The Impossibly Chic Rooms That Elevated Wicker to Cult Status Among Designers
The Impossibly Chic Rooms That Elevated Wicker to Cult Status Among Designers
Wicker seating has long been synonomous with outdoor rooms in vacation homes and resorts, from screened porches at mountain lake houses and country farmhouses to seaside verandas from Maine to the coast of France.
But the world's most sophisticated and well-traveled designers have been quietly defying that conventional wisdom for decades, installing beloved woven rattan pieces in decidedly nonresort locales and distinctly indoor rooms. Now, the notion that every room is more refined with at least one good piece of wicker is a near-universal truth, and top designers around the world, from England and the Bahamas to South Africa, are launching new collections to serve the growing demand.
Here, a look back at 10 of the most iconic rooms from the last 100-plus years that have helped cement wicker as an essential element in today's relaxed elegance design vocabulary.
The Cafe Parisien Aboard the Titanic
Designed as a replica of a Parisian-style cafe, RMS Titanic's Cafe Parisien was furnished with wicker seating reminiscent of the City of Light's iconic bistro chairs. The cafe, which afforded diners views of the ocean while eating (one of the Titanic's many "firsts" for a British passenger ship) via large picture windows that could even be rolled down when the weather cooperated, created an atmosphere similar to that of a veranda, complete with ivory-covered trellis walls.
Princess Irene Galitzine's Winter Garden in Rome Designed by Renzo Mongiardino
It's only fitting that Italian designer Renzo Mongiardino would have outfitted the Rome apartment of Irene Galitzine, the Russian-born Italian fashion designer who invented the palazzo pyjama, with wicker sofas and chairs by the Italian firm Bonacina. The luxury furniture company has been making indoor and outdoor woven pieces by hand since the 19th century, with a style as clearly fashion forward as Galitzine's own sensibility was.
Marella Agnelli's Living Room in Rome Designed by Ward Bennett
Ah, to lounge about reading magazines on a wicker chaise in the company of fabulous art and lemon trees...does it get any chicer? Only if you are Italian art collector and style icon Marella Agnelli, seen here in the living room of her Rome apartment, designed by Ward Bennett, in 1977.
Agnelli's homes were known for their refined yet relaxed interiors, from her New York City apartment and her villa in Turin to this Rome apartment. Here, the use of large-scale wicker furniture in an urban setting, complete with a neutral palette and modern art, helped to cement the woven material's standing as appropriate for use anywhere — not just in resort communities or on cruise ships.
Givenchy's Poolhouse at Le Clos Fiorentina
Laidback elegance reigns in the poolhouse of Hubert de Givenchy's Le Clos Fiorentina, the French Riviera villa the fashion designer purchased in 1995.
Furnished with overscale honey-colored wicker seating with striped canvas cushions (completed with a chaise longue oriented directly towards the of the pool and the Mediterranean beyond), the room is a testament to the staying power of chic simplicity and the role that wicker has played in that for decades past and decades to come.
This Maine Living Room Designed by Tom Scheerer
Ever since designer Tom Scheerer pulled up a pair of antique Bar Harbor chairs in a chocolate brown finish around a sleek white Saarinen coffee on a Moroccan wool rug, wicker has never looked back. Gone are its days of disintegrating in a dusty corner of a lake-house porch or a forgotten attic.
With this decorating move at a coastal Maine summer home where wildly different decades of furniture design dance harmoniously together, lending a generational spirit to the space that one might expect from such a house as this, Scheerer swiftly brought the woven material back into the fore, never to be forgotten about again.
10) Greater Investment in Outdoor Rooms
"It used to be that outdoor living areas were one of the last topics to be discussed on our projects and by that time, clients had often run out of money and/or suffered from a serious case of decision fatigue," says Jean Liu. "However, the pandemic has changed the priority this part of the house takes. Serious dollars are now being allocated to outdoor living at the onset of every new residential project, and we do not see this waning in 2022."
Liu notes backyards and patios are now being treated like indoor spaces and she is regularly purchasing whole sets of acrylic or unbreakable glass- and tableware to elevate drinking and dining poolside. And with further investment and innovation in performance fabrics that can be used indoors or out, outdoor furniture is more beautiful and luxurious than ever before.
"Clients are asking for outdoor rooms to be designed with the flexibility to function as a traditional interior space and act as a center point for family gathering and relaxation," says Tammy Connor. "Recently, we’ve been sourcing from our library of indoor-outdoor fabrics as much—if not more—as we source from our library of traditional interior upholstery fabrics."
Randy Cornell also notes that our outdoor spaces are no longer equipped with a lone grill or minuscule bar space anymore. As outdoor parties became all the rage in 2020, he's been installing pizza ovens, full kitchens, and more on the porches and patios of his clients' exterior spaces and predicts that desire will grow in the new year.
The Playa Grande Beach Club Great Room Designed by Celerie Kemble
Only Celerie Kemble, another doyenne of the Palm Beach (and New York) design community, could resuscitate the iconic peacock wicker chair with such ease.
At the Playa Grande Beach Club living room in the Dominican Republic, these woven pieces mix as seamlessly with the brightly colored tile, Dominican Victorian architecture, verdant accents, and island folk art as that twist of lime does in the daiquiris guests sip on the adjacent covered porch.
Ragan Cain's Alabama Sunroom Designed by Mark D. Sikes
Along with weeknight family dinners and those retro-chic station wagons, we'd happily bring back the sunroom — that window-clad sitting room known as a garden room or conservatory in other eras and locales that brings the outdoors in — from the mid-20th-century American ranch-style house.
This Mountain Brook, Alabama, sunroom has been beautifully revived for the 21st century by California designer Mark D. Sikes. His update for the space centers on a matching set of American Country Home Store wicker seating, upholstered in a Colefax and Fowler print (on the chair cushions), and a Peter Dunham Textiles print (on the sofa). The chandelier is by Visual Comfort & Co. and features a custom plaster finish.
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The Drawing Room at Cobbler's Cove Designed by Lulu Lytle
Leave it to interior designer and Soane Britain creative director Lulu Lytle to craft a new seat at the West Indies table, as it were, for 21st-century wicker.
At Cobblers Cove (the historic Barbados hotel Lytle recently redesigned), classic wicker chairs in natural hues rub elbows with their Messel green-painted counterparts alongside rattan console and coffee tables with sinuous curves and traditional lighting fixture forms recast in woven natural fibers. West Indies wicker will never be the same.
It's time to think beyond the porch.