FOR years, Paola Dindo put her signature on walls. Now, she's off the wall. In a new line of furniture and decorative accessories, the Swiss-born artist turns to a favourite era, the 50s, for inspiration.
''It was a period of lightness. After the war, people were relieved. They wanted to have fun. You can see it the vivid colours, the themes of popular music, the styling of automobiles and clothing.
But the woman herself is not easily pigeon-holed to any decade. Olive-skinned, she has a trace of earthiness associated with European femme fatales a la Callas. If Dindo were a colour, it wouldn't be pastel.
On a recent morning she descended a staircase for her interview. She lives over her retail shop-studio on Staunton Street in Central. The dark leggings elongate the already long legs. The retro look of her sofas and chairs has found its way into her wardrobe. The chiffon scarf graces the leopard print pullover like a priest's chasuble.
The 50s as translated into furniture design is scroll arms and skinny wooden legs, chairs that envelop and neck-rolls in silk, curved backs and Easter pastels, the kind of shapes that caress the eye.
In an array of silk cushions, the palette she chose is what you'd imagine in a love child produced by torrid affair between Mexico and India.
