Bold and Brave Bold and brave is a head-turning look: it is pattern that is out to make a statement. Dynamic, hard-hitting and generally quite masculine, some might even call it loud. Abstracts, geometrics and florals are heavily stylized, usually over-scaled and drawn with bold lines or in flat blocks of unnatural colour. Delicacy is not the issue here; it is impact that matters. The roots of this look are in Sixties style Ð the era of youth and rebellion, when fashionable culture revelled in the ephemeral, the innovative and the zany. Motifs came from film, music, television, comics, adverts and everyday items such as seaside postcards or domestic appliances, using vibrant, self-assured colours such as orange, yellow, purple, green, crimson and silver. Abstract geometric shapes and polka dots were also popular, as were the swirling geometric shapes of Op Art, often in monochromes, especially black and white. Later in the same decade, and into the Seventies, patterns were strongly influenced by psychedelia, which arose largely from the Californian hippy movement. Influenced by Art Nouveau, free love, Eastern religions and drug culture, it featured amoeba-like patterns and clashing, acid colours. Contemporary bold pattern takes elements of the above and updates them for the 21st century. Well-defined outlines and dense patterning in abstract forms are key. Rather than a plain, pale background that provides a relief for the lines and shapes of the pattern itself, in this case there is no distinction and the entire field comprises an all-over pattern. Scale and colour are important features of bold pattern, and most bold patterns are reasonably large in scale or strong in colour; generally both. There are occasions, however, when a smaller scale pattern can be used in vivid colours, or when pale or soft colours are used for a large-scale pattern, and the overall effect, though not absolutely characteristic of its genre, can still be called a bold pattern. For those who are wary of surrounding themselves with look-at-me pattern, yet still enjoy its character, this is a good route to take. When combining two or more bold patterns, the secret is to co-ordinate colours carefully, to ensure that their scales vary slightly but not too much, and to look for similarities in the patterns themselves, in terms of outline, form, density and overall style. If they are too disparate the scheme will fall apart. As with many decorating endeavours, the golden rule is that, if in doubt, you should take it out Ð Mies van der Rohe's maxim that less is more holds very true when applied (as he surely did not mean it to be) to the use of pattern.
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