Déco Off 2020: Paris's top design show showcasing the best of British and international interior brands

Major British and continental décor brands are showcasing a feast of new looks for the home in the French capital.
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Barbara Chandler10 March 2020

It’s the big reveal in Paris tomorrow for Europe’s top interior decoration brands, including many from London.

They’ll showcase their new looks at the Paris Déco Off event, spread across the showrooms and galleries of the 1st-7th Arrondissements and covering both sides of the Seine.

Running until Monday, the event is open to all free of charge with several late nights and with the star turns being the fiercely competitive window displays.

British brands are bullish, taking inspiration and gathering clients from all over the world.

Continental top guns include Rubelli, Lelièvre, Kvadrat, Moooi, Sahco, Christian Fischbacher, JAB, Création Baumann, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Zimmer + Rohde and Pierre Frey.

New in tandem is Déco Home, sporting 30 mainly French furnishing outfits, with chic ultra-modern furniture at Ligne Roset and romantic crystal at Lalique.

“All the world now goes to Déco Off,” says Saffron Hare, the fifth generation and creative director at James Hare, set up in 1865 to feed fine fabrics into interiors and fashion showrooms. “No other show has such an international pull.”

She’s putting her Fitzrovia edit on display, reflecting that erstwhile Bohemian area tucked between Euston Road and Oxford Street: “Theatricality, flamboyance and divine links with Art Deco.”

Such old family firms invariably have great appeal, that’s why they’ve lasted.

The Romo Group, founded in 1902, now has fifth-generation Emily Mould as design director.

Its Mark Alexander label has grasses, sisal and abaca leaf fibre woven and stitched by artisans in the Philippines.

Mark Alexander: Network wallcovering in Indigo, £950 per roll

Nothing is too laborious, and the outcome is exquisite. Here are three kinds of Japanese paper crumpled and coloured by hand, torn into squares, embroidered and finally laminated; and strips of gauze with plaited braids of banana bark.

“These designs will never date,” says design director Mark Butcher, “they’re deliberately understated and richly complex.”

Other brands are even older. Cole and Son wallpapers go back to 1875. Its new Seville collection is “a sunny effervescence of flora, fauna and flamenco”.

Morris & Co is the legacy of William Morris (1834-1896), our greatest Arts and Crafts maestro, acquired by the group that became Style Library in 1947 — they also own Sanderson, about to celebrate its 160th anniversary.

Morris and Co’s new Rouen printed velvets flaunt popular classic patterns Strawberry Thief, Sunflower and Fruit, layered in the window of Style Library’s Paris showroom.

From fab floral fusion to eco-cred vintage cork

Set up in Suffolk in 1903, craft-based weaver Gainsborough dyes its own yarns.

Its Grand Masters edit has history seeping from an archive second only to the V&A’s.

It is infused with looks from 18th-century French silks and toiles, Italian hand-cut silk velvets, and a traditional English damask once used at Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, which was built for the Rothschilds.

Paint & Paper Library: Hardy Palm wallcovering — Acqua Viva, £108 a roll; skirting in Pontefract in Architects’ Eggshell, £68 for 2.5L

Always adventurous, Tricia Guild created Designers Guild in 1970 and now has a huge international brand, a fabulous fusion of imagination, innovation and decades of gritty graft, to be celebrated next month in her retrospective at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey.

Guild is an avid gardener, so it is not surprising that florals are her forte, with ever-evolving takes on old riffs: witness Grandiflora with its embroidered hollyhocks, painted magnolias and abstract peonies, offset with a “retro corduroy and easy-clean velvet”.

Seamless extra-wide wallcoverings are a must. Osborne & Little’s clever panels look like murals, while Anthology’s 134cm-wide vintage corks are sustainable and sound-softening, adding style to eco-cred.

Sanderson celebrates the ancient Silk Road that linked Asia with the Mediterranean. Expect Chinoiserie, Persian pomegranates, Indian frescoes, ikats, prints, chenille, velvet and embroidery.

Paint & Paper Library do tonal paint cards for easy colour scheming.

Now comes Botany, with leaves pressed into mini prints and geometrics, or rampantly entwined on panels: “Exotic foliage for elegant décor,” says Ruth Mottershead, marketing director.

Finally, Fromental, luxe leader of London, has a whole apartment decorated with its handcrafted paintings, collage and sumptuous embroidered wallcoverings.

Timorous Beasties at Déco Off

It's 30 years since Timorous Beasties was set up by Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons, design mavericks who met at Glasgow College of Art.

Their anniversary Oceana launch in Paris is a melange of marine motifs including these eels snaking across velvet cushions, £130 each.

“Creative Brits at Déco Off are proudly eccentric,”says Simmons. “We disrupt somewhat those strong and stable French fabric houses, so chic and established.”

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