The death of ‘shabby chic’

9 January 2010

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Britain in the 21st century has finally abandoned faded beauty, says Harry Mount, and fallen for the sterile minimalism of the international rich

These sterile cubes are designed to look like no one lives there. And quite often no one does. Their owners are off visiting their other empty white boxes in the country, in New York, in Tuscany. Nihilism is now the style of the international rich.

Kitchens become pristine laboratories; flat expanses of steel, glass and slate, with no food on show, or any sign that anything’s ever been cooked or eaten there. There’s great attention to cleanliness, with a bathroom per bedroom, each one a practical exposition of modern plumbing techniques, with free-standing baths and multiple sinks, all connected to gleaming copper pipes. Back gardens have none of that horridly asymmetrical, unfashionably green grass or those ragged-edged, shambolic borders. Instead, there’s more slate, interrupted by the odd square patch of flowers planted in symmetrical matrices growing to uniform height. British borders haven’t been so geometrical since the Elizabethan knot garden.

The nihilist’s desire for control, order and blankness, and his dislike of beauty and the past, mean there’s nowhere calming or beautiful for the eye to rest; no magazine or book by the sofa; no way of putting your feet up on that sofa without compromising its snowy virginity. The house is on permanent standby for the estate agent’s surprise visit. It is forever Year Zero. Old, pretty things have given way to new, ugly nothings.

Harry Mount’s A Lust for Window Sills — a Guide to British Buildings from Portcullis to Pebble-Dash is published by Little, Brown (£12.99).

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January 8th, 2010 7:31am Report this comment

The new ideal is to be centre stage and the focus of all attention. For this you don't need the clutter of stage props whatever their provenance. We are now colluding in the 'moi' generation's total lack of human responses to civility and humanity.