Some may think them beastly, others beautiful, but whatever side you fall on in the great Austrian blinds debate, there’s no denying that we’re seeing them more and more of late. For the uninitiated, Austrian blinds are a form of ruched blinds with two or more lines of vertical gathering that create a great waft of fabric that swathes a window. They are a simplified version of French and German festoon blinds (ruched horizontally and vertically), which all became popular in their various countries around the same time in the 18th century. Beloved in the 1980s for their voluminous, dramatic look, they fell out of favour after that. Until now.
For some designers, they’ve never gone out of style. Martin Brudnizki, who has them adorning the kitchen and bathroom of his country house apartment, says “done the right way, they remind me of a Fragonard painting, like beautiful clouds – almost frothy, fluffy and so soft and light. The trick is they mustn’t be too structured, otherwise you’re in danger of them looking old fashioned and fusty.” This is key to their secret; you can’t use them on windows where you need to open and close the blinds a lot or you lose the beautiful cloud-like appeal. “They are wonderful to look at when they are dressed,” explains Octavia Dickinson, who fell for them via “books on Colefax & Fowler and some wonderful curtain making books that I have from the 80s and 90s”, and warns that “if you put them down and up, they mess up and you need to arrange them correctly.” Her advice? Use them in hallways or bathrooms where you’d have a voile privacy curtain too.
They are all style over substance in that regard, but the style is so effective that they’re worth the sacrifice. “I love them because they soften any space,” explains Stephanie Barba Mendoza, who used them to great effect in a Miami project with a entire wall of huge floor to ceiling windows. “A Roman blind can look just like a panel of fabric, whereas an Austrian blind will add texture with its pleats and ruffles, and make any fabric look more interesting because of the shading that its shape creates. They also add a bit of drama and they look wonderfully theatrical!” she concludes.
For Christabel MacGreevy, who recently added Austrian blinds to a London project with a distinctly 1980s character, “part of the appeal is in their flamboyance and the fact that have a historical look to them, harking back to another era.” Veere Grenney, a legendary interior designer with a huge respect for historical decorating, is also a fan, and has made festoon blinds out of Fox Linton satin and taffeta from Tissus d’Helene in the sitting room of his 18th-century folly in Suffolk, where naturally they work wonderfully. “In the 18th century, curtains of this style were always called ‘pull ups’,” he advises, adding that he chose satin for its sheen but also as having inverted pleats on satin stops them from becoming “too blowsy” and overtaking the room. “I wanted to use them in this room for two reasons,” he adds, “one, they are appropriate for a room of this height and grandeur, but moreover, in using them I could disguise the fact that the windows in the room were in fact different heights. By keeping the top of the blinds the same height no one would ever know the window on the East side is lower.”
