When you take an academic approach to interior design, you start to see patterns in the fine details of interiors. There’s a reason certain things just work when it comes to design principles like proportion, scale, and balance. And when you start to examine interior design history, you find that patterns repeat themselves. There is a lot of value to understanding the past, whether you are looking for patterns in politics or design. 

While many interior design styles have emerged over the decades, the pendulum can swing in taste from simple to ornate and from bright to muted in terms of color. The intricate trim work of the Victorian style gave way to the streamlined profiles of the modernist movement, followed by the over-the-top Dynasty-level grandeur of 1980s design. 

 

Once again, maximalism is on the rise. Recently, one highly decorative, even frilly, design element the design world is celebrating again is passementerie. 

 

In this Interior Design Glossary entry, I want to share my interest in and love of passementerie and my excitement that the design world is interested in trimming all over again!

What is Passementerie? My Journey Into the Art of Trimming 

I first discovered passementerie early in my interior design career. In the late 1990s, I was living in NYC. I had just left my position at Christie’s auction house, my first job out of college, to start working as an office administrator at a high-end traditional interior design firm. I found the job among the wanted ads in the New York Times, which feels like such an old-fashioned way to get work in this day and age. 

 

The firm was small, comprised of a husband and wife architect and designer duo, one additional architect, and myself as the new (and only) administrator. This job was my first glimpse into the design world, and I instantly fell in love with all of it — especially running errands to the design showrooms. 

 

This is where I would first be acquainted with the art of passementerie. 

Stumbling Into Scalamandre

One of my first tasks in my new role was to return a stack of borrowed fabric samples to the Decoration & Design Building on the Upper East Side. Although it was just a few blocks away from our office, I couldn’t make it there without getting distracted by Scalamandre’s shop window on the way. 

Scalamandre has been a staple of luxury design in NYC since 1929, producing fabrics, wallcoverings, and, yes, passementerie. Its founder, Franco Scalemandre, immigrated to NYC in 1923 from Italy to escape the fascist rule of Mussolini. He worked as a draftsman and became a teacher at The Sealy School of Interior Design. After importing fabrics from Europe, he realized there was an opportunity to produce silk domestically and founded the weaving business. He went on to create fabrics and wallcoverings for Hearst Castle, cementing a reputation for luxury textiles. 

 

The shop window looked like an old-fashioned candy store, with colorful ribbons twisting through a maze of tassels and bows and lace. It was stunning, mesmerizing. And I had to know more. 

Discovering the Art of Passementerie

I was not familiar with the word passementerie at the time. It sounded like something from a French pastry shop, which is fairly accurate to the visual presence of the elaborate trimmings that make up the art. So, I began to research more to understand what exactly passementerie is, its history, and how to apply it in interiors. 

 

Passementerie, by definition, is the art of making elaborate trimmings or edgings of applied braid, gold or silver cord, embroidery, colored silk, or beads for textiles and furnishings. It includes the decorative bits like lace trim, tassels, rosettes, buttons, embroidery, and fringe that you’d see on drapes, accent pillows, or bedding. 

The term comes from the French word passement, meaning lace. The art has existed for centuries, dating back to ancient Egypt and Greece. In the late 16th century, it was professionalized with the Guild of Passementiers, which required a seven-year apprenticeship to master the craft. 

 

Passementerie has experienced waves of popularity, reaching heights in the Renaissance and the 18th and 19th centuries. It also had a resurgence in the 1980s thanks to designers like Mario Buatta, who preferred more decorative textiles, especially chintz. 

I Thought Passementerie Was Beautiful, But It Was So Not My Style 

While the passementerie in the window of Scalemandre was enough to distract me from my route to the D&D Building, it didn’t appeal to my personal design style at the time. I was much more interested in the streamlined designs of the Halston style and the “clean” work of Angelo Donghia.  

So, after a burst of research, I’d return my trimming and tassel samples and forget them for a while. 

But Everything Makes a Comeback…Including Passementerie 

I warned you early on that everything in design makes its return. While I’ve always loved a contrasting edge piping on a curtain panel and interesting textiles, true European trim work has only recently entered the Amity Worrel & Co. aesthetic. In the last five years or so, I’ve started using more and more passementerie in my interiors. Tassel and fringe samples once again pile on my office desk (some long overdue to be returned), and I couldn’t be happier. 

Design is All in the (Trim) Details

Passementerie is just one of the thousands of small details that go into a well-executed and researched interior design plan. And while the scale of minimalist to maximalist interiors constantly swings back and forth, the small details will always matter. Like me, you may one day find yourself once again captivated by the art of trimming. 

 

So, never say never, especially to trim.