Rites of Spring

SPRING-SUMMER COLLECTION FOR HOMES

Spring may not be the most manifest season for Indians, but that doesn't have to stop us from enjoying its associations "" with the renewal of life, with sunny days at weekend home verandahs and tall glasses of lemonade . The arrival of spring also has discernible implications on design, both fashion and home decor.

And at the turn of March, home stores rush to eschew the grand, dark heaviness of winter staples for light and airy spring-summer merchandise. FabIndia has announced the arrival of a mull range of apparel and furnishings to celebrate warmer climes.

"Winter for us this year was grand baroque, spring/summer is stark linen; its Kashid beach versus the Palace of Versailles." laughs Maithili Ahluwalia, proprietor of Bungalow 8.

Simran Lall of Good Earth agrees. "People tend to decorate their homes and buy the big ticket pieces over the festive winter season, so over summer they're doing little bits to their vacation homes ."

Shalini Kapoor, design consultant with Contemporary Arts and Crafts (CAC), agrees, saying the new collection at their store is heavily accented with shell, bone and mother of pearl, perfect for holiday homes.

Bungalow 8's spring-summer repertoire features planters, outdoor seating like rusted wrought iron garden chairs and corals and shells to strew on side tables or use as garnishing for table settings. "There's a move to bring the outdoors inside your home,"explains Ahluwalia.

"There's also lots of casual entertaining done at this time so we find that glassware and barware are ideal buys,"says Lal. The tableware of choice this season, as she indicates, is muted, either in silver, glass or even acrylic.

"So the focus is on the colourful salads and tropical fruits and not the tableware," she says. Although a flash of colour in the form of brightly coloured glasses might be fun. Good Earth has also introduced a range of organic teas in handmade sachets.

The season is also about nature motifs. The allusions to fauna and flora are unmistakable "" from Good Earth's Abeille clear glass tableware with the honeybee on it to CAC's recurring leaf motifs.

Awaken that spring garden if you have the luxury of owning one, nothing spells spring more than flowers "" roses, jasmine and bougainvillaea and oleander. Bring some of that into your home.

In general though, spring decor tends to manifest itself more through colour palettes and materials and less through accessorising. As the phrase spring cleaning suggests, there is a general move towards de-cluttering, often done through colour. "It's about colours like khakhi, soft teals and gun metal gray," says Kapoor.

"We've always taken a classical approach to colours because we have seen that our clients' palettes tend to be conservative," says Ahluwalia, whose store sports a neutral canvas this season.

Most stores however, including hers haven't conformed to the all-white summer association, throwing in a dash of pale aqua and spring green.

Global design gurus are suggesting the 1970s are back this spring in original designs and pieces that evoke the era.

Ahluwalia doesn't advocate replacing everything each season "" "Most people have shopped a lot in winter, so it would be unfortunate."Her store keeps the odd Versailles piece among the Kashid, the oversized candelabra among the crisp linen. So you know its okay to mix and match.