Pretty in pink: why designers fell in love with the flamingo

This year they can be found adorning phone cases, shoes, wallpaper, swimsuits ... but what draws designers, from fashion to interiors, to this eye-catching bird?

With its pink feathers, slender neck and legs that go on for ever, it has one of the most famous bird silhouettes on the planet. As instantly recognisable as the penguin, puffin and pelican, it sadly has never had its own publishing imprint. However, today it can be found on wallpaper, lampshades, dresses, cushions, crockery, shoes and bags. Mostly, you can spot this increasingly common visitor from the United States on the uncut lawns of manicured hipsters who love a bit of tongue-in-cheek tackiness to rub up against their bunting. It is, of course, the pink flamingo.

On Monday, Don Featherstone, the inventor of the original plastic lawn ornament, died at the age of 79. The New York Times described the man who put a hot pink flamingo in the garden of millions of working-class families in the 60s as "indelibly altering the landscape of mid-century America". His creation, first cast in Massachusetts, 1957, after a failed experiment with a duck, was venerated as "a flagrant totem of suburban satisfaction and, in later years, postmodern irony."

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