Berber decor for a chic and bohemian interior

But what is it with all these non-Muslim Westerners that they suddenly want to furnish their homes with Berber rugs? Why all these benches made of raw lemonwood or these wicker baskets from North Africa? Why has the Berber style become a staple of interior design? How did the "Chic and Bohemian" style become so closely associated with the craftsmanship of the High and Middle Atlas Mountains?

Instagram and the 2010s bring travel into our homes.

The explosion of social media, and of its king, Instagram, has undeniably revolutionized the way we think about interior design . For better or for worse, as the mayor mischievously remarked on my wedding day. It's a fact that our perspective on interior design ( @bohemianchicinterior ) has changed, and what we find creative and inspiring today wouldn't even have crossed our minds ten years ago. We spend hours on Instagram, gazing at ever more beautiful chic and bohemian decor, luxurious Moroccan riads in Marrakech, and photos of enchanting nights in the heart of the Sahara. Sometimes, sitting in the smallest room of our apartment, we daydream that we're the fleeting lover of a Lawrence of Arabia, who would open the folds of his Berber tent and his djellaba to us. The moon would shimmer on the calm waters of the wadi. In our dream, Lawrence of Arabia would have dismissed his other Moroccan or Tuareg wives and renounced polygamy for one night. No Kabyle woman to disturb this perfect moment, far, far away from Casablanca or Rabat.

All these images, joyfully mixed with the old hippie nostalgia of May '68 on barricades that the younger generation of us never experienced, let alone climbed, make us love chic and bohemian decor for our Parisian apartments, our farmhouse in the Perche region, or our house at Cap Ferré. Well, that last one's for the more fortunate among us.

Perhaps also due to an IKEA overdose, we want our home to resemble those travel photos of Kabylia that make us dream. We want that ultra-photogenic lamb tagine with its preserved lemons and freshly cut coriander on our handcrafted ceramic plates. That ultra-photogenic vegetable couscous (because we're cutting back on meat) in a terracotta couscous pot becomes, for a fleeting moment, our culinary ideal. We'd almost live in djellabas and trade our Birkenstocks for a pair of tasseled babouches made of camel or dromedary leather.

Berber style does not mean Moroccan living room!

But there's no question of us all eating from the same greasy dish with our fingers, sitting in a Moroccan living room on large leather poufs that still smell of the tannery. Nor is there any question of gorging ourselves on rose-flavored Turkish delight and other Turkish delicacies while watching belly dancers sway their hips. We are far more subtle than that in our approach to exoticism; we like to appropriate what we find beautiful without necessarily understanding or respecting its origins. We know very little about Berber culture, and our Tuaregs are postcard-perfect blue men from a fantasized Maghreb. We don't suspect that there isn't one Berber language, but rather Berber dialects.

It is this same nonchalance that leads us today to adopt the Berber style for our interiors, sometimes without ever having set foot in the Atlas Mountains, or even in the souk of the imperial city of Fez el Assad. We appropriate what pleases us, what we find beautiful, without truly understanding its origins or how it is made. For some of us, the Berber rug has nothing to do with Islam; it is simply a decorative element, more beautiful than exotic.

So, some naysayers will claim that "boho chic" is a mix of orientalism, hippie nostalgia, and IKEA aesthetics that have nothing to do with the traditional decor of the nomadic Berbers of the Moroccan desert. These same killjoys will tell you that our Western couscous and canned chickpeas are neither Moroccan nor Algerian. They'll tell you that if you don't regularly attend a mosque, if you don't wear babouches (traditional Moroccan slippers), and if you don't understand the muezzin's call to prayer, then you can't claim to appreciate Berber decor. You're simply engaging in orientalism and are nothing more than the dreadful heirs of a colonial system.

Personally, I don't think it's such a big deal. Decorating your home doesn't have to be a political statement or an ethnographic study. Treating yourself to an Azilal rug to add charm to a child's room doesn't obligate you to simultaneously conduct ethnographic research on tattooed women in rural Moroccan villages. And there's nothing stopping you from placing Scandinavian furniture on top of an antique wool Boujaad rug. Relax, it's just decorating!

No, I don't eat that traditional Moroccan dish of boiled sheep's head with its gelatinous eyes. I like to eat with cutlery, and I'd rather have my belly dancers on Patrick Sabatier's TV at my father-in-law's house than in my living room. But I love the colors, shapes, and materials of Berber decor, and I'm not afraid to use them in my home without feeling like I'm betraying some kind of cultural identity.

Why do I love Bohemian Chic decor and Berber rugs?

I've turned forty. My parents are getting older, and those who know me know how much I love them. I'm not ashamed to feel a wave of nostalgia when I look through the photo album of their youth. My mother in her bell-bottoms. My father with his mustache and his Vespa. My parents, though undeniably bourgeois and proponents of a rather traditional upbringing, were young and in tune with their generation. My mother was a teacher, but not a leftist, and above all, she held a teaching degree in Classical Literature. My father had to interrupt his studies to work and assume what was still called the role of Head of the Family. They took me on trips to Morocco, to Agadir, and to other North African countries. There were the capitals of Europe, but also Morocco, which they instilled in me a love for. In Morocco, as a teenager, I discovered handicrafts. I fell in love with wool rugs, pottery, cement tiles, and the architecture of the riads in the Fez medina. I loved running barefoot in the dunes and swimming in Essaouira. The Berbers called themselves Amazigh, the "free men," and this stirred guilty fantasies within me. Perhaps I should have asked myself other questions about the status of Moroccan women in this patriarchal society. I should have wondered if there was a feminine form of Amazigh among the Berber tribes of the High Atlas or in the kasbahs of Ouarzazate. I certainly should have looked into the issues of freedom of expression in this kingdom. In fact, it's perhaps subconsciously sensing all of this that later led me to study journalism. But today I must confess that these considerations are somewhat distant from me. I am a businesswoman, a rug seller. I buy and sell Berber rugs. I do so with respect for those who produce them, of course. But without asking myself a million questions.

If we had to conclude on the Berber carpet trade

I could tell you that I contribute to the economy of these rural families in southern Morocco. And that's probably true. But the reality is also more prosaic. Through seeing each other regularly, we've forged bonds of friendship. But it's also, for these families as for me, a business. There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm not going to sell you videos of beautiful, smiling, wrinkled women to sell you my handcrafted rugs. Because I respect you too, and I believe that a beautiful rug doesn't need a slow-motion Instagram video with ambient music to appeal to you. It simply needs to be well-made, its colors harmonious, and it needs to not only suit your interior but, above all, to be love at first sight.

All you have to do is choose the one you like best from our constantly renewed collection of Berber Rugs !