make something new in a healthy economy has created a number of trends, including the clean minimalism of Japanese art.

But others, viewing design through the lens of social history, note the inevitable impact as nesting baby boomers start looking back to a time of hand-painted roses and personal craftsmanship that they have only heard about.

“It’s not just beauty we seek, it is a re-created past or a dusted-off tradition,” says Los Angeles interior designer Kerry Joyce, 45, noting the new interest in antiques and crafts.

“People of my age are recalling the past without being the past,” he said. “People may be career-driven, but they want to come home to an archetypal feeling of home. Home is not modern, skeletal, precise. Home is mother baking cookies.”

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That’s the brand of nostalgia being successfully marketed in new stores like Restoration Hardware. The growing chain bills itself as “gourmet” and has made a specialty of reclaiming and personalizing a whimsical blend of ceiling fans, laundry scoops, walnut coat racks and books of campfire songs, along with a substantial line of period furniture and lamps.

Not only is the Restoration interior designed with rich natural woods and warm lights to look like a comfy home, the merchandise is personalized with nostalgic essays or notes, written mostly by CEO Stephen Gordon. A psychologist, he founded the first store in 1980 when he was trying to restore a Queen Anne Victorian in Eureka, Calif., and couldn’t find authentic hardware or light fixtures.

Starting with square nails, glass doorknobs and brass fixtures, Gordon expanded from hardware to furniture, choosing favorite pieces and concentrating on solid Craftsman pieces and overstuffed chairs.

“I see lots more movement toward dark woods and richly textured furniture like our parents had,” said Gordon, 46. “I think people today are looking for warmth--they face starkness in a lot of milieus and don’t want it in their homes.”

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With 34 stores open, including four in the Los Angeles area, and more planned, Gordon thinks his yuppie hardware approach achieves the right blend of tradition and whimsy.

At Crate and Barrel, which is expanding the furniture line in its 70 stores, the notion of being a sociological touchstone is pleasing.

“We like to think we started it all,” said spokeswoman Bette Kahn from the corporate offices in suburban Chicago.

The store was founded 35 years ago, she said, to help young married couples fill the tabletop gap between their wedding china and the everyday melamine plastic dishes and “jelly glasses you got at the service station for a fill-up.”

Starting with simple lines and sets of all-white dishes, Crate and Barrel’s merchandise now reflects color, texture and a softer look, Kahn said.

“Our furniture comes covered in chenille, mohair or velvet--fabrics that are so luxurious to the touch that you just want to cuddle up.”

Societal cuddling up is a specialty for Faith Popcorn, marketplace trend forecaster who introduced “cocooning” into the language a few years ago. She drives it a step further in her latest book “Clicking” (HarperCollins, 1996).

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Citing violence everywhere from the high school campus to the freeway, Popcorn predicts a future where Americans seek not only comfort but physical safety from the chaotic outside world in their homes, where they will four-poster and four-pillow their beds with Italian linen sheets, silk dust ruffles and cashmere throws and convert utilitarian bathrooms into luxurious spas with RainStorm shower heads, automatic hand dryers and heated racks for their monogrammed towels.

Popcorn suggests that many people want a veritable moat around their homes, noting that 4 million Americans now live in gated communities.

Kahn wouldn’t go that far, but she does see the point. “Truthfully, life outside the home has become so pushy and so stark and so hard that it has softened everyone’s idea of home,” she said. “Today, it’s a retreat from the world.”