The skirted table: making a comeback?

Or did it never really leave?

I was surprised to read a short article in praise of the table skirt in today’s Wall Street Journal. Former Domino dynamo Sara Ruffin Costello confesses that she has dragged one from apartment to apartment, changing covers as she goes.

Ms. Costello declares that, “The strong dose of fabric balances rooms that have a lot of leggy furniture and goes with any kind of interior design scheme…”

She’s right, of course.

I have to confess that  I’ve always pooh-poohed the skirted table. When someone says, “table skirt,” I think round, ruffly, conservative, flowered, and, well, kind of ’80s.

Yes. Kind of like that.

It’s hard to explain, but a skirted table felt like a cop-out. Don’t know what to do in the corner? Let’s put a skirted table there w/ a lamp on it and all those extra family pictures! And tchochkes! And heck, a few small books lying on their sides!

But a year or so ago I remember taking a long hard look at a picture of rectangular sideboard cloaked in white cotton duck in a quirky, white room. (Was it in Apartment Therapy? Metropolitan Home? I can’t find it now.) It looked so modern. And fresh.

Ms. Ruffin is absolutely right about the softening, grounding effect amidst a skirt in a sea of furniture legs. When a room craves fabric – even a contemporary room – my first instinct is tall, simple, ring-top drapes…

But maybe I should consider a skirted table instead.

I’ll keep it tailored and straight, which probably means that the round skirted table will continue to elude me, unless my fabricator knows Tom Scheerer’s.

Am I the only one who has shunned – unfairly – the skirted table? Do weigh in. I’m curious.

Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She has been quoted in publications from The Washington Post to Real Simple and is considered an expert on color, residential space planning, and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.