Trend setters: Are interior design influencers all hype or helping the market

A large collection of around 25 English 19th century antique, mainly stoneware, jelly moulds priced at £595 with furniture dealer Miles Griffiths Antiques.

Laura Chesters, Frances Allitt
18 Mar 2024

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When it comes to interior design and decorating your house, some buyers are a slave to fashion, while others like to consider themselves as a free-thinking individualist.

But even people who believe their ideas are wholly original may have to come to terms with a fact spelled out in the movie The Devil Wears Prada that the item you have chosen could perhaps actually have been dictated to you by a small group of influential designers. Actress Meryl Streep, playing fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the hit 2006 movie, utters the immortal lines: “…that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean… in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns… And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores, and then trickled on down… in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.”

So if a customer is buying an Uzbek suzani or adding another Victorian copper jelly mould to their kitchen dresser display, they may well have been influenced by an interior designer, trend forecaster or magazine editor.

A collection of early to mid-20th century brass/ copper kitchenalia including jelly moulds, sold for £110 at Auctioneum’s sale, February 2024.

Of course, fashion plays a part in any collecting field and this then influences demand over a long period of time, but do fickle interior trends, deemed ‘in’ one month and ‘out’ the next, really impact prices and demand in the world of art and antiques?

Some antiques dealers have noticed certain trends have influenced demand. For instance, furniture dealer Tarquin Bilgen in Belgravia, Phil Taylor, of Phil Taylor’s Cool Stuff in Lillie Road and Aaron Nejad of Aaron Nejad Gallery in Marylebone have all noticed that ‘trends’ – led by interior decorators and media – boosted some of the areas in which they sell.

Aaron Nejad of Aaron Nejad Gallery in Church Street, Marylebone – who organises the annual London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair (LARTA) – has benefited from a trend for decorative textiles.

He says: “The appreciation of suzanis from Uzbekistan as a decorative art has certainly increased in recent years which has led to higher prices for good examples.”

Michael Hezaveh, of the Oriental Rug Shop in Sheffield, is aware “that important interior designers like Rita Konig, who bought a jajim from us at LARTA 2024, often set trends which are picked up by magazine editors and then become more mainstream.”

Belgravia dealer Christopher Butterworth says: “It is naive to think that designer trends and shifts of interest do not affect saleability. Currently, my own taste for a richer, more colourful, more baroque and less mid-century-greige world is certainly coming to many sophisticated people’s attention.”

Les Watson, who runs Lemon Tree Antiques with his wife Mo Hughes, in Blackford, Somerset, stocks a range of traditional antiques from early oak furniture and silver to kitchenalia and textiles.

Fashion trends have not influenced his buying, or any perceivable demand, but like any good dealer, he welcomes any reason for a purchase. He just sold a mirror to an interior designer in Bath and says: “Any business helps, whether it is trade, private or interior designers.”

Here we look at four so-called trends within interior design, discussing current demand with dealers and highlighting recent auction results.

Kitchenalia

Decorative textiles

Lamps

Burr wood