Home Fashion Forecast - Spring 2008 - (Page 4) The green issue is not a black-and-white one. Without universally accepted, applied and enforced standards in both the manufacturing and retail sectors, green is in danger of becoming a murky, difficult to describe shade of confusion. Without defined standards, some consumers are applying their own green meaning to home furnishings, and much of the product they’re finding at the point of sale doesn’t make the grade. At the same time, the number of true-blue eco-consumers is swelling. Two new retailer friends recently told me that consumers are entering their stores armed with reams of information about green harvesting, construction and finishing. Both store owners told me about having to educate their sales associates—when it comes to describing the greenness of a product, what’s permissible must be policed. All this attention to green is placing a more general trend focus on nature, even in products that boast no greenness at all. In Senior Contributing Editor Nancy Robinson’s three-part product showcase, “Planet Earth,” page 30, she breaks down the inspirations into three style elements: water, wood and fire. The greenness of the product shown throughout the feature—much like the product in your store, no doubt—varies greatly. The merchandising of green and no-green products together can create a strong style story, but it runs the risk of turning the industry’s green message into so much white noise. Home Fashion Forecast has not solved the myriad challenges of the gray area that is green furnishings. But it does illustrate how green and notso-green product can intermingle in fashionforward ways. Call it a multichromatic take on a tough issue, but one thing is certain as the issue continues to evolve: Never overpromise on a product’s greenness. It’s a step backward when the industry is aiming to create black-and-white standards. Julie M. Smith, Editorial Director jmsmith@vancepublishing.com earth science Seeing black and white was neither a political nor a green issue at the 2008 edition of immCologne, Germany’s annual furniture fair held in January. White was deemed the “trend color” of the fair. And while it looked edgy, pure and flawless, the most enchanting iterations paired black and white, relied on negative space to create contrast or split the difference in grays (with metallic finishes). Desmos armchair by Sotiris Lazou for Varangis is one example. www.varangis.com.gr 4 HOME fashion forecast http://www.varangis.com.gr
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