If you are going to use decorative lacing AND worry about durability and maintenance:

1. Use quality spokes - DT, Wheelsmith, Sapim, etc...
2. Consider 2.3/2.0 single butted.
3. Make sure they are built by a wheel builder who tensions properly.

Reason is simple. Some of the decorative lacings such as the weaved one using groups of six spokes will require an entire and complete detensioning of the wheel in order to be able to replace a broken spoke. So you need to prevent this up front by building the wheel properly to begin with and adding a little "beef" as an insurance measure doesn't hurt either.

Otherwise, you will essentially be paying for a wheel build instead of a spoke replacement and true each time it happens. I've only dealt with this on the weave pattern - so you'll have to examine each yourself and determine what happens for each lacing type service-wise when a spoke breaks.

=8-)