Vintage Style: A New Approach to Home Decorating - Hardcover

Kidston, Cath

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091878241 ISBN 13: 9780091878245

Publisher: Ebury Pr, 2000

Synopsis

After years of neutral, minimalist interiors, designers are returning to the colors, textures, and comforts of yesteryear. Cath Kidston provides a guide to creating and updating this refreshing look throughout your home. The essence of this eclectic style is the combination of beautiful old fabrics and textures with modern comfort. From the living room and kitchen to the bathroom and outdoors, Cath Kidston shows how the elements work, from big-picture ideas for walls, floors, and woodwork to the details, such as lined storage baskets for the kitchen or fabric-edged antique blankets for the bedroom. Her inspiration is drawn from a broad palette: the faded beauty of old French wallpapers, the bright patterns of the fifties, and many other sources. With irresistible photography by Pia Tryde, Vintage Style transforms the charms of the past into a fresh, contemporary approach to decorating for today.

About this title

Review

With its floral prints, chintz fabrics, and flea-market finds, vintage style is a popular one. Cath Kidston introduces us to her variation by taking us on a tour of her own home--bedrooms, bathroom, living room, kitchen, and home office--in her new book, Vintage Style: Creating a Compete Look for Your Home.

Kidston's original love of this style stems from the patterns and fabrics she grew up with. When she started her own design shop as an adult, she realized that these same fabrics hadn't lost any of their freshness and comfort, and she began designing around the patterns and items she found at thrift shops and flea markets. Her vintage style consists largely of rose prints in chintz fabric as well as comfortable linen and ticking. Lavish details abound--velvet curtains, tassels, and bobble fringe, for instance.

Liberal in her use of color, Kidston often recommends mixing clashing colors for a vibrant feeling in the room. Her walls are usually painted white, and color is added with fabrics, furniture, and accessories, which makes it easy and inexpensive to change the color scheme if you get tired of the old one.

Resourceful decorating ideas include the use of old scraps of patterned fabrics and striped linens, ribbon, and haberdashery flowers to create padded clothes hangers, ironing board covers, and stitch lavender sachets--all of which would make excellent homemade gifts as well. Kidston is practical about her flea-market finds--she never buys anything she can't use. But as she points out, there are lots of unusual uses for items you already own--you just need to use a little ingenuity. A chipped china cup becomes a laundry detergent scoop; old curtains are turned into tablecloths. There's something very refreshing about such resourcefulness in an age of disposable items. Kidston's Vintage Style is all about cheerful, well-worn rooms that are as comfortable as they are pretty. --Kris Law

From Library Journal

This London shop owner, whose designs have been featured in Better Homes & Gardens magazine, describes her own design style as a blend of Rachel Ashwell's faded, worn, and comfortable look (Shabby Chic, LJ 9/15/99) and Mary Engelbreit's bright nostalgia-inspired look (Crafts To Decorate Your Home, LJ 5/15/99). With photographs of her own home as well as those she has designed for others, Kidston describes how she came to develop her style, using flea-market and thrift-store finds and taking inspiration to create color schemes from favorite pictures, vintage fabric, etc. Purchase where there is a continued interest in this style.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ebury Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0091878241
• ISBN 13: 9780091878245
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144