They're all the rage, darling
By Sonia Purnell
Published: August 19 2006 03:00 | Last updated: August 19 2006 03:00
The rebellion started in restaurants such as London's Nobu Berkeley and Hakkasan. Now, it's spreading to inner-city loft spaces and even country homes. Designers are rejecting the whites, ecrus and taupes that have dominated bathrooms for nigh-on a decade in favour of something richer, more suggestive and more glamorous: black.
"We're finding all sorts of people are going for black bathrooms, from young stockbrokers to country folk," says Cheryl Gurner of Bathrooms International in London. "It all started about a year ago, with the growing revolt against taupe and a boredom with the minimalist look. All that limestone and Philippe Starck resulted in a lack of soul, colour or drama."
Such is the demand for black marble, black tiles and even black baths, basins, toilets and showers that Gurner has now created two black bathroom settings in her store. One, reminiscent of a 1950s Hollywood siren's seduction parlour, incorporates black-and-red glassware and glossy nero maquina (a black granite from Spain) with a sheen that lifts the colour, conveying warmth and luxury rather than darkness or sobriety. "I used the same, quite quirky [white] bath in a Moroccan setting and never sold one in three years," she says. "But since it's been surrounded by black, I've sold at least one a week."
Baths wrapped luxuriantly in black leather have also proved popular, as have those made entirely from black resin. AZen basin is made from a highly polished scooped-out chunk of black granite, with tactile rough outsides.
"Black is an extremely powerful colour and one that needs confidence to use throughout a whole room," says interior designer Tara Bernerd of UK-based Target Living. "But implemented without fear, it has a very bold and handsome effect. The bathroom lends itself perfectly to creating a strong clean statement with black, stone, granite or lacquers."
She recently used marbled black tiles and red lacquer paint for a bathroom in one client's home and installed African, black-honed granite floor tiles for the "his" shower room of another client's penthouse. "Some say it's masculine," she says, "I think it's sexy."
Luigi Esposito, the Brazilian-born designer behind Forma Designs, has also bought into black, installing an opulent black-and-gold bathroom in his new Chelsea show home. "All-black bathrooms reinforce a very glamorous image and I'm now using them a lot," he says. "The one in Chelsea will have the wall along the bath in black and gold Bisazza mosaic tiles, with the opposite wall in grey floor-to-ceiling mirrors and the two remaining walls in black Russian marble. All the china and sanitary-ware will be in black Lefroy Brooks selected from the 1920 Charterhouse range, all inspired by a 19th-century Parisian barbershop."
Michael Swan of Villeroy & Boch, which has just launched its Memento black bathroom range, confirms the trend but thinks it has limited reach. "There's certainly a [move] in the big cities across the world towards black [because] it has a cosmopolitan feel. Interior designers are busy saying black is the new white," he says.
But homeowners unable or unwilling to redecorate their bathrooms on a regular basis have been hesitant to embrace the directive. Many women still regard an all-black look as too masculine, heavy or even funereal. "Everyone likes it but no one is buying it - from us anyway," Swan acknowledges. "People still remember the old avocado and pampas coloured suites from the late 1970s. They feel safe with white, which hasn't dated in the same way and which still accounts for 98 per cent of the worldwide market for suites.
Still, he adds, "black is definitely a way of saying something."
Living toe to toe
With dedicated rooms for wine, work-outs and watching films these days, it was only a matter of time before one of those other great indulgences in life - shoes - also commanded bespoke accommodation.
Many top-end interior designers have long worked on the presumption that their female clients own at least 100 pairs and need sufficient dressing room wall space to store them. But today's fashionistas are more likely to have shoe collections running to the many hundreds, spanning the colour spectrum, and ranging from stilettos to flats, satin to snakeskin. When you blow $1,000 on a pair of diamond-encrusted sling-back party specials, it doesn't make sense to file them next to the cheery pair of poolside flip-flops or even hand-embroidered Spanish riding boots.
Serious shoe lovers don't need a make-do shoe rack but rather an entire shoe room meticulously regimented to keep tabs on their assets.
Luigi Esposito has just completed a 150 sq ft dedicated shoe room for one 21-year-old Park Lane princess who owns 350 pairs of shoes and boots. "A lot of my clients have this common love of shoes but owning so many presented more of a challenge," he says. "She wanted glamour but another of her requirements was to have visual access to every single pair. So the whole structure is composed of wood, painted with black lacquer like a piano, but with transparent thick sage-green glass dividers so that all the shoes can be easily seen both from the front and the side."
There are eight shelves from bottom to ceiling round the room and a series of different-sized compartments, some containing two pairs - flats at the front and higher heels behind. "The compartments can be flexible and altered in size as she continues to expand her collection."
Finchatton, an upscale developer, also customises different-sized shoe compartments for different brands - Jimmy Choos are known for having lower heels than Manolo Blahniks, which are in turn less vertiginous than Christian Louboutins.
"We recently created wonderful walnut shelving lit by fibre-optics for one London client in her late 40s," says the firm's co-founder Alex Michelin, "and made sure we left more room for the 30 new pairs of shoes she buys every year."
Elika Gibbs, who through her business Practical Princess helps to organise the shoe collections of many wealthy and famous women around the world, has just completed making 390 matching but individually customised shoe boxes for one client's shoe room. "I'm working with more and more shoe rooms as women build up their collections and look for the right way to store them," she says. "Even when women put on weight or don't feel so good, a nice pair of shoes immediately helps and they don't mind spending serious money on them."
Practical Princess photographs all the shoes and keeps them on a database so that clients with multiple homes can check whether a particular pair is in the London, New York or holiday house shoe room. It also organises each room, grouping shoes by colour, style, purpose and material. Every season, they are rearranged to suit the weather and accommodate new purchases. This can take some time with clients such as Tamara Mellon, president of Jimmy Choo shoes, who has more than 500 pairs.
"Tamara has two rooms for her clothes - room A, which has the current season clothes, and the much bigger room B for extra storage and her shoes ranged out on simple mahogany shelves," Gibbs says. "We put closed-toe shoes together and open-toe, we separate satins from skins and we arrange by colour. There's also another storage unit in the middle of the room for her trainers and holiday shoes. "The whole space is the size of a lot of people's bedrooms."
Now you see it . . .
Somewhere in the leafiest part of Surrey, in the luxurious drawing room of a grand country estate owned by a wealthy international businessman, lies a well-hidden secret.
Visitors, including captains of industry, ambassadors and politicians, are no doubt impressed by the man's collection of Georgian antiques and his elegant 24-carat gilded Regency chiffonier bookcase, with its marble top and silk-lined shelves holding first-edition books. Yet most would be surprised to learn that the latter piece has a dual purpose. It is not 200 years old but a new museum-quality reproduction that serves as camouflage for a slimline plasma television, which can be called forth, at the tap of a button, from behind the books through a panel in the marble. It's just one example of a growing trend towards ingenious concealment of technology.
"The advent of flat-screen TVs means that people can have them anywhere they like and can conceal them in the most unlikely places," says David Salmon, maker of the chiffonier and other bespoke furniture. "Clients who like a traditional look and fine pieces of furniture still want modern entertainment. This piece is now in a formal show-off drawing room where the owner entertains officially and therefore does not want to see a big TV. But at the same time the owner needed to be able to watch the football in there with friends when he wanted.
"The better quality the piece, the less expected it is to find a TV concealed within it. Yet these are totally functioning pieces of furniture, with real books on the shelves. What really surprises people is that the proportions of the furniture are not compromised at all."
Salmon, whose most famous work is a series of copies of Napoleon's campaign chair for most of Europe's royal families, is now frequently contacted by clients who want to slip their TVs into the most unlikely places. One of his favourites is perhaps even more difficult to spot in a panelled library in a fine house in Greenwich, Connecticut. Over the carved mantelpiece, flanked by elaborate sconces and two arched recesses for books, hangs a much-admired oil painting. But when the owners fancy watching a film, the painting (applied to a specially created canvas) simply rolls up into a recess behind the panelling to reveal yet another plasma TV. (The same clients also asked Salmon to make one of the arched bookcases into a secret door.)
Designers of contemporary living spaces are joining in too. In a new fleet of 10 slick, minimalist, Anglo-Italian yachts designed by the architect Norman Foster and currently under construction - and offered for fractional ownership by YachtPlus - the look is ultra-pared-down modern. "We're planning to have a glass wall in every suite that will be painted black except for a cut-out where the mega-plasma screen will be siliconed to the back," explains YachtPlus chief executive Han Verstraete.
"When the TV is turned off, the whole wall looks like just a dark glass panel. But when it's on, the TV lights up from behind the glass and looks like it takes up the whole wall."
浴室崇尚黑色
作者：英国《金融时报》撰稿人 索尼娅?普奈尔(Sonia Purnell)
2006年9月4日 星期一
叛逆始于伦敦Nobu Berkeley和Hakkasan等餐馆。眼下，这种趋势已开始波及市中心的阁楼空间，甚至乡间住所。近10年来，白色、米色和褐色一度主导着浴室的色调，但设计师们现在拒绝使用它们，转而青睐更丰富、更引人联想，也更迷人的颜色：黑色。
“我们日益发现，无论是年轻的股票经纪人，还是乡下人，各种各样的人都开始喜欢黑色浴室，”伦敦Bathrooms International的谢丽尔?格纳(Cheryl Gurner)说。“这都是约一年前开始的，人们越来越讨厌褐色以及极简主义外观产生的单调乏味。到处都是石灰岩和菲力浦?史塔克(Philippe Starck)设计风格，结果是空间缺乏灵魂，色彩单调，也无戏剧性的变化。”
市场对黑色大理石、黑色瓷砖，甚至黑色浴盆、面盆、马桶和淋浴室的需求如此之大，格纳甚至在其店内布置了两间黑色调的浴室。一间让人想起50年代好莱坞女星充满诱惑气息的客厅，它融入了黑红两色玻璃器皿和光亮的黑色大理石（产自西班牙），表面的光泽提升了色调，传达出温暖和豪华的韵味，而不是黑暗或者中规中矩。“我曾在摩洛哥风格的浴室中摆放了同样一个相当怪异的（白色）浴缸，但三年里一个也没卖出去，”她说道。“不过，自从背景变成黑色后，一周至少要卖出去一个。”
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事实证明，浴缸包上豪华黑色皮革后，也很受欢迎，全黑色树脂制作的浴缸也很好卖。AZen牌面盆是用一大块中间挖空的黑色花岗石制成，盆里用高光打磨，而外面则手感十分粗糙。
“黑色是一种极有力度的色调，在整个房间运用时需要有自信，”伦敦Target Living的室内设计师塔拉?伯纳(Tara Bernerd)说。“如果无所畏惧地运用黑色，会产生十分大胆、漂亮的效果。浴室极其适合用黑色石材、大理石和油漆，产生强烈的洁净效果。”
最近，她为一位客户住所的浴室铺了黑色大理石瓷砖，刷了红色油漆，而为另一位客户屋顶公寓的“男用”淋浴间铺了非洲黑色磨光大理石地砖。“一些人说这样有雄性气概，”她说。“我认为很性感。”
出生在巴西的路易吉?埃斯波西托(Luigi Esposito)是Forma Designs旗下的设计师。他也选用了黑色，在他位于切尔西的新展房里布置了一间华丽的黑色和金色浴室。“纯黑色的浴室能使景象更迷人，我现在用的非常多，”他说道。“在切尔西的这间浴室中，我将在浴缸一侧的墙上铺满黑色和金色的碧莎(Bisazza)马赛克瓷砖，然后在对面的墙上从地板到天花板都挂满灰色的镜子，其余两面墙都铺上黑色的俄罗斯大理石。所有瓷器和洁具都选用黑色的Lefroy Brooks产品，属于上世纪20年代卡尔特修道院(Charterhouse)系列，其灵感均来自19世纪巴黎一家理发店。”
迈克尔?斯旺(Michael Swan)所在的Villeroy & Boch公司也刚刚推出了“纪念品”(Memento)黑色浴室系列。他证实黑色已成为潮流，但认为影响有限。“全世界的大城市中的确出现了一种青睐黑色的（潮流），（因为）它散发出一种海纳百川的质感。室内设计师们正忙着到处宣扬说，黑色就是新时代的白色。”他说道。
但要不要融入这一潮流呢？无法或不愿定期重新装修浴室的房主们还在犹豫。许多女士仍然认为，纯黑色的外观过于男性化、沉重，甚至有葬礼的味道。“每个人都很喜欢，但还没有人买――至少没人从我们这里买，”斯旺坦承。“人们仍在怀念20世纪70年代末的老式暗绿色和草色卫浴设备。他们认为白色有安全感。同样，白色也没有过时，仍然占据着全世界卫浴市场98%的份额。
尽管如此，他还是补充道，“当然，黑色是一种表达意境的方式。”
