Coffee tables made from barrels. Lamps crafted from brooms. Chairs swathed in burlap and sackcloth. Look at the some of the newest furniture on the market, and the recession appears to have really hit home. But irony alert: This new brand of shabby chic doesn't come cheap.
At the Dan Marty showroom in the Pacific Design Center, the heart of West Hollywood's design scene and the place where top decorators shop for their wealthy clients, light fixtures made from old French apple baskets carry $1,600 price tags and canopy chairs upholstered in burlap sell for $3,600 a pair.
"Some of these pillows cost $600 each," Marty said, pointing to shams made from grain bags. Customers tease him about the high prices, but the pillows are selling -- about two dozen a month. Kathy Hilton, Paris' mom, just picked up eight of them.
At Environment Furniture, an eco-chic retailer that counts actor-environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio as one of its customers, giant floor cushions are made of truck tarps and $3,000 sectional sofas are upholstered in material from old pup tents and other military textiles.
Such humble looks would have probably drawn disdain from style-conscious consumers addicted to Hollywood glamour and glitz a few years ago, but times have changed and so have many high-end home fashions. Some of today's expensive decor seems more "Beverly Hillbillies" than "Beverly Hills 90210."
Like a dowager in a Chanel jacket with frayed cuffs, the look suggests modesty -- people of means who wish to express their taste without flaunting their relative immunity to the recession.
Brooke Hodge, former curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has christened it "dumpster diver deluxe."
Arbiters of style such as Jonathan Adler, a Melrose Avenue boutique owner and judge on the Bravo show "Top Design," see the trend as the convergence of several looks: an organic, modern direction evidenced in tree-stump end tables and other designs that recall the back-to-nature hippie era; the urban loft aesthetic, which embraces castoff industrial furnishings and found objects; and a growing green consciousness, with an emphasis on recycled materials.
"People used to say that 'less is more' meant 'more expensive,' " Adler said. "Now you can say humble is the new grandeur."
