Top Design Trends of 2018: Deco Noir

As 2018 draws to a close, we’re looking back at the debuts and launches from the year’s design fairs, taking stock of ideas and imperatives driving the industry, like the evolution of work or the refinement of a sustainable consciousness. But we’re also digesting the visual and material themes that emerged throughout the year in fairs from Milan to Chicago, Helsinki to New York, Cologne to Stockholm. 

Even as the Apple aesthetic prevails—benignly chamfered edges, smooth seams, and efficient joints—an affection for the decorative and all the latter-day lifestyles that the term embodies is again on the rise. We’re in a Deco moment, but its noir side rather than its froth. Whether a real blast from the past—Cassina’s reissue of the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin chair (an angular throne for the modern-day villain)—or Moooi’s new, thoroughly cosmetic study of extinct fauna, there is a mood here: one of luxury, nostalgia for the glittery days of yore, and perhaps a fetish for an obsidian dystopia. At least it will have style.

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