Luxury and industry seem contradictory visions. Luxurious evokes thoughts of fluid lines, excessive fabrics, rich colors, and more, more, more of everything. Industrial suggests straight lines, minimalist features, gray metallics, and less, less, less of everything.
Luxurious
Today, luxury living means selecting quality, unique, and personal elements. You’re spending top dollar on the unique and individual statement from room to room.
Luxury is not so much about status and obvious affluence anymore. It’s more about creating a sensory experience that invites touching, curiosity, and wonder. Status means having something others don’t have. So, the sources are no longer the scarcity presented in antique and foreign origins.
Rather, designers choose the rare piece for an artist or artisan, something rare enough in design to command attention. There is, for instance, the introduction of elements from exotic cultures and lands with a concession to their eco-needs in woods, crystals, fabrics, and sculptures.
Such selection enables owners to refer to design elements as their own, to suggest a personal involvement in its discovery or purchase, and to refer to treat the best as casual.
The Valentina, for example, is a stunningly textured lighting fixture. Three circles of crystals hang in tiers below an antique brass hoop, each tier longer than the previous.
There is industrial precision in the craftsmanship and the architecture of the fixture. Multiple crystal rods, each a triangle with sharply indented sides, hang in disciplined rings.
The brass band hangs by three short brass chains from a small brass base some 27.5-inches from the ceiling and 28-inches across.
Disciplined and ordered, it still creates a luxurious moment in its shimmering light among and through the glass. They multiply the light yet soften its glare over a living room setting or grand dining room table.
SHOP VALENTINA
The Alleta, on the other hand, seems strikingly modern and deceptively simple. The simple lines recall the industrial and functional. The long slender stem is strictly utilitarian until you notice the tight burgundy leather wrapping around the golden brass. At 41.5-inches long, it cannot go unnoticed.
But, that vertical line leads to an explosion of multiple glass globes with a diameter of 24-inches. Only four bulbs illuminate this fixture as the light bounces through and among the glass. Even the globes recall industrial uses, but combined with other features, this pendant attracts and intrigues as a stark one-of-a-kind feature.
The pendant hangs low enough to display as an artwork in a stairwell, a high-ceilinged foyer, or private art gallery. Simple and industrial, Alleta still presents itself as a luxurious conversation piece.
SHOP ALLETA
This approach to interior design has been called “Sophisticate Industrialism” or “Luxury Industrial,” but it’s a contemporary trend that makes a dynamic use of the industrial without committing to it. It reconfigures old perceptions into some contemporary realization. It’s a fluid mingling of forms and features to define some new way of seeing and sensing your environment.