Copyright New York Post
Out with the maxim “less is more.” “More is more is more” is what’s in fashion now. You read that right. Visual va-va-voom is having more than a moment — it’s a new way of life. Just take a look at the recently unveiled maximalist renovation of actor Zooey Deschanel and Jonathan Scott‘s Manhattan pad by renowned interior designer Young Huh. It went from “raw and stripped down,” according to Deschanel, to bold, brassy and “brilliant,” not to mention floral and frankly flamboyant. Or check out ex-couple Lilly Allen and David Harbour’s “weird and wonderful” (if you ask Allen) brownstone in Carroll Gardens, which has hit the market for just under $8 million. Witness the tiger-print carpet and a matching couch in the media room; walls covered in pricey, eye-popping Zuber & Cie wallpaper; boldly patterned, contrasting carpeting from Pierre Frey (including in the bathroom); and what could politely be summed up as a proliferation of pink in the main bedroom. But why be, you know, polite? “It’s just extra as f–k, and very unapologetic, and whoever buys this house, I just hope they don’t tear it out,” New York design guru Nancy Cavaliere raved to The Post. The pink-haired, stuff-loving 39-year-old is a maven of nouveau-chic maximalism, and her own mantra is simple, if startling: Always make sure every room has at least three patterns, four period styles — think 1970s, mid-Century or Rococo — plus five colors or textures. Her so-called “3 4 5 method” aligns well with Allen and Harbour’s viper’s lovenest — and, apparently, many others’ palettes, too. Just think of it as more is more is more. “Maximalism is basically about being yourself,” she said of the brassy boom. “We’ve been overexposed to this clean girl, conservative aesthetic, all this minimalist beige. At this point in time, people want their own stories.” They also crave Cavaliere-approved interiors like that brownstone. Move aside, Marie Kondo, and forget those stark black-and-white spaces that were once the Holy Grail of home style. New York’s in a moment right now where it’s cool to be over-the-top. Take Printemps, the ultraluxe department store whose encrusted, multicolored interiors are Aladdin’s cave on acid. Or look to the recent Kips Bay Decorator Show House — the annual orgy of design excess, this year held in a 9,000-square-foot townhouse in Greenwich Village — which featured a mashup of rosettes, friezes and more in an “Alice Through the Looking Glass” dining room from Corey Damen Jenkins, plus a busy Victoriana-inspired drawing room by Ben Pentreath. Earlier this year, “Moulin Rouge” director Baz Luhrmann, the patron saint of “too much is never enough,” opened the visually helter-skelter East Village bar Monsieur, complete with custom Mokum textiles. Alan Faena’s newest namesake hotel in Chelsea is as unapologetically lavish as any of his sites, while Casa Cruz founder Juan Santa Cruz’s latest disco-inflected, scarlet-bathed boîte, Obvio, even has bright red bathrooms. It’s all a swing back to swaggering interiors that the chartreuse- and pink-loving Cavaliere relishes. “Minimalism? It doesn’t invite me to sit down and have a cup of coffee,” she explained of her penchant for clutter. “Maximalism does, and I feel right at home.” Experts, though, prefer a different term for decorating akin to the late Iris Apfel: “layered.” “Maximalism sounds like you’ve overdressed something, or that you’ve done too much,” Deschanel and Scott’s designer Huh told The Post. “I’d say it’s very colorful and very layered,” the New York-based creator said. Martin Brudnizki agrees. He’s another glam-skewing interior decorator who just published the aptly named “My Life in Colors” and likes his projects to fire all five senses at once; there’s always a scented candle burning in a maximalist home. But he told The Post he “seldom” uses the “m” word: “I prefer hyper-layered.” What’s triggered this return to rococo-level exuberance in New Yorkers right now? Melissa Marra-Alvarez, a curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology who worked on its 2019 “Minimalism/Maximalism” show, has charted when and how our love of “more is more” elbows aside an urge to purge; just look at the 1970s, for example, with its psychedelic patterns and economic crises. “Maximalism today, this idea of maximalist romanticism, it’s maybe a form of fantasy and escape,” she told The Post. It can be the ideal antidote to a fractious, uncertain outside world, experts say — now more than ever, we want to feel happiness. Designer Huh’s clients repeatedly brief her to bring out that feeling via her decorating. “They want to feel joyful and happy in their homes,” she told The Post, pointing to a 30-something exec and his family who had a private elevator in their house: she covered it in deep purple wood paneling. “He loves Prince and he loves purple, and thought it was a great place to take a big leap.” Italy-born Cavaliere — who moved to New York at age 7 and “wanted to be a nun, surrounded by all that architecture and frescoes” — said the eclectic, melting pot-style is especially a natural for New York. “Things from every culture are central to this style, mixing them,” she said, “and that’s something I love about New York: its diversity. I’d never buy a house in the suburbs.” Small city apartments also make ideal blank canvases. Normal New Yorkers might not be able to afford more than an alcove studio, but almost anyone can stretch to covering every surface there is with charming, secondhand doodads. “There’s so many creative, passionate weirdos in New York, and maximalism is really inclusive,” author and design expert Sophie Donelson explained to The Post. “If you only have a certain amount of space to live in, you might as well eke out the most interest in that space.” Minimalism, on the other hand, takes money, whether to buy that perfect loft with vintage casement windows, or to splurge on more than veneered furniture so it oozes understated opulence — or both. Compare how thrift-based decorating, a mainstay of most middle-class maximalists, is not only more affordable but more sustainable, too. “Most New Yorkers don’t have an apartment with amazing bones to strip down and paint the right color,” Donelson says, “Maximalism embraces the imperfect.” There’s a generational shift at play, too. Generation X may boast of Kondo converts, but millennial and younger New Yorkers relish interiors primed for the Instagram feed that filled their imaginations as teens. “They’re interested in dressmaker details, wallpaper, patterns plus fringes, tassels and trims,” she explained. (Steal the look: Samuel & Sons or Houlès are Huh’s faves.) Though maximalists relish bucking rigid rules of how to design, there is one key thing to remember, per experts. “It’s not clutter or hoarding — you can do a layered apartment and not feel stressed about it,” Donelson maintains, suggesting a trick that decorators deploy to keep a jampacked space still visually streamlined: group objects or paintings by theme, and they’ll read as a single moment. Brudnizki is even more matter-of-fact, insisting that every object crammed into a space should still have a tale to tell, a reason it’s there. “If you say your house is maximalist because it’s messy, that’s absolutely wrong,” he said with a laugh. “It has to be considered. You can’t just chuck everything in and call it maximalist because you’re lazy.”
