On following fashion

Well, finally, here are trends I can get behind. Mostly though, I find trends irritatingly interesting. They have a whiff of resolutions about them and seem to appear at around the same time. I read them avidly, as I must, all with the intention of ignoring them, but sneakily they are a bit like advertising in that I hope I am immune to them but I am so totally not. They are unexpected guests in the recesses of my mind, blithely asserting their influence and overstaying their welcome. It helps though that it’s rare that I actually positively like something that’s trending so I am relatively safe in my perception of myself as a contrarian.

So isn’t it marvellous that this year one of the major trends in interior design is to follow one’s own inclination, whatever that might be. To paraphrase the great Oscar Wilde, my go to man for a bon mot, “Fashion [in interiors] is what one wears [likes] oneself.” So you can surround yourself with a riot of clashing colour and pattern or live in Zen-like monochromatic tranquillity and be reassured that whatever you choose, you are totally utterly fashionable. Isn’t that the best trend ever? There will be those who will deride your sartorial choices as bad taste, but we all know what we think about such folks. Some people are so achingly behind the times.

And to consider oneself truly fashionable, one must temper this long awaited green light for self-actualisation, or as some might have it, self-indulgence, with those other major trends – sustainability and provenance. Sustainability and provenance have no truck with selfishness. Both require us to think of others and of the Earth; that we act with due consideration of their wellbeing, now and in the future. They insist that we reflect before we spend our money; that we behave as conscious consumers. That we don’t just buy reflexively, which actually is very hard given the amount of advertising we are exposed to, but that we buy with the intention of using and loving the item for many years to come and perhaps passing it on down the generations. You know, like folks used to do until relatively recently.

Having recently finished reading Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, I wonder whether this approach to persuading us to mend our ways might just have a chance of working where all the prognostications of doom have failed. And wouldn’t that be fabulous?