In Design, Now Is the Time for All Materials to be Treated Equally

It’s never been more clear that authenticity in decorating is a fallacy, writes the interior designer Nicky Haslam.

There’s a story that Marella Agnelli, on first seeing a friend’s silken-velvet-walled, head-to-toe French 18th-century-style Fifth Avenue apartment, gasped, as if for air . . . ‘‘But don’t you just long for a bit of wicker?’’ These words come back to me every time I see today’s version of an ‘‘authentically’’ conceived room. You know: the exposed brick, the poured concrete, the reclaimed wood, the glare of unrelieved glass. In such surroundings, Signora Agnelli (who, in fact, created a ‘‘minimalist’’ décor years before it was the fashion) would have as readily longed for something humdrum or seemingly inappropriate like wicker, something witty or even fake, to take the curse off such sanctimonious sterility.

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