A central theme in decor, design and lifestyle is “Desirable Development,” highlighting consumer interest in ethical products and solutions. What are the key features of this core trend?

What Is Desirable Development?

This theme reflects a basic premise: Consumers want solutions that are simple, positive, fluid and do them good. Until now, sustainable development was often a moralizing injunction. Desirable development gives pleasure pride of place, while respecting nature in a beneficial approach. It’s an idea that is at once positive and creative.

Today, consumers are conscious of global warming, of the need to limit their consumption and its waste and carbon footprint…. From now on, the idea is to place desire once again at the heart of these environmental stakes, by avoiding catastrophizing discourse or assigning blame.

Desirable development responds to a subtle equilibrium that translates to a lifestyle in harmony with nature, by leaning on technologies while preserving traditional know-how. From now on we will talk about alternative consumption rather than de-consumption.

How Does “Sustainable” Transition into “Desirable”?

The need for desirability and the quest for meaning is already part of the trend. The pandemic overturned what was fundamental to us and placed many of our patterns in question, accelerating the need for humanity, simplicity and solidarity.

2021 is marked by resilience, just as 2022 will be synonymous with rebirth, re-creation and reinvention marked by positive energy — redefining our manner of living, consuming and inhabiting. It’s time for optimism!

What Are The Key Ideas?

Redefining Geography

We are noticing a need for proximity, the new development of connections over shorter distances, in reaction to globalization and internationalization. This implies a new relationship to space, a relocalization, a redefinition of geography and a new closeness.

While more and more city dwellers are leaving the large urban areas, we are seeing at the same time an urgent need to re-tame the city, to appropriate the urban, by placing value on proximity and restoring the life of the neighborhood. Local manufacturing, deliveries by bicycle, urban farms or terraces with edible plants illustrate this trend.

Retraining The Senses

The senses, sensation and sensitivity are at the heart of the desirable. The pandemic made us lose our benchmarks and restricted our senses: our relationship to taste, smell but also to vision and touch.

During the lockdown, we were deprived of the people close to us, of everything that surrounds us. The idea emerging from this crisis is sensitivity, even hyper-sensitivity. We must also retrain these senses, which have been undermined by the digital, by placing the human once again at the heart of our lives.

Valuing Learning

At the same time, we need to place learning and knowledge back at the heart of production and manufacturing processes. Now, consumers inform themselves about the materials used and their orgins, the different stages of production, the packaging or the transformation of a product.

Reinventing The Artisan

Removing the inhibitions around consumption and injecting fantasy, audacity and fun into the artist, recycling and upcycling are part of the central tendencies of desirable development. The result: pieces that are unique, spontaneous and creative in new ways, committed and sensorially rich.

The success of recycling studios, creative ateliers, needlework like crochet or macramé, along with objects with pictorial dimensions and totemic furniture pieces, demonstrate the resurgence of artistic reference points in the world of decoration.