Why nostalgia is so important to the way we decorate

Take cottagecore, typically expressed through such flourishes as bobbin-legged furniture, Falconware, sink skirts, short curtains, frills, Staffordshire pottery, the previously mentioned gingham, and florals, whose use “creates a feeling of comfort due to the familiarity of the pattern for us all,” as Nicole Salvesen and Mary Graham of Salvesen Graham explain. The most recent wave of cottage fetishisation crested during lockdown, when, crucially, we had time to bake our own bread. But it’s nothing new: Marie Antoinette’s Versailles cottages date from the 18th century, and in the late 19th century, the new middle-classes went crazy for chocolate box-worthy paintings of cottage interiors, depicting the ‘simple life’ they’d left behind. Of course, Marie Antoinette and the Victorians conveniently forgot the reality of what it would have been like to live in a cottage in those times – these were the dwellings of the poor, generally accompanied by freezing damp and a dearth of food. Nostalgia often presents as an idealisation, particularly when it comes to what we feel are lacking from our current lives, such as connection to nature, or leisure time. We romanticise collecting eggs and digging for potatoes in a pink and white rose-strewn pinafore, or approach a Cath Kidston polka-dotted ironing board as a pretend 1950s housewife, trying to forget the work emails pinging in on our phones.

It’s a similar story (and timeline) for Eastern European and Russian folk designs; Emma Burns, joint managing director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler mentions the allure of Nathalie Farman-Farma’s “ravishing” Décors Barbares fabrics. And it’s the same again for homesteading, which has its beginnings in America’s original pioneers, before it became a fantasy for every child who fell in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, published in 1930s and 1940s.

For childhood is another catalyst for nostalgia, and has an undeniable impact on taste. Sister Parish spoke of the “first memory of some house, some room, a vivid picture that will remain deep down in one forever.” It’s worth remembering that the word nostalgia derives from the ancient Greek nostos meaning ‘return home’, and algos, ‘pain’. It explains why sometimes we’ll find a lump in our throat when we unexpectedly come across the scent of floor polish mixed with narcissi, or a chest of drawers that looks identical to a set we once knew.

And so, in search of a ‘feeling’, nostalgia can inform the style of abode we live in (or aspire to live in) and it is no coincidence that fitted carpet, bed canopies, elaborate curtain treatments, decorative paint finishes and the matchy-matchy look are currently being installed in the homes of those who were raised in the 1980s. There are, of course, variations: artist Michael Craig-Martin’s modernist-furnished Barbican flat is a product of his New York childhood and the designs he saw then, and textile and homeware designer Eva Sonaike’s interior reflects the West African Yoruba culture and traditions that she grew up with.