Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Are you seeing a lot of pineapples, or am I just crazy?

In fall/winter of 2012, I gave up on wallpaper in the kitchen...as I stared at the jelly and pasta sauce stains on the paint.  I thought I'd stencil an all-over pattern instead...and I'd been holding onto this stencil for a while:


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So I bought the stencil.  Then the stencil came and...it was clearly outside my abilities as a wall stencil virgin.  So I was thinking about easier patterns or cheaper stencils (apparently they tear easily, and the pagodas are $100 a pop) when I had an epiphany:  Pineapples.  I remembered seeing this wallpaper in Katie Brown's brooklyn townhouse YEARS ago.  I hated it at the time, but really clung to the bat-shit craziness of enormous pineapples up your stairwell.

from Traditional Home
I immediately stopped whatever work I was doing, and went on a mad google binge for pineapple images and stencil making supplies, tutorials, etc.

my favorite pineapple--a brass embossing stencil

Then, in Summer of 2013 the internet started to whisper about a "pineapple trend".

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Magpie's post made me really want this wallpaper, but I didn't think too much of the occasional pineapple print--a few pineapples on my Pinterest feed made me feel validated.  Plus, I'm so slow and physically lazy when it comes to DIY, I'm no stranger to being scooped by the web.  Cue Spring/Summer of 2014 when I CAN"T ESCAPE PINEAPPLES ON MY PINTEREST FEED.  Seriously, some days I think 20% of the images are pineapple shit.


While my original choice of chinoiserie is hardly novel, its kind of so not-novel as to move into classic territory.  But pineapples...now I'm stuck trying to figure out if pineapples are passé.  I don't think you can really love pineapples--it was more about pineapples evoking a specific feeling...one that made sense when I was fixated on a coral-pink kitchen and feeling like I needed some Happy Chic in my house.  But that raises a deeper philosophical inquiry:  is someone who drops an idea when it gets popular/over-exposed better, worse, or the same as the person who jumps on a trend because it is popular?  Can we draw a legitimate distinction between popular/trendy and overexposed? I'm pretty sure this question has been answered by many in the context of high school, coolness, and music choices.  

Rifle Paper's new wallpaper:  Pineapple

Here is the spookier question:  is there really a pineapple mini-trend?  Are they crowding your aisles at Target, or all over Pottery Barn catalogues and HGTV magazine?  Or was it a ghost trend created by Pinterest...and really, only particular Pinterest feeds (like maybe you all think I'm crazy to think there is a pineapple trend because there are none when you log into Pinterest).  It's like the google ads in your sidebar showing you Birkenstocks for two weeks after you looked at a pair on Zappos.

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At the end of the day, you have to buy/do what you love.  And just know that sometimes it will end up a case of marketing beer goggles, and sometimes things you love won't play nicely together and you have to pick sides.  And sometimes you will just fall out of love.   


1 comment:

  1. I say classic. Didn't they symbolize prosperity and or good luck for sailors? I must admit to loving the wallpaper at first sight. It was a crazy meets classic. Scale is so important. Think how I messed up on my couch because I didn't wait for the huge birds.....life is full of regrets....

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