Love it or Leave it: All Over Print

{Tory Burch’s Quadrille-Covered Breakfast Room}

The photo of Tory Burch’s breakfast room in my Quadrille post from yesterday got me thinking. I love bold, graphic patterns, but tend to use them as accents against a more subdued background. As much as I am inclined to say that Tory’s breakfast room looks fabulous, I think there might be days in which I would wake up and find that having the same fabric on my walls, drapes and furniture was a bit nauseating. Designers had a tendency to use the same fabric all over back in the 1950s and 1960s and to make matters worse, a lot of times, the fabrics were chintz, which make my skin crawl.

Am I missing something? I find the look to be too much for my taste. It’s sort of like having a burger, fries and milkshake. You can have one, maybe two, but all three at once is just too much! And yet, plenty of talented designers and stylish people have no qualms with all-over prints. Is this a look that you like? Is there something that makes it fabulous that I just don’t understand?

{Mary McDonald}

{Bunny Williams}

{Sister Parish}