Renaissance glamour: make like Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Anne Boleyn with luxurious velvet and rich colours for dramatic interiors
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A “renaissance” look is doing the rounds in fashion. It’s about big puff sleeves, square necklines, loads of velvet, brocade, pearls and gilt — and the unlikely style icon is Henry VIII’s unfortunate second wife, Anne Boleyn.
Homeware, of course, loves to cosy up to the catwalk, so the luxe look is coming to a shop near you.
The Scott retro-style sofa in grass-green velvet by Made.com, already an Instagram hit, now also comes in navy and orange, while the Giselle is a slimmer update (100 Charing Cross Rd, WC2).
“Soft-textured velvet reflects light brilliantly, making colours more intense,” says Loaf founder Charlie Marshall (stores in Battersea, Spitalfields and Notting Hill).
“Velvet is now a best-selling fabric in the jewel shades our customers love,” confirms Vanessa Hurley-Perera, of Sofa.com.
With the party season looming, lustrous fashion velvets top the list for evening jackets and suits — see Victoria Beckham’s emerald version worn by Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag.
Your velvet sofa can come with a protective finish to guard against marks. Digital prints can add lush florals or tropical leaves.
Velvet is everywhere this season from cushions to throws, standalone chairs, lamp shades, bed headboards and even velvet-covered chests of drawers at Graham & Green.
Also lush and lovely is damask, with its soft sheen and gracious two-tone motifs.
British brand Zoffany has damasks, velvets, prints and embroideries, in a stunning edit called Antiquary.
Studio head Peter Gomez says modern fibres have toughened up this most ancient of cloths. “These new damasks won’t degrade, split or fade.”
Team these fabrics with moody walls of burgundy, ochre or inky indigo, adding flashes of copper, brass or bronze. Or line your walls with lookalike “tapestries” courtesy of Watts of Westminster.
The new Tableaux Scéniques are “democratising” the great tapestry picture-stories that warmed up palace walls in chillier times.
Watts director Marie-Séverine de Caraman de Chimay says: “We are redrawing figures, trees, mountains and temples and printing them with advanced digital technology on to paper or paper-backed fabrics, still keeping the subtle colours and texture.”
Prices start at £190 a metre, 130cm wide, on paper. For extra cost and realism, choose prints on paper-backed linen, grasscloth, canvas, silk or velvet.
In its Design Centre Chelsea Harbour showroom, Watts has a superb spread of trimmings, archive silks, braids, embroideries and damask.
Northumbrian artist Susi Bellamy, with her own luxury homewares brand, has designed a sumptuous, painterly range of furnishings saturated with Italian memories from her years living in Florence.
“I love those rich, deep colours, the burnt orange, the Borgia reds and Medici greens; the paintings, the columns, and the coral, malachite and marble. I’ll be eternally inspired by the Florentine aesthetic.”
Prints at the quirky brand Mineheart have given Renaissance artworks a modern twist for saucy rugs and cushions, and a lamp shade printed with a detail of the Sistine Chapel.
As for opulent interiors, John Lewis is in on the act, talking in its latest retail report of a growing taste for “theatrical glamour”.
During the past year, nearly a third of John Lewis customers bought something made of velvet, brass, copper and/or marble for their home — and in response, the Oxford Street giant now has a whole range of velvet furnishings.
Meanwhile, at the National Gallery see Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks wrapped in a silk-lined cloak in a new “immersive” installation (Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece, until January 12).