Everyone has a sofa at the heart of their house. It’s where you collapse in the evening after work, it’s where you snuggle up with your children, it’s where you fall asleep after a night out and wake up fully clothed at dawn, it’s where you watch Sunday night telly with a bowl of pasta on your lap.
But sofas are more than purely functional. They are increasingly fashion pieces, frivolous decorative installations and even economic indicators. Leather is still popular (its latest reincarnation is brown and worn — not black), but the latest word in sofa style is garish patchwork in a variety of fabric textures, preferably involving velvet.
Homewares is one of the few retail sectors to have remained strong in the recession. Marks & Spencer, Next, Asda and Tesco are all opening dedicated homewares stores, as is John Lewis, which last week reported a 21.8 per cent increase in sales of homewares on the previous week. Homeowners prevented from moving in the difficult property market have instead invested in their most important asset during the recession and are choosing bright, fun colours instead of the minimalist palette preferred by those planning to sell.
Patchwork sofas are popping up in department stores. Peter Jones, the Sloane Square branch of John Lewis (johnlewis.com), has just launched the Boheme sofa — a traditional chesterfield festooned with a patchwork of hand-dyed velvet. One of the most popular sofas at Selfridges (selfridges.com) is by the Shoreditch-based company Squint (squintlimited.com). “They refurbish antique sofas with patchworks that they make themselves,” Caitlin McCann, Selfridges’ furniture buyer, says. “It’s pretty fabulous — they sell really quickly.”
At Liberty (liberty.co.uk), meanwhile, you can find the Flower Power sofa by Bokja (bokjadesign.com), a Lebanese label that also upholsters antique pieces in bright fabrics.
Could fabric really be overtaking leather as the sofa covering of popular demand? “The market has moved on and fabric now makes up a much greater percentage of sales than leather,” McCann says. “You sit on a leather sofa, not in it. Cheap leather is so coated and slippery — it’s not nice on a bare leg. There’s something much more welcoming about fabric.”
McCann attributes this shift in taste to the recession. “People are looking for one-off extraordinary pieces,” she says. “Maybe this is about people treasuring their homes because they’re staying in more.”
She tips linens, velvets and metallics, in bold textures and designs, as key trends of the moment. The one unfashionable fabric is chenille — “it’s been done to death”.
Soft-furnishing shoppers at Homebase (homebase.co.uk) and Argos (argos.co.uk) are also increasingly choosing fabric over leather. Victoria Brawn, the product manager for furniture across both brands, also identifies the trend for “heavy open-weave textures, cord and velvet” and strong patterns — “stripes, spots, florals and geometrics” — on sofas and “Union Jacks, diamante and animal prints on accent chairs”. Purple and grey are the hottest colours, she says.
This is also the case at M&S, which is breaking out from under the dead hand of beige. “Greys and plums are big commercial colours for us, moving away from creams and mochas,” says Jo Unsworth, buyer for upholstery at M&S (marksandspencer.com). “Customers are braver when it comes to bright or patterned fabrics.”
She has found that smaller pieces, such as two-seater sofas, occasional chairs and love seats, are particularly popular. The Kyoto sofa from the online fashion and homewares store Plumo.com is a good example. It even comes in patchwork.
Another trend noticed by McCann is for modular corner sofas. “A few years ago I would have thought a corner sofa was too Eighties,” she says, “but now they are massive.” Loft Living (loft-living.co.uk), stocked in Selfridges, now sells more corner sofas than straight ones.
McCann recommends a long, low shape. “This is definitely where it’s at,” she says. “There is a perception that low sofas don’t give back support but if it is well designed a low sofa can be very supportive.” After all, she adds, “you don’t really sit on a sofa — you lie down, or at least I do”.
Let’s not forget the sofa’s primary function: horizontal lounging.