A look at The Look

Today I spent the day at the Boston Design Center catching up with friends and colleagues at The Look.  Every fall, the BDC puts together an informative day of seminars, presentations, lunches and cocktails to update and educate my trade on the latest trends and products being released for the following year.  The day began with a wonderful breakfast in their new 342 Designer's Club.  This is a huge addition to the building - Finally, I will have a place to take a client to unwind and sift through materials that were collected during the day!  Here, we were greeted by a number of local bloggers and social media personnel, including Leslie Fine of Leslie Fine Interiors and Julieann Covino of Jace Interiors/CreateGirl blogs.  I personally was very happy to see that Cassandra Lavalle of Coco+Kelley (www.cocokelley.com) came all the way from Seattle just to join in.

After breakfast, we headed up to the seminar room to hear Julie Rogowski, Vice President/GM of the BDC, give her Trend Report for 2013.  The presentation was broken into three categories; color, pattern, and style.  We were told that yellow will become the new neutral.  True blues and mushrooms will work well together while shades of red will make big statements in small doses.  For pattern, updated geometrics will get reworked into new colorways.  Floral prints will return (and yes, that does include chintz).  Stripes will overlap, and animals prints and figures will bring a bit of whimsy into any design.  Lastly, style trends will continue to follow the latest fashion runways with feminine shapes, easy elegant forms, personal detailing, and a return to classic, timeless design (remember, Audrey Hepburn has never gone out of style).

The rest of the day was spent listening in on a number of smaller presentations.  Notably, Lee Jofa introduced their Malika Collection; Kravet discussed their new Jonathan Adler line; and Michael Lee showcased his photography at M-Geough.  We ate lunch while learning about photo-styling secrets, and heard about why every project should ideally have not only an architect, but an interior designer and landscape architect on the team before the ball gets rolling (with a special thanks to Kristen Rivoli for representing our gang:)).

And, although I left the event early in the afternoon to get back to pressing Show House deadlines, book signings and giveaways were still going on.  I was sorry to miss the announcement of the 2012 inductees into The New England Design Hall of Fame.  The lobby was dressed in fresh flowers for the occasion, and I'm sure that it was a great end to the day...