IDS 2010

This past weekend was a blur–it was the 10th anniversary of the Interior Design Show, and the showrunner-in-chief, Shauna Levy, who I regard as one of the key connectors in Toronto in terms of putting people and great ideas together and making things happen had pulled out all the stops, hosting incredible speakers from the world of design and extending the show into a number of offsite simultaneous events and exhibitions that made it into a full-fledged international design week.

The opening night party had a particularly nice buzz about it. People seemed thrilled to be in the new smaller venue, the Metro Covention Centre, if only because it actually has windows onto the street and natural light.

I chatted over champagne (Veuve Cliquot was a sponsor, and they kept it flowing) with designer Clayton Budd of 64th and Queen, who is currently working on a re-cooling of developer Peter Freed’s corporate website and was overjoyed that he wasn’t doing a design space at the show this year.

 ”Last year’s Opening night I was a total wreck. I had spent the three days beforehand working around the clock trying  to get our space ready,” said Clayton. “This year I get to just hang around and enjoy myself.”

Gossip king Shinan Govani was there, sporting hair so long in front that with a bit of hair wax he could have been an excellent Elvis impersonator. Speaking of wild male coiffures, gallery owner Jamie Angell was also there, with his trademark high-energy and blue-tinted glasses. His new gallery space, which is much larger, is just about together.

I bumped into both Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan of Umbra, separately. I bought Les a drink because he had got through the line-up to the bar only to find you needed drink tickets. Les complained that now that he has a cottage and a ski cabin he never gets to travel anywhere with his kids. “you think you’re doing yourself a favour when you get these vacation homes,” said Les, “but then you feel guilty going anywhere else.”

Paul Rowan and his wife were admiring the ingenuity of the Drake General Store’s on-site pop-up store which was made of a pile of upturned shopping carts painted primary colours. When I told them I was on my way to Israel next week (yes I am, for More magazine–it’s a trip themed around women of the Old Testament), they recommended I read The Red Tent in preparation.

I walked the show aisles with photographer Susan Gouinlock, Spafax Managing Director Raymond Girard and Kate Thornley-Hall of Source UK. Raymond was interviewing everyone in sight about their favourite airlines and airports. I couldn’t come up with anything better than the tiny one-room airport  I once flew into on Union island, where the same two guys unloaded the luggage, and then ran inside to man customs in this adorable turquoise painted concrete building.

Raymond had submitted designs for the show’s carpet competition and hadn’t been selected. We all agreed that the winning submissions were good, but not stellar– and not just because we all love Raymond.

The next morning, with a bit of a day-after head (we finished the night at the after-party at Ame for delicious sushi and more champagne), I walked the show to actually check out some of the new product and designs for More magazine (go to www.more.ca, for my 2010 Trend report).

The highlight of the day was the 5 pm Pecha-kucha–a sort of live rap, where the speakers pick 20 slides and talk over them for 20 seconds each. Cobi Ladner, Shinan, designer David Dixon and 3rd Uncle’s Arriz Hassam were among the rappers. Cobi was dreading it. I sat with the always lovely House & Home editor Suzanne Dimma, who was a nervous wreck for her new husband Arriz. “He is thoughtful so he tends to talk slowly,” worried Suzanne. “I’m not sure that this is going to go very well.”

Arriz pulled it off in style, of course and I was particularly impressed with David Dixon’s presentation. He had great slides, and talked about inspiration in a way that gave you a little window to the inside of his head.

The big highlight of the show in my opinion was the chance to meet (and hear) the brilliant Barbara Hulanicki, founder of London’s swinging Biba back in the 60s and the single most influential designer responsible for the boutiquing of formerly derelict South Beach in Miami. At 73, she is still cooler than cool–un-lifted, super-chic, all in black with a trademark blonde fringe and huge black glasses. She was funny and self-deprecating and kind of dreamy in a still-youthful way. It was such a thrill to meet her I honestly can’t recall much of what she said other than that she was just the bomb and gave me hope that coolness is still possible in your 70s, even as a woman (a possibility that in my increasingly invisible late 40s, I am beginning to doubt). I had her sign a copy of her book, A to Biba for me as a reminder. Maybe you just have to make it through the rough bit of mid-life before coming out the other, better side?

On Saturday afternoon I hosted a panel with the delightful Dee Dee Hannah of Taylor-Hannah architects, Karsten Ruwoldt of Audi, Taryn Doobay of RADO watches and the charming designer/chef/restauarateurs Guy and Michael Rubino, owners of Ame. Our topic was the pressing question of Luxury (for text of my speech on the subject read on:

Luxury Now

It wasn’t so long ago that the big story was how rich the world was. Two years ago, Forbes magazine was adding Russian oligarchs and newly minted Chinese billionaires to their World’s Wealthiest lists like pennies.

 And all the talk was about how this new money was blowing it bigtime: on 24k plated MacBook Pros with diamond Apple logos and custom-built $350,000 Rolls Royce Phantoms. At Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Armani, Hermes and Chanel there were waitlists for “it” bags and historic annual revenues in excess of $1 billion.

And yet even before the crash, some, like journalist Dana Thomas, whose 2007 book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre, became a bestseller, argued that luxury, which Thomas defined as a global market that “produces and sells clothes, leather goods, shoes, silk scarves and neckties, watches, jewelry, perfume and cosmetics that convey status and a pampered life” – to which I would add beautiful, luxurious home finishes and furnishings–was a victim of its own success. In her view, the ready accessibility and availability of luxury goods was the killer.

 “The word luxury has become a lazy synonym for expensive”, Giorgio Armani told a European think tank commissioned by American Express. “Unless you can perceive quality, authenticity, a degree of exclusivity and timelessness, then price alone does not justify the luxury tag”.

 The past thirty years have seen rapid change in the luxury business: the emergence of branding and licensing, corporate takeovers of design houses and the public offerings of designer names. Offshore manufacturing, mass-market knockoffs and do-it-yourself design as entertainment on cable tv. Before the worldwide market crash, it wasn’t luxury that was in shrinking supply, but exclusivity.

 By last fall, however, as we all know, luxury had bigger problems. At Gucci, sales fell 6.4% in the third quarter, compared to a 4.6% rise in the same period in 2008. In November, Versace–which projected a loss of $45 million, with no return to profitability before 2011–cut a quarter of its worldwide work force. According to the research group Bain and Company, in the last two years, the luxury market worldwide has shrunk by 10%. Signs of its ongoing weakness include thinner magazines and newspapers, and the retailers along Bloor Street marking the holiday season with pre-Christmas boxing week sales.

 And yet if you look around this show, it’s clear it ain’t exactly dead yet. In the art world, for instance, a 1962 Warhol recently fetched a record-breaking $43.8 million. At Boucheron, whose new tag line is ‘Beyond Luxury’, a one of a kind necklace by Marc Newson sold out within weeks despite a price tag of $ 1 million. And Versace just announced its plans to unveil a new $5000 designer cell phone—apparently the new luxury watch.

 For those who still have the means, the new buzzword is “stealth wealth”: goods so quietly luxurious that the status kick is in having the inside knowledge to appreciate them, as well as the insider chic of “little-known” cult labels, all of which require the refinement of a connoisseur to fully appreciate.

 And indeed, we have all become connoisseurs—and not just of fashion labels. Status now, it could be argued, is in being able to identify your Eames from your Jacobsens and being able to namedrop at cocktail parties the likes of Koolhaas, Starck and Graves.

 Indeed, when we want, what we want is artisanal beef over US Prime, heirloom rather than hothouse tomatoes, fair-trade over instant, hybrid cars over gas guzzling SUVs and premium vodka in limited edition bottles by star designers.

 Two years ago, the Consumer Research Center of the Conference Board, sponsored by the likes of Conde Nast, Gucci and the Ritz Carlton, asked 1800 affluent consumers to define luxury, and almost 50% of them said time—more time to enjoy their lives and their family.

 Since the economic slowdown, however, some of us find ourselves with a lot more free time on our hands to enjoy our friends and family, while some are more pressed than ever.

 Another angle of this luxury equation is the emerging trend of social responsibility. Hence the rise of values like “sustainable”, and “organic” in place of a designer logo. That Anya Hindmarch’s re-usable “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” became a status statement attests to the power of this view. In my view, buying “local”–which is well represented here at the Studio North collection–is the next new value with that luxurious ring.

 And then there’s custom. Perhaps the most luxurious thing I have heard about lately is a pizzeria in Chicago called Great Lake, where patrons literally line up for hours because the owner, who carefully sources each of his local ingredients and makes the all the toppings, also actually makes each pizza by hand to order, by himself, right in front of you.

 In the end, those mourning luxury’s passing may have killed the golden goose too soon. Perhaps Luxury isn’t dead but changing.

 Appropriate to our complex times, this new luxury has as many sides as a Rubik’s cube. Mooi’s Marcel Wanders, whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently,  perhaps sums it up best. “Before it was just about spending money”, said Wanders. “Luxury is now more hidden, disguised under a blanket of innovation, intention and meaning”.