Evening Standard - ES Magazine
BRAGGING RIGHTS
Handmade, salvaged, entirely repurposed — the time-worn contents of a humblebrag home are a showy, soulful statement of their own,
Winging its way to us across the Atlantic from Silicon Valley, powered by sails made in Marseilles and the most up-to-date satellite technology, is a strange interiors trend that can be described only using that most delicious of neologisms: the ‘humblebrag’. If most interior decorating is as much about aspiration as it is about trying to infuse your home with some sense of self expression and beauty, the humblebrag home virtue signals being in touch with a bygone age of hand-hewn craft, industrial toil, having soul — real soul — and integrity. When the humblebragger entertains, they are likely to sit on a pair of rustic pig farmers’ benches and eat from a table that was once a jewellers workbench rescued from the eaves a 19th-century Lyonnaise sweatshop: ‘See how the original ankle shackles have been preserved and have a perfect patina,’ they will casually mention.
Of course not everything will have such utilitarian provenance. The lighting will most likely be mid-century Italian or French (Belgian or Dutch for newcomers), while the rest of the furniture will be an artful sprinkling of Pierre Jeanneret and Jean Prouvé of indeterminate age, paired with some slouchy-but-tailored traditional upholstery shapes wrapped in loose pastel linen covers from Axel Vervoordt (or possibly Zara Home). There are rough-hewn marble console tables and raw silk ‘floor pieces’: because a ‘rug’ would have too much of a whiff of the bazaar and more organic textures than a weekly west London Natoora shop.