Why UN-Decorated?


Why UN-Decorated”?



What has happened to American Decoration?

Since around the late 1980’s, there seems to have developed a real lack of individuality, innovated thinking, creativity, and a personal touch.....a ‘soul’ if you will, within the world of American Interior Decoration. And its only gotten worse. What happened to Individual style? What happened to clients that had a voice and a personality, and how did the current trend in design become so generic, germophobic, plastic and formulaic? The new standard is often achieved by clever Designers and equally guilty Design Editors of American Decoration Magazines. Using a  “color of the month” format, a clean slate devoid of any personal souvenirs, collections or memorabilia, a perfectly calculated layout,  what we the designers and non -designers alike witness, is something resembling a Hollywood Movie Set. Especially so in the printed pages of   Decorating Magazines, where editors on a photo shoot often remove any personal and meaningful effects from the project and inject a handy truck load of calculated accessories, that more often show the point of view of the editors than of the designers or clients who live in the space. The decoration is one dimensional, and so clean that it squeeks.  And this is true for modern, traditional and contemporary styles.  And within these settings, everything is fresh and new....almost medicinally so.  And where are the books?  The piles of  half done crossword puzzles,  the art that the children have created?  Anything and everything of any poignant, emotional content is stored away, or worse, thrown away. As a good friend of mine said, it has all become very “Spic and Spam”...just the way most Americans live.  21st Century American Decoration lacks fantasy, whimsy, individual style, and rooms that look and feel really lived in! Trendy, disposable decoration is horrifying and worse, it represents a society whose values are superficial and wasteful.  Over the years, I have encountered many clients who simply request that everything they have be thrown out or sold in order to make room for the new decor.  Hopefully thru the Un-Decorated Blog, and its Facebook and Twitter relatives, and the future on line virtual magazine also called Un-Decorated, we will present ideas, and options, and graphic imagery of a kind of Decoration that will act as a catalyst and hopefully an inspiration for Designers and non-Designers alike to create a more interesting, layered, multi-dimensional, soulful and less serious Decoration in what I am calling, the  “Un-Decorated” style.