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Used as a noun and as an adjective, the oxymoronic phrase shabby chic refers to someone or something that is fashionably or artfully dishevelled or dilapidated.
This phrase now refers especially to a style of interior decoration that uses a varied mixture of furniture and furnishings that are attractively old, worn or faded, or have been given a distressed appearance.
The phrase shabby chic occurs, for example, in Blue sky thinking, about the best “under-the-radar beaches in southern Europe”, published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Saturday 20th January 2024 [page 72, column 1]:
France
Plage des Sabias, Île d’Yeu
While crowds descend on the Île de Ré, those in the know head for one of France’s lesser-known western islands, the Île d’Yeu. Only six miles long and 2½ wide, it is reached by passenger ferry from Saint-Gilles Croix de Vie and Fromentine on the Vendée coast. Its beaches are quiet coves of golden sand, and none is more idyllic than Plage des Sabias, which is backed by shabby-chic whitewashed fishers’ cabins, with blue shutters and doors.
The earliest occurrences of shabby chic that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
—Note: In early use, the phrase seems to often refer to someone or something whose dishevelment or dilapidation is unintentionally attractive or fashionable:
1-: From The Romance at Madame’s, published in Leslie’s Weekly (New York City, New York, USA) of Saturday 9th February 1901 [page 134, column 1]—Madame’s is a cheap restaurant:
To be sure, she wasn’t stylish—one would hardly look for that at Madame’s—nor was there anything about her costume that suggested even the shabby chic. She was dressed in black, even to her hat, that was devoid of anything but the poorest velvet trimming.
2-: From Mention My Name in Mombasa: The Unscheduled Adventures of an American Family Abroad (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1958), by the U.S. author William P. McGivern (1918-1982) and the Irish-born U.S. author Maureen Daly McGivern (1921-2006) [chapter 2, page 33]:
Their clothes were shabby-chic, reflecting a compulsive generosity and an equally compulsive neglect; tweed jackets from Gieves and torn, rope-soled alpargatas; yacht caps, Eton collars and monogramed blazers in combination with unwashed faces and broken nails.
3-: From Polish Subtitles: Impressions from a Journey (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1962), by the Canadian poet and translator Daryl Hine (1936-2012) [page 116]:
—this book is from the diary kept by the author when he went to Warsaw in 1960 to work on English subtitles for a Polish film:
Art galleries were indistinguishable from small, shabby-chic galleries anywhere.
4-: From With a Cast of Thousands: A Hollywood Childhood (New York: Stein & Day, 1963), by the U.S. author Jill Schary Zimmer (1936-2024) [page 85]:
If there were a few cracked Mexican pots around and blankets over worn furniture, so much the better. The height of style in Hollywood Hills was shabby chic.
5-: From the caption to the following photograph, published in the Evening Standard (London, England) of Tuesday 26th January 1965 [page 6, columns 3 & 4]:
The policeman looks incongruous outside the faded little two-floor black and white painted house. Perhaps he is aware of this, for he moves a few yards away occasionally and stands in front of the antique shop next door. He is guarding Mr. Michael Stewart, the new Foreign Secretary, who lives at the tradesmen’s end of shabby-chic Walton Street, behind Brompton Road. He has lived there for about 15 years.
6-: From Toys of a Lifetime (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1966), by the U.S. editor and publisher Arnold Gingrich (1903-1976) [page 136]:
All the French trains, and not just the great international expresses, seemed still to give off an air of a certain shabby chic, of a rumpled and rather dégagé elegance, like a famous beauty caught at a moment of disadvantage, despite the deplorable state of their upholstery and the wretched condition of their tracks, even in those first months after the war’s end.
7-: From Demand for Denim Outstrips Supply, by Margaria Fichtner, Herald fashion writer, published in The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida, USA) of Saturday 18th August 1973 [page 28-A, column 1]:
It was just four years ago that blue jeans began their long trip uptown from the commune, the ranch and the factory to invade the fashionable circles inhabited by such trend-setters as Jacqueline Onassis and Mrs. Charles Revson.
Blue jeans, which in their former life were sturdy, homely miners’ pants, suddenly became shabby chic. Denim napkins, place mats, chefs aprons, caps, tuxedos and fake-denim bikini underwear and automobile interiors began to show up everywhere.
8-: From Cotton Blooms as Spring Favorite: Dresses Are Lawns Of Tiny Flowers, published in The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) of Wednesday 19th March 1975 [page 9-B, column 2]:
Witness the reblossoming of cotton as fashion’s favorite.
For spring and into summer big dresses are poetic lawns, sprinkled with millions of tiny print flowers for the most romantic look possible.
New soft caftans and gowns are being shaped in sheer cotton gauze. Natural muslin is starring in active sportswear as a perfect foil for shell and wood and straw accessories.
[…]
Many of the new cottons need no ironing; others are designed to look unpressed. Touch-up ironing would destroy their deliberately shabby chic.
9-: From Fantasies bloom in Monte Carlo, an account of the formal opening of the luxury hotel Loews Monte Carlo, by Charles Lazarus, Star staff reporter, published in The Montreal Star (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) of Monday 1st December 1975 [page D-4, column 7]:
What was also interesting to view, among these folk of affluence and influence, was what a friend of mine calls the “shabby chic” syndrome:
● Princess Grace rolling up to the ribbon-cutting in a 10-year-old Cadillac showing all its 9,000-plus miles.
● Tall, exquisitely-mannered noblemen with heavily-accented and languorously-cadenced English, wearing better-days tuxedoes with peaked lapels, narrow trousers, and nary a colored or ruffled shirt in sight.
● The geriatric set of European society trying for fading visibility, the ladies in subdued formal attire right out of la belle époque, and sporting heirloom jewelry.
10-: From an account of the Republican National Convention held in Kansas City, Missouri, by Remer Tyson and Saul Friedman, published in The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) off Sunday 22nd August 1976 [page 2-D, column 6]:
There are loads of good restaurants in Kansas City, if you like steak. If you get tired of steak, you can leave town, or you can go to Arthur Bryant’s for barbeque.
One day in a fit of hyperbole, a Calvin Trillin, a Kansas City native who now writes for New York magazine, described Bryant’s as “the best restaurant in the United States.” This gave it a certain cache among the delegates and press, who flocked there to enjoy its scrumptious ribs and aura of shabby chic.
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