NY Now Is For Trend-Spotters

NY Now

This week, NY Now is proving itself to be a gift show that keeps on giving. Hardy buyers who braved an 8-inch snow storm and Super Bowl crowds are finding trendy treasure for their stores.

There’s still time to shop thousands of new lines today, the final day. The Home and Lifestyle collections will remain open at the Javits Convention Center through 2 p.m. 

During two excellent seminars, industry experts identified key consumer trends in color and styles for the home. Here’s a quick recap, with photos from the show floor to help you see the hues, patterns and influences highlighted as emerging for 2014 and beyond. 

The experts:

• Tom Mirabile, contributing editor for Pantone View and senior vice president, Global Trend & Design for Lifetime Brands.
• Tori Mellott, senior design and market editor at Traditional Home.
• Sabina Jahic of Sherwin-Williams.

The trends:

• Colors with softer, warmer and calming spirit are emerging including cream, latte colors (also called cosmetic colors), warmer grays, rose pink and other aged-looking pastels, orchid and indigo blues. Metallics are also dynamic and feature gilded items, bronze, rust and copper colors. Patterns are positive/negative: Think lace with a strong light-and-dark contrast.
• “The language of luxury is mixed materials,” Mirabile says. For example, mercury glass with wood.
• Wings, angels, diaphanous fabrics, shadows and clouds for the home, where we seek peace.
• “Divine Womanhood”: images of women whose beauty evokes both strength and femininity.
• Restoration: objects that look like they’ve been “collected over the course of years,” aged, distressed surfaces.
• Neoclassical influence: busts, Corinthian columns, Greek key patterns.
• Marriage of science and art in objects: molecules, vintage medicine, and curiosities that push boundaries of quirkiness.
• Geology has also become influential: geodes, agates and fossils.
• In men’s gifts, references to Industrial Revolution are big, specifically everyday objects (footed tubs, old fans, household tools) rather than factory equipment.
• Heritage is revered. Look for objects that let families showcase a special heirloom or keepsake. The glass-topped, cloche display container is back.
• Witness the comeback of pop culture inspired by the art of Lichtenstein and Warhol. These dot and pixilated graphics/comic books are big. For the young, it’s fresh. Saw it first-time around? Now it’s nostalgic.
• Spectrum color-blocking in accessories and furnishings: It was inspired by the protected designs of the artist Mondrian, and reinvented in new tones. Rainbows also are hot.
• Large-scale graphics with statement-making power make a room feel modern.
• “Keepsake Garden”: Victorian florals, cabbage roses.
• Pale, weathered wood. Accessories made of wire, including bird cages (with and without birds).
• The “Downton Abbey” look moves into the Jazz Age.