DESIGN Stripes in style for clothing, home

Although they are just lines, stripes go with any style of decor.
By MEG DUPONT
HARTFORD COURANT
The zebra knows you can't go wrong with stripes.
Somehow, they've seduced fickle fashion into a long-term relationship, remaining perennially chic. As style guru Colin Cowie put it, "Polka dots get their 15 minutes. Stripes are 24/7."
"It's a classic design style. They've been around for centuries," said Jackie Hirschhaut, vice president of the American Home Furnishings Alliance, a national trade group for furniture and accessory manufacturers based in Highpoint, N.C.
Designers just love working with them.
"It allows us to put our own spin on the most simple pattern known to man -- taking two lines and placing them side by side -- and playing with the thickness and the color, to come up with a bar code that's unique to our souls," Cowie said.
In his own home in Los Angeles, designer and party planner Cowie says he has used horizontal stripes on the living room walls and vertical stripes in his office.
Variety in stripes
If you're stuck on pillows and wallpaper as the vehicle, it's time to break out; stores are chock-full of options to sprinkle around the home.
How about striped lamps (Neiman Marcus), baby cribs (cradlencrib.com), coat hooks (Anthropologie) or brooms (Target)?
Like a cashmere sweater, stripes can be dressed up or down. You'll see them in your Cape Cod rental living room and "Masterpiece Theater" drawing rooms. And that helps explain their staying power.
"In every season, we have something that's striped," said Bette Kahn of Crate & amp; Barrel. "They're versatile, adaptive and equally at home in modern, traditional, country or classical styles."
Last season, Crate & amp; Barrel was showing blue- and white-striped slipcovers for that seaside-cottage look.
This season, the company will be introducing "a stripe that is the kind that you would associate with the English in India. Like a campaign stripe," Kahn said.
Their new stripe incorporates burgundy, khaki, greenish-blue, mustard and brown.
When it comes to upholstery, fabric choice is key in controlling formality, Hirschhaut says.
Canvas, cotton, denim are casual choices for stripes; silk and damask, obviously, are going to fancy-up your look.
Oh, and the zebras could be wrong: It is possible to mess up with stripes.
Cowie has some advice: "You have to be very careful with the coloration ... and tastefully edit the things you put around them. Work with a very limited and very tight color palette."