Vintage View: We show you how to find (millennial) granny chic
Albus wall mural, €65, feathr.com.
Granny chic? The first time I was sent a press release headed by this pert new interior trend, it really put my knitting bag into an uproar. A fluffed up copywriter’s riff, it’s supposed to describe a sort of mumsy, comfy cosy, nostalgia-spattered maximalism. What were the marketing heads up to?
My granny, with her Rothman’s Blue behind her ear, used a wheelbarrow to take her "old" furniture out to the kerb-side in about 1955, and installed the latest and the greatest the O’Connell Street-style temples had to offer.
Take away the two-bar electric fire (possibly the telescopic pole lamp) and the perpetual light to the Virgin Mary, screwed to the anaglypta wallpaper. It was pretty much exactly what is now on offer across Harvey Norman, DFS, Arnotts, Ikea — you name it.
Still, having mulled it over, I think I’ve got it. There are few of us lucky enough to have even a great-granny who recalls the 1930s, let alone the Edwardian era (about 1901–1910). That’s what this style really describes. It’s all pagoda lampshades, Colefax & Fowler roses the size of infant cabbages (everywhere), fringed, deep-buttoned velvet furniture and hooked wool rugs.
There are amateur oil paintings, simpering ornaments and an archipelago of pouffes. It’s busy, feminine (the granny hook) and unapologetically homey. If granny chic took corporeal form, she would plant petal-soft lips on your forehead, before she tousled your hair and padded off to make your cocoa, her rose-water lingering — a little stale.
Millennials might not understand early 20th-century classic Ewardiana (having bounded straight to the safety of spare, mid-century style), but they do know the feeling it exudes. It’s a big fat, feather chair with your backside groove. It’s a blessed signal to give up trying to impress with cool eclectic modernism and relax into an old fashioned, layered, hand-me-down surroundings. Granny chic ignores any fear of being dated — it’s unconditional acceptance.
One of the more extreme expressions of old-fashioned "granista" this year is putting the same chintzy print on the furniture as you do on the walls, or matchy-matchy. Varying a ground colour and scale of repeat, it can be done, but in most cases you’ll need two oSolphadene by about 11am, to live in it. Decorators of the 1980s flirted with this queasy confection, along with rag-rolling, and binned it all with their golden pine kitchens by 1990. More likely, we’ll be knitting together some 1930s and 40s quaintness with some brazen 21st-century colour.
The first thing to dispense with is anything on the Terence Conran line in terms of lean, echoing rooms. More is more: You’ll have to make peace with pattern. Jean Simmons in her cottage in her stint as Miss Marple (BBC) is the aesthete’s granny we’re after.
The form-swallowing damask rose covers to high-backed armchairs, the lustrously waxed tea-tables, curtains (with pelmets) pooling to the floor, and snowy linen antimacassars (cloths to keep 18th-century hair pomade off embroidered upholstery). It’s accrued, calming, timeless, and gorgeous, littered in frayed copies of Horse & Hound, foxed mirrors and chipped antique porcelain.
The English cottage set has held onto this charming look, and you can find it beautifully illustrated in the magazines of the wax-coated ones in magazines like Country Life (TI Media).
Today’s granny chic can mix up faux tiger print fabric with Timorous Beastie wall-coverings and repro Lloyd Loom. Look what Instagram darling Pearl Lowe, a designer based in Somerset, has done to her home —her "gran-millennial", re-imagined from auctions and market stalls, Liberty fabrics and ordinary but super comfortable furniture tricked up to be extraordinary : https://www.instagram.com/pearllowe/ . You might want to add more classic retro or positively kitschy elements to the mix — this is probably the most personal style genre we’ve been offered up in years. It’s a little out at the elbows, but let it hug you back.
Your easiest way into the early modern of the 1900s is by adding status to your curtains, soft furnishings and rugs (Nana says, there’s no right or wrong). We don’t all need a duvet on the triple-glazing, but few period styles work without theatrical window dressings, lush and delicious as a violet cream. Go right to the floor, headed in pelmets if you like or at least a sexy drape or two.
Sprigged with blossom or a one-colour weaves — double the width of the window to deliver decadent, enveloping folds. Consider lining them in another colour or even in a complimentary print, to flare out, couture style from the leading side when open with tie backs. Yes, congratulations — you can have those rococo tiebacks you’ve secretly mourned for.
Rugs are an instant decorative hit — and newsflash — you can have more than one for the same place. Change them out to suit the season, just as you would cushions, bolsters and throws.
Clashing rugs layered or throw down over carpet — high granny chic. Buying an oriental? Expect to pay more for a vintage tribal piece without a fussy, central medallion. Fringes on rugs, cushions and the base of sofas and chairs are trending for AW 2020, and for furniture, it’s possible to retrofit fringing with a crafter's staple gun or firm fabric glue. Pin it in place, before deploying that permanent fix. Fringed cushions offer eye-watering, exciting prints. I’m faint for the flamboyant work of Sabina Pieper, who takes her inspiration from the Tudor and Elizabethan era’s "formidable women"; Ghost Ship velvet cushions with ostrich feather trim, start at70, audenza.com.
Flowery wallpaper is far from dreary, but it is a vivid commitment. Aspiratonal? Torture yourself with the work of deGournay (London), have a quiet, pillow-thumping cry, and use it for inspiration for a cheaper buy.
Take it to one wall in a fragile nuptial bower or a fantastic explosion of blossom. The Albus III wall mural by Feathr, from Claire Luxton's new Botanica collection, features a chrysanthemum the size of a VW Polo, taken by photograph, mounted on aluminium and acrylic, and hand-finished in resin. Powder pink, giggling with girlie — you can just peel it down if its charm starts to bore, €65, feathr.com. Try some of the darker shaded grounds in papers to rock up the older chintz styles.
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