Fashion designers are creating products for furniture market

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
You're panting for an Armani. You have your eye on something from Dior menswear master Heidi Slimane. You're making room for a Gucci. Maybe you're a clothes horse. Or maybe not.
The designers on your wish list are not just about wearable fashion. Their stars are rising in the furniture market.
The idea, of course, sounds like a quick hit at the gaming tables. Chairs, china and pillows could mean fast cash.
But the larger mission is to expand the designer's aesthetic from body to bedroom, says the British magazine Wallpaper. They have a point of view, and who knows better than designers how modern tastes are shifting?
And companies with fashion designers on board can touch a consumer unfamiliar with the international furniture greats.
Slimane teamed with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons to produce a line of ebony furniture. Others from Gucci and Versace to Fendi and Calvin Klein are doing some kind of homeware line.
Kate Spade, the handbag and shoe queen, has been doing tableware for a time. Ralph Lauren got the idea years ago.
But not everyone is cheering designer decor. A piece of furniture requires research, innovation and certain materials, says one manufacturer. The products do not lend themselves to seasonal change, argues one analyst to Wallpaper.
And designers don't always get it right nor do they always have the drawing power. Former fashion designer Todd Oldham's line for La-Z-Boy is sliding in sales, the Wall Street Journal says.
The answer seems to call for collaboration between the two worlds. And in an era when the next new thing is the Holy Grail, that will probably come.