STYLE SPOTTER
Stacy Naquin mediates products, trends at furnishing trade show
Stacy Naquin, owner of Stacy Naquin Interiors, frequently attends the High Point Market to select furniture and other design items for her clients. But this October, the Baton Rouge businesswoman had a bigger challenge. She was one of eight people selected as style spotters at the market.
According to the High Point Market website, style spotters are “home fashion trendsetters that showcase their favorite products and top trends at the market. The style spotters post and curate their favorite looks on Pinterest, a website that lets users organize and share photos on virtual pinboards.”
“Basically we got to select up to 20 manufacturers’ products, and then we put this little tag on the item and uploaded a picture and description of the item to Pinterest,” Naquin said. As Pinterest visitors view the items, they “repin” their favorites so more and more people can see what the spotters selected.
Naquin, who graduated in design from LSU in 2002, said that all eight spotters selected for the October 2012 market are involved with social media. She writes a design blog, Stacy Naquin Interiors The Blog, at http://stacynaquininteriors.com/blog. Jason Oliver Nixon, global lifestyles editor of Delta Sky magazine, and Lori Dennis, a star of HGTV’s ‘The Real Designing Women,” also served as spotters for the October market.
The High Point Market, originally the Southern Furniture Market, is advertised as the largest furnishing industry trade show in the world. It brings nearly 200,000 people to High Point, N.C., each year.
As Naquin moved around the more than 10 million square feet of space occupied by more than 2,000 exhibitors, she kept her eyes on the trendy colors in fabrics, paints and accessories. “Greens are going more to yellow, more like the limes and citrons,” she said. “We’re definitely not seeing olive and moss.”
She also saw lots of greens paired with gray. “Gray is the new brown. Gray is the new black,” she said. Blues, she said, are trending more to blueish green in shades like teal and turquoise. “I saw lots of color, saturated color. Color gets me real excited,” she said.
Graphic and geometric patterns were prevalent in fabrics and wall coverings along with shagreen, rough, untanned skin usually of sharks or stingrays. “Shagreen has a bumpy texture,” she said. “They use it on everything from tabletops to desks, even on lamp bases.”
Naquin, who works from her home and an office on Siegen Lane, says that the Internet is a wonderful tool for designers. “In the old days, I would have my clients tear pages out of magazines to collect ideas. Now I send them to Pinterest,” she said. “They are not just looking at five shelter magazines. Now they are looking at favorites from people all around the world and pulling from that inspiration.”
Pictured are some of the items Naquin spotted at the High Point Market.