Skirted Chairs Are Making a Comeback, But There's a Trick So They Don't Look Frumpy
In Defense of is a new House Beautiful column where interior designers defend sometimes unpopular design trends, styles, or items. Here, Chad James makes the case for skirting, well, basically everything.
"It just looks so....arachnid." This is how the Nashville designer Chad James refers to many of the dining rooms he's seen lately. And when you think about it, he's not wrong. "You look around a room, and there’s the table base, and the chairs, and the sideboard. It’s just legs, legs, legs, legs, legs," the designer says. Like the view from underneath a hardwood tarantula. So, James has taken up the cause for a design trend that's been often forgotten of late: the skirted chair (and table, bench, cabinet, and anything else you can imagine, but more on those later).
"Design is so cyclical, and I went through a period of time where I, like most people, hated skirts, and I didn’t put skirts on anything," he confesses. But his arachnoid aha-moment led to a change of heart. "To me, it started feeling very conflicted. I felt that there had to be a way to soften that effect," he says. "So I thought, okay, let’s go back to skirts on chairs and skirts on tables, and skirts, and skirts, and skirts." You get the idea.
Now, James is pretty much a skirt fiend, fitting them on any item of furniture he can. "It's not just on chairs and furniture," he says. "I love to take a little kitchenette or bathroom and under sinks, instead of a big bulky cabinet, I love the idea of running a very simple ripple skirt underneath. To me, it’s a way to add fabric in a room and help soften areas and spaces, so they don’t look like everything is up on stilts."
Mind you, though, these aren't your grandmother's furniture skirts: " I found that if you just do these dressmaker skirts or a box skirt [the most simple designs], they start to look so grandmotherly, or matronly," the designer says. So, he's come up with several ways to jazz them up. "I started doing is working with my friends at Samuel and Sons and Houlès and Loro Piana, who make trim," the designer explains.
"We started really dressing the skirt. We put tape trim or a bouillon or a contrasting cuff, or in the gussets of the skirt-which is the part where it kicks back-we would do a contrasting something in the gusset, whether it was a print or a little plaid or a dot. It really takes the piece to the next level, brings another step of detail."
For those hesitant to try the technique to its full potential, James urges introducing a few skirts into the mix to break up the "pick-up sticks" effect. Worried about potential wear on your new skirts? He has a few suggestions to avoid that, too. On a lighter fabric, he says, "a lot of times I’ll do a contrasting fabric across the bottom of the skirt, because it hides stains from shoes, kicks, or mopping." Another secret weapon? Performance fabric, which stands up to stains and is bleach cleanable. "We use performance all the time. I think that’s the way of the future." As is, if James has his way, a fully skirted house.
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