I like big bows and I cannot lie
It's giving Samantha Parkington decor.
(Beata Heuman’s Xmas tree.)
I am hardly the first person to point out that, like anti-abortion billboards in red states, bows are everywhere. It’s been especially pronounced this holiday season, as bow-laden Christmas trees are dominating the social feeds. But it’s also been a big year for bows in decor.
First, a bit of a history lesson. We associate bows with femininity, yet they were originally a male fashion trend of Louis XIV’s reign. There was a hairstyle known as a “lovelock,” which today might translate to a braided rattail finished with a ribbon. Bows on men were also signs of wealth and status.
Fast-forward to newer centuries, and bows are (mostly) associated with women, and have continued to signal awesomeness (or power) throughout popular culture.
(Via Cooper Hewitt Museum)
In furniture and decor, bows or ribbon-like motifs were popular during Louis XIV’s tenure (no surprise), finding their way into Rococo styles, like the above Chippendale chairs.
To my knowledge, bows haven’t had any dominance in decor otherwise, save for the ‘80s to early ‘90s where they decorated the bedrooms of middle- to upper-class Americans.
Over the past few months, I’ve been noticing bows popping up in interior design — not merely as embellishment, but as main character energy.
(From left to right: Candle holder, rug, candelabra, glass, drawer pulls, hook, wallpaper border, wallpaper, knife)
On the surface level, I feel it’s the confluence of two design trends:
One which I call Crayola British: It’s this embracing of traditional lines and motifs that feel very English countryside, and rewiring them them in boisterous and cheeky colors.
Quaint irony. I’m mostly talking about the resurgence of food-as-decor, where the literal is elevated to mid-design.
But there’s also something larger going on here, which, as The Cut astutely notes, is a return to the embracing of girlhood. Two major influences come to mind. First, the American Girl doll renaissance happening on millennial social media, where we’re playfully bonding over the shared childhood experience of owning (or not owning, hi, me, still in therapy because of it) a Samantha/Kirsten/Molly/etc. and how those personas continue to reflect on our adult identities (for better or for worse). Second is the Barbie movie, which gave us a hilariously existential reflection on the femininity that was forced on young girls, allowing us to silently acknowledge what we’re all thinking: Barbie was sooooo bad for us and yet…we still secretly love her.
This has all allowed us to come to a place where we can re-embrace femininity, because pop culture has rendered it camp, subversive. And therefore, okay to love again — albeit with limits.
When I see bows finding their ways onto rugs and candle holders and wallpaper, I can’t help but think about gender in spaces and architecture and how, for ages, the home was gendered and tainted with constraints of “domesticity.” These trending bow-y objects feel almost like a fuck you to all of that. I’m sure there’s a lot more to say about gender and spaces blah blah blah, but I won’t, because my daughter is begging me to watch a Christmas movie with talking dogs and and a magical icicle/crystal thing that Santa clearly got at House of Intuition on his last visit to L.A.
Happy Holidays to you all!
(Thanks to Downtimefor reminding me about writing this post.)