24 May

Why do fashions change? Have pondered that for years. And now I think it’s pretty simple, all human behaviour is based on one thing - imitation. Humans imitate, in every walk of life. So this article has an interior designer saying “I guess everyone just got sick of the minimalist trend – I know I did.” That’s how fashions change, people imitate one another, and then those who want to buck the trend go for a contrast from the norm - which is just another form of imitation really. To consciously go against the fashion is itself a type of imitative fashion. I was born in the 1960s, and grew up in the 1970s and 80s. The 60s and 70s were hugely colourful, in clothing and interior design, and in music. Then in the 1980s we moved to pastels, muted colours, and by the 1990s everything looked like a colour TV set with the colour turned right down (the interiors and clothes on Seinfeld). Now in the 2000s we’re at greys and whites, minimalism, and house design has for a while been about the old modernist box, open plan, knock all the interior walls out, minimal ornament or colour etc. But now, as the article says, the counter-imitation is on, and colour is starting to come back. Within a decade I bet home renovation shows will be entering the houses built now, and saying “where’s the colour, where’s the ornamentation? And where are the walls, all this horrible open, loud space?”