Smiles, not significant style messages, are the point of the recently opened Trend House at Marshall Field`s State Street store.
”It`s an exercise in whimsy and smile,” says David Snyder, Field`s vice president/fashion merchandise director. Snyder created rooms with fake alligators, exuberantly colorful floral fabric and green bottled Gator Lager beer adjacent to a heavy silver candelabrum on a side table.
Opened in conjunction with the store`s ”Club Florida” promotion, the house aims less to sell its contents than to sell the idea ”of a little more relaxation and casual attitude . . . a departure from the heavy, dark, titled look which we have all, including myself, been doing for so long,” Snyder says.
The fantasy and fun of it all was not lost on visitor Rod Kreitzer, president of Baker Furniture. He approvingly observed: ”You won`t find another department store in America that does something like this.”
Some Trend House visitors clearly were baffled while touring rooms on the first day it was open to the public.
”Would you live with this?” demanded one shopper to a bystander scribbling notes.
Snyder and staff have not neglected such serious shoppers. In the new Resource Concept model rooms adjacent to the lighthearted Trend House, there is a more sober, though equally striking, eclectic mix of wood, metal and upholstered furniture. Big bowls of oranges, a few wood pieces and natural-tone pots accent the dramatic black and white rooms.