TREND: Crossover Wallpapers
THE DESIGNERS behind Mini Moderns know the appeal of ‘crossover’ wallpapers. Their own designs - officially for “kids and kidults” - have for seasons adorned their own walls at home in south London (see their Do You Live in A Town?, pictured left) and not just nurseries and children’s bedrooms across the land. But then the papers were originally conceived with the idea “to cover very young children and teens and adults with a humorous yet stylish approach to their interiors,” according to one half of the duo, Keith Stephenson.
Lizzie Allen, a young wallpaper designer who rose to fame with her charming, London-themed hand-drawn paper designs - including the ‘Changing Guards at Buckingham Palace’ and ‘The Royal Guards’, believes the crossover appeal of her own papers is a result of the adult and childhood themes that come together in the designs. “One of the main inspirations is my brother as he is in the army and I’ve grown up with that always being part of my family,” says Lizzie of her Brit, retro military creations. “Another inspiration is A.A. Milne’s poem ‘Changing Guards at Buckingham Palace’ - this was one of my favourite poems growing up and Winnie The Pooh and Christopher Robin were two of my favourite characters. Thirdly, my style of drawing is influenced by the colours, style, and shapes of the 1950s: I love that era!” So presumably do many others. Note the differing appeal of her Changing Guards paper in the Spring colourway and Autumn gold - the latter is infinitely more ‘adult’, despite the motif staying the same.
Such crossover prints are on the rise this season. Mini Moderns’ most teen/adult aimed wallpaper design to date may well be their new C60 - a 1980s-inspired paper based on the tape cassettes we all spent hours compiling amateur soundtracks on in days gone by, and which is available in a colour-it-yourself black and white version or in a fab, and possibly more adult, disco-ish black and gold (pictured right). Mini Moderns fan, Living Etc writer Claudia Baillie admits “I do kind of want this for myself!” And then there’s the rather brilliant new ‘Skulls’ wallpaper from Biba originator Barbara Hulanicki for Graham & Brown, £60 a roll, featuring graphic human skulls stacked one on the other. It’s intended (loosely speaking) for adult tastes, (she thinks it would rock a guest loo) but we can see it being a huge hit with teens too.
But then we shouldn’t be surprised when adult and children’s tastes overlap, says new wallpaper designer Victoria Cramsie of Paperboy. Her just-launched range of papers - including a graphic print based on shadow puppets, called Hand Made, £100, and Animal Magic, showing animal skeletons in glossy black on grey, (pictured below) £120 - is officially intended for boys aged 5 and over. But there’s a global appeal to Cramsie’s sophisticated take on children’s themes.
“I do think that adults and children can and do have common tastes,” says the designer and mother. “So many men I have spoken to about this whole project have spoken fondly of their love of dinosaurs, fighter planes, tanks, football and how even now (in the middle years) they would like to have designs which reflected that in their homes - if only the wives would let them. I hope my designs will appeal to the ‘boy’ in all of us. It’s about finding a theme that a child may be interested in and giving it a thoughtful and, dare I say it, tasteful treatment. We seem to forget that children are not a different species to us,” she adds. “They do often like garish and loud colours, but then so do some grown-ups, but there is a point where they begin to move away from the bright blocky colours and shapes into the more subtle colours and shapes of the adult world. They don’t just wake up one day with a more sophisticated taste - it is a gradual journey.” And one that we never seem to grow out of.
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