Why Floor and Decor Fashion Is Having a Moment
Chintz curtains, doilies, and upholstered furniture were unlikely inspirations for designers who made themselves right at home this season.
There’s a photo of 16-year-old Molly Ringwald, at the time of her breakout in Sixteen Candles, wearing a cream-colored jacket with a botanical print that mirrors the wallpaper behind her. It’s from the June 1984 issue of Vanity Fair, but it feels frozen in time. The prints aren’t cutesy schoolgirl blooms—they’re more like the ones found in a dead person’s never-sold house. Actually, both the wallpaper and the jacket wouldn’t have been out of place in a great-grandmother’s living room, which is exactly where designers seem to be drawing inspiration from recently. Call it upholstery chic.
The fall/winter 2025 runways could have doubled as window displays for your neighborhood Floor & Decor store. At Marc Jacobs, a floral dress looked like a Palm Beach retirement community’s couch; at Moschino, models were sent down the catwalk in enveloping coats and cushion-like hats. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt had a white lace ensemble that resembled a doily plopped atop a model. Zomer used lampshades as hats, while Versace—a brand that has done upholstery prints since the 1980s—seemed to turn a baroque duvet into a ball gown.
This particular trend is not about looking rich but, rather, about projecting personality. The look is dramatic and excessive, a little haphazard and lived-in. It makes sense right now: We’re emerging from an era in which minimalism has been the prevalent aesthetic for both clothes and interior design, as exemplified by the spare concrete palace Kim Kardashian calls home, where she takes selfies wearing many variations of nude jersey loungewear from her brand Skims. Upholstery chic is a pivot away from the anesthetized modern grays and beiges of seemingly every Airbnb rental and cashmere sweater from a so-called quiet luxury brand. Who wants another faux bouclé–covered ottoman? When did camel coats start to whisper “I’m so depressed”? All of the inoffensive tone-on-tone dressing seems to have made many designers yearn for a room of their own—preferably one in a fusty hotel that hasn’t been redecorated, ever.
Maybe Miranda July’s 2024 best-seller, All Fours, is influencing the runways too. In the novel, July’s perimenopausal artist heroine finds a renewed sex drive, as well as flowing creative juices, after zhuzhing up a drab, small-town motel room. She turns it into a grand oasis embellished with chintz curtains, dahlia wallpaper, and a salmon-colored quilt—her re-creation of a suite in Paris’s famous Le Bristol. This fantasy is about going rogue and living among clashing prints, like a senior citizen too old to care what you think.
“I have always dressed with elements of doilies or tablecloths or bed ruffles,” says Katie Merchant, a Toronto-based stylist and creative director. “I have a Comme des Garçons blouse I refer to as my ‘napkin top.’ ” One of her core childhood memories is of traveling to the Cotswolds with her family, catching the flu, and being confined to her hotel. “My pajamas were from Laura Ashley, and the whole hotel room was the same print. I thought, This is the height of luxury.” When you’re matching the carpet to the drapes to the bustier to the coat to the hat, even the wackiest idea can be, well, on the table.
From left: Courtesy of Versace; courtesy of Marc Jacobs; courtesy of Dries van Noten; courtesy of Zomer; courtesy of Marie Adam-Leenaerdt; courtesy of Moschino. Background: © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images.
