Shabby Chic Redefined

I have always been the anti-Shabby Chic gal.

While I certainly understood how it would appeal to so many people, I just always felt it was messy and too casual for so many styles of homes. I don't think anything was more shocking then walking into someones home and seeing the formal spaces turned into shabby chic without a real thought into how it fit your "modern" home.....

But it still shocked me when in January I had heard that Rachel Ashwell and the "Shabby Chic" brand had filed for bankruptcy. She had stores, lines in other stores, web sites and many, many books. So what happened?

Apparently, she was trying to expand (due to a deal) at the same time the economy was going down the dirt. This led to the downfall of the company and the eventual Chapter 11 filing.

Bus Rachel and Shabby Chic are making a comeback according to this article in the New York Times. "The business plan, he and Ms. Ashwell said, describes a line of lower-price upholstered pieces that will appear in furniture stores sometime next year. Her new flagship stores in Manhattan and Santa Monica (a third is to open in London early next year) have been conspicuously named Shabby Chic Couture, to differentiate their higher price point — the new $3,500 sofa, versus one that might sell for $1,500 — from the new line for other stores."

While I applaud the "lower priced" line, I do wish there was not a disconnect between that and the higher priced "Couture" line. Does it make that much of a difference if your sofa is $2,000 as long as it has that Shabby Chic title?

Just asking....

Anyway, it's great to see a decorating icon make it back after a difficult time. Let's look for more of those decorating icons to return...like some of those magazines we have lost.....

Shabby Chic....redefined for the better, I hope.