Old-fashioned modern

Vintage decor is chic this year, ousting the stark perfection of minimalism.

Minimalism, we hear (and see), is fast going out of favour. Rather unfortunate if you took your time getting used to it. Cold hard slickness is being replaced by nostalgic references to granny chic. Think the salon chair, wallpaper, lace and crochet, but updated with modern fabrics, bold color and a sense of humour.

At the Milan and Maison & Objet design fairs, meccas for trend deliverers and spotters alike, baroque homage found great favour, with well known design protagonists like Philippe Starck and Capellini presenting products stylistically inspired by old glamorous epochs, in modern materials.

Maithili Ahluwalia, proprietor of Bungalow 8, a design destination in Mumbai, thinks consumers may find the design imperfections of that period hard to digest after the polished perfection of minimalism. But she's taken the plunge anyway, with her store this season. "It's a retaliation to everything technologically flawless and factory-made," she says.

"The trend is all about tapered-down interpretations of old forms that retain a bit of fluff and frill," she says. "After all, decor does take many of its cues from fashion." Spring-summer fashion this year perfected Victorian-era conservative; collections from Chloe to Balenciaga were injected with ruffles, bows, lace and crochet.

"There's an overarching element of decor being handmade and imperfect," says Ahluwalia. The crockery at Bungalow 8 has a certain jaggedness (a kacchha clay-like quality, she says) and incorporates Victorian motifs like lace. "We've even extended the symbols to accessories like the candlestands."

Besides products that are a modern take on vintage, Ahluwalia has also thrown in found-objects that she's been amassing for a while, like glass bubble jugs, manfactured by Indian glass-makers back in the day for the European markets. "So much was sourced from India in the Art Deco and Victorian periods."

The words retro and Vintage sometimes disorient. Vintage is usually assumed as colonial, and retro "" '70s style pop art. "The '70s may not find favour among the Indian aesthete, it's a little too alien. But the period from the '20s to the '50s, and the styles in between, are far more accessible in modern day interpretation." It's popular because it's nostalgic.

Wallpaper makers are excitedly riding the wave, given that wallpaper lends itself so well to that period. Aashiesh Shah of AA Home Design says wallpapers are getting less dark and stuffy and more dramatic from jaamevaar patterns to Louis IV opulence.

High-end tile maker Bisazza's newest collection of wall patterns also fall within the tendency of fusion design, combining and blending the contrasts between antique and modern, East and West, minimal and baroque.

The key to making the vintage style work in 2006 is mix and match. "The design community is, today, far more responsive to an ecclectic mix. At the fairs it was clearly about a global mix, a '50s modernist chair with a baroque chandelier and Vietnamese accessories. It's not about one thing anymore like the Italian sofa, and rattan has had its moment," says Ahluwalia.

"I do believe we have lost out on the past, which is increasingly now an integral influence. After three years we've realised that minimalism is incomplete," she concludes.

If you were prudent enough to appreciate some of granny's crockery instead of disposing it in a garage sale, or granny perceptive enough to save some for you, you'll be one happy camper right now.