What’s Old Is New

by Layla L’obatti

What’s Old is New will be the theme of this column, and in many ways that is a recurring theme in life and design for me. Clothing has been made for many centuries, and my view on design is that we don’t often reinvent the wheel as often as we modernize it. The idea of vintage inspiring current trends is perhaps itself “vintage” or old news. The true genius comes when something that has lived in antiquity is pulled from its hiding place and brought into the light.

One of the recent high profile iterations of this trend has been on reality TV, with the wildly popular American Pickers. A show where two guys in their own words “rescue junk” and bring that “rusty gold” to market. And more recently I was introduced to the Picker Sisters, a show about two friends who do the same but with the twist that these interior designers were not as picky or savvy on the value of real rusty gold, but their skills as modern interior designers are used to elevate, well… real junk. I watched in awe as these designers lifted up a rusted car bumper, long separated from its body and covered in dirt and debated what part of a chair it could become. Then to see them actually bring that vision to life in surprisingly modern industrial furniture was the icing on the cake. What struck me was the way their minds worked, and that unlike the manufacturers churning out “fake rust” or faux vintage, they were creating one of a kind works of art with the power of their minds and a little elbow grease.

Now you can see this trend has gone on for many years, and perhaps the soft, clean, fuzzy pink world of intimates avoided the vintage décor for a while. The trend in intimates has so often been towards the boudoir or bordello, but there are a crop of intimate retailers seizing on the power of their minds to bring their aesthetic and new life to vintage finds in a way that is both feminine and inspiring. The stories of boutiques like Forty Winks, Faire frou frou, or Lille boutique  and their search for the perfect display table, cabinet, or the perfect pattern for their backdrop that I find riveting. They spend many months or years scouring for that piece, and when they stumble upon it they have the vision to see its end use in a way no one else could. This vision lends their shops an indefinable appeal that is most definitely part of their success, the ability to see a spark and bring to life a vintage piece.

Vintage Table displayed at Forty Winks in Cambridge, MA