Couch commitment problems
couches have been on our minds for the past week, after a period of serious conference organization and intensive negotiations at work; we have finally confronted our seriously underfurnished home... it's been torture. Chinese knockoffs of the Mies Barcelona daybed can cost 10% of the Knoll "original." But when we went to a showroom to try it out, the whole thing seemed to sag in the middle. We have yet to venture to Design Beyond, I mean, Within Reach's showroom in Santa Monica to sit on the real thing. The DWR version costs over nine grand! And looking around at used furniture in the OC made my stomach turn - seems around here they like it the bigger the better: everyone's couches look as if they're on steroids. Sitting on one obscenely obese item makes me feel like Lily Tomlin in the giant rocker on old SNL's. Why so big?
2 Comments:
When I read your comment, I thought of the many times that I have wondered the same thing. Why so big?! What is it about society, about America, where things (like couches) need to be king-size in order to be taken seriously. Its as though a normal or smaller scale piece of furniture is somehow impoverishing, needy-looking, giving an image of scarcity instead of wealth. Is that what this is all about? A professed image. Does one buy an image of wealth, opulence, and plushness that a big couch seems to promise? I think that all it really means is that one has more to clean.
When I furniture shopped in the past, I visited various stores. Though I could not afford it, I went into a store that sold some posh furniture pieces from Denmark. I do not know if the designer represented most of the furniture made in Denmark. Yet, I took one look at the furniture and said to myself, "Wow." The items capitalized on the slender and the narrow, less wood and more style. Chic. Beautiful fabrics. That experience made me reconsider what I considered a look of wealth--plump couches, huge dining room sets, oversized lounge chairs. That danish furniture was all about low-key, scaled-down, and gave me a new sense of luxury that I never had before--a feeling of efficiency, space, a clean feeling. Hard to describe, really. I do enjoy a comfy bed, so shame on me. Remember that trite little corporate jingo, "Less is More." If Americans truly believed that then why do they buy all those big ugly-ass Hummers.
One could argue that Americans themselves are getting bigger, but the big couches are like CARTOONS of opulence and plushness -- it's about a fantasy about falling into a couch and never having to get up again.
Anonymous -- I love the idea that lighter furniture connotes "scarcity." It is totally against any kind of design rationality. The giant couches are hideously irrational!
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