Jean-Charles de Castelbajac – or JC/DC as he’s known to his fash-pack mates Jeremy Scott and Cassette Playa – is well known for his graphic fashion collections.

Over the past 40 years, Mickey Mouse, teddy bears, Union Jacks and portraits of Jimi Hendrix and Diana have peppered his brilliant, candy-coloured collections. Given this penchant for print, it’s a wonder he has only just hit us with a wallpaper collection. It’s not like he hasn’t dipped into interiors before – he has been designing for the furniture company Ligne Roset for years, and has produced a collection of rock’n’roll rugs featuring outlines of electric guitars.

“Wallpaper has been in my head since the 1970s,” he says. “But it has been out of fashion in France for years.” Now it’s back and, thanks to Lutèce (France’s answer to Cole & Son), de Castelbajac’s paper is making a splendid debut, all the richer for its years of incubation. He has produced a scratchy approximation of what he calls “global toile de jouy” in cartoonish turquoise, with pen sketches of the Taj Mahal, a zebra and the Eiffel tower; another paper features huge prints of receipts from a supermarket near his castle in southwest France; other designs display jaunty hearts, rainbow stripes, a racy manga comic strip that he describes as “strictly postadolescent”, and a camouflage pattern that is a playful collage of world maps. At just €25.50 (about £18) per 10m roll, you could have them all if you chose.

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FLY BUYS

1 Out go faddy, paper-cut shades – they’re the devil to dust. Focus instead on slick statement lights, such as the Conran Shop’s jaunty Mexican Pendant.£450; www.conranshop.co.uk

2 The glass artist Mihai Topescu’s glossy, cartoon-coloured creations are handmade in his studio in Romania; they are now available here through Thorncroft.Milano vase, £259; www.thorncroft-collection.com

3 The word ”inkuku“ is Zulu for chicken, and it was the popular South African plastic chicken ornaments that inspired Ryan Frank’s recycled Inkuku bag chair. I’m guessing he shops at Sainsbury’s.£1,920; www.ryanfrank.net

4 The chic Slovakian design collective ComuniStar has a Superman hanger that’s so new, it doesn’t even have a price yet – but it’s certainly witty.www.comunistar.com

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Everyone’s having a go at design this days. We’ve got celebrities assuming the role of designer (well, putting their name to a product); designers assuming the role of celebrity; and people just mucking about with scale and material, making a 20ft lamp or a chair from concrete. Playful ideas, but is it really design? With so many boundaries blurred, how do you work out who is doing the real thing? Easy – invest in Terence Conran’s new tome, Design: Intelligence Made Visible (£40 Conran Octopus). Its A-Z format makes it perfect for dipping into, and entries include all the great designers, movements and innovations over the years – an instant education.

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