apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

But what are aspiring home-gourmands to do when we don't have the funds? I feel like, because food is cheaper than furniture, obvs, it's much easier to be a fancy cook on a budget than a fancy home designer. Either I'm ignorant of sources, or the energy it takes to close the bank account gap is huge.

As a weird sort of counterpoint... by far the most popular resource/inspiration for SC entrants is some combination of thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, street finds, and inherited stuff. Hardware stores, eBay, and Craig's List are the runners-up.

The total count for all mainstream design magazines just barely beats Target for popularity. If hot young designers want to reach AT readers, they need to follow Victoria Hagen's lead and do a line for Target.

I disagree. I think Murray Moss is responsible for a lot of today's design movement. Where do you think places like Target looked when they decided to focus on differentiating themselves through design? (There was an interesting WSJ article about how they decided to move in this direction 20 years ago.)

And as for not wanting Pottery Barn--well, I think you are influenced by the people who come to this blog. The general public is fine with, and aspires to, Pottery Barn, and will never care who designed their chair.

Good ferment.

But how powerful/influential do you think Murray Moss really is?

Am I missing something here or has he (like Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada) been pulling strings behind the scenes and programming our tastes without our knowing?

Personally, I find Moss fun, but disappointing in terms of finding many things I REALLY would like to have in my home. I think his shop is awkward, difficult on purpose and does NOT express a lifestyle vision.

It is, indeed, a museum.

Again, with all due respect....

Maybe I am REALLY old, but I find the times article inconsistent with my memory of things... I distinctly remember the rise of this design culture predating Murray Moss's shop (when was that? 1994?). I started buying Metroplitan Home in 1982 (1981?), when I was still in high school, and I remember the huge leap that happened design-wise in the US as chronicled on its pages. I imagine most of the pioneering retailers are probably no longer around, but the seeds that they sewed have born fruit. I distincly remember an issue that featured Eurostyle in America; the Eurostyle lifestyle in (what looked like) a New York brownstone. The Taurus (I think that was the car) was shown to be an American car of European lineage. The '80s issues of MetHome tapped and fed the design culture; as you say Maxwell, Moss was part of a groundswell, not the kingpin. And he may popularize European talent in North America, but I recall seeing the stuff first in my European design magazines, not in Moss.

I don't recall Murray Moss referring to these other designers as "punks". I think that's putting a negative spin on his statement. The article said "...Not that he’s proud of his ignorance — indeed, he seemed a little sheepish about it. 'It’s not willful,' ...it’s just that with work and travel, 'you don’t have time to do it.' He wants to do better... 'I have to get out there and be in the ’hood'.”

Look, Moss is an awesome store. Murray Moss had vision that few others had a decade ago. Today he continues to grow his kingdom and expand on his ideas of design. He is forward thinking with his artists and this contributes to doors opening for other designers and retailers. There's tons of room for new, younger designers to move forward and even improve on the idea. That's what it's about. And it even affects the Pottery Barns and the Targets of the world, too, who also shape and reshape to answer the demands of a more informed audience.

P.S. I think it's quite a generalization to say that "In our generation, no one wants a home that looks like it came right out of Pottery Barn." Guess what, there are a lot of people who just might.

...sorry about those hieroglyphics that appeared in my post. I have no idea why/how that happened.

BB: I think its an AT glitch - probably some sort of encoding (text type - Unicode, Western) glitch. I've seen it before.

...Now if the Times had stated that Conran was the seminal talent behind today's design culture, I might have bought their argument...

right ON to the comments thread on this one!
and I daresay a well-executed Pottery Barn clone would be nirvana for most of America, and for pllllllenty of the readers of this site. No matter what our more cultured eyes see when we look at those twiddly cast iron finials...

I'm not saying that he's a kingpin, pulling strings and directing the US culture. All I am saying is that he has an extremely influential store that no doubt inspired many other retailers by the very fact that his store seemed to be successful for many years. 13 years is (statistically) a long time for a small retail store to be successful.

I agree that his store is a bit of museum, but I think that's fine in its own way. So are parts of ABC Home--I mean, who DOES buy those $30k Chinese wedding beds?

I would also argue that DWR (as annoying as I sometimes find it) also had a huge influence because it made "elite" designers more mainstream, and made the idea of having designer furniture something that people wanted (and that Target picked up on very quickly)

I absolutely agree with Fiona regarding the rest of the population & PB. While I feel that the generation's overall interest in design and quality in their homes, offices, lives, etc... has increased, I also do believe that the majority of people would love (even choose) an all-PB house or apartment versus one with more of a unique perspective and/or eclectic composition.

An example from my own personal experience would be of a close friend of mine who makes triple in salary than my girlfriend and I do combined, appreciates nice things, and (i think) good design- yet has furnished her entire $3000 per month apartment with Pottery Barn. Sure, it's nice, but it's like Edward Norton in Fight Club buying everything in the Ikea catalogue while on the toilet.

On the other hand, it's not like I can talk really.... a lot of furniture the furniture in our apartment comes from well known, highly utilized "mall-of-america" sources.... Room & Board couch and chair, PB bedroom dresser. But, we also have a saarinen table, 2 ultrabellini chairs, and some natural and flee market finds to compliment. However, these more eclectic/higher design items only recently came to us..... before that = chairs from Pier1, west elm, and a PB table......

Anyone elses thoughts?

I don't know if if I would like to have a PB furnished house... but I sure would like the money (and higher salary) with which to do it!

I think Murray Moss has been well out ahead of the pack since day one. He's absolutely not selling a lifestyle, he's selling "design" at its purest - his shop IS a museum, and he is its visionary curator. These other shops are galleries, which serve a similar function as art galleries do to art museums.

Ach, blah blah blah, a grandiose and pompous post indeed! But I think we can welcome the current wave of small shops without dismissing either the importance or the value of Moss.

Much of this - maybe all of this - is about elitist consumption. Take, for example, the disdaining of Pottery Barn and the valorizing of DWR (which, btw, is strikingly less WR than it used to be), which are, at the end of the day, just retail shops selling branded lifestyles to consumers who have different conceptions of who they are and what objects they want to surround themselves with.

This evolving "gourmet"-ization of design is more directly a commodification of design, a slow transformation of something that once aimed for transcendence, but now focuses on fashion. Is your sofa upholstered in one of the hot new fall colours? Is your living room decorated eclectically enough?

I'm not sure that being able to name your chair's designer is actually a GOOD thing.

Wholeheartedly agree with Fiona: give Murray Moss the credit he deserves. I think his genius was that he said, "Hey, design is precious-- and valuable-- and BELONGS in a museum." No body that I know of said it that way before.

I think it's a combo top-down, bottom-up scenario that got us all much more design savvy. Murray Moss: top-down, Target: bottom-up. That's the only reason design ever reached "the middle" and I don't mean that as snobby as it perhaps sounds.

And Monika totally pegged it for giving props to Sir Terence.

And I think the American Conran is Gordon Segal of Crate & Barrel.

I'd add to the list of influencers of American design intelligence Michael Graves, Alessi, Ralph Lauren, and IKEA.
I'd add to the later wave of influencers Rob Forbes of DWR.

And if we New yorkers think the Brooklyn upstarts are influencing American design, we are seriously kidding ourselves. Say "Dumbo" to most Americans and they still think flying elephants.

If we are living in an America where the WORST CASE scenario is Pottery Barn (which, sorry, AIN'T too shabby and does not deserve the digs it gets), then we have come farther than we used to be.

I think you have to look at the fact that the New York Times spoke with Ellen Lupton and and the editor from House and Garden and they both told the Times that he was the "kingpin". I think if Grace Bonney of design*sponge or AT cared that much about it they'd ask Lupton or Rus how they felt about the article, or some other equally credible source, rather then just spewing their own opinions.
MP

Patrick (the other one) - have to take issue with your statement that "I think his genius was that he said, "Hey, design is precious-- and valuable-- and BELONGS in a museum." No body that I know of said it that way before. "

Actually, MoMA made that point back in 1932 when it established the world's first design collection in a museum http://www.moma.org/collection/depts/arch_design/index.html.

Moss's roots are indisputably in the MoMA collection (he is very up-front about it -- he even presents his items essentially the same way); he is essentially a high end gallery owner in his relationship to that collection. Moss has taken the MoMA collection and expanded it, he has sought out new arists and designers, exhibiting, cultivating and encouraging their work. He is a retailer in the same way that a gallery is a retail establishment. So I guess I would have to say that his genius lays in his courage and conviction in proposing an expansion to the list of iconic designs and fostering new talent; whether he is right in his judgements only time will tell -- and the influence that these designs have on Target and PB etc. is a key way of determining their cultural significance.

Okay, don't take me to task when I agreed with you!

Perhaps I should have said no RETAILER ever put it that way. Sure, galleries have said that forever about art and (in Moma's case) design. But again, if you think the American public is making style decisions based on GALLERIES and ART museums, I suggest doubling your medication.

Ironically, (to me) Moss is now a better example of design documentation than the recently reopened design galleries at Moma, which (oddly) look more like a crowded store of tchotchkes than does Moss.

I agree, I agree!!! - esp about MoMA and MOSS.

But hey! I never said that the American public is making design descisions based on what is on offer in galleries and museums, but that the Targets and Pottery Barns of the world take an iconic product and knock it off at their respective price point. And they do so not because they are paying homage to a good design, but because there is some sort of buzz about it (it's in style and fashion magazines, InStyle photographs celebrities with it, etc. )-- and Moss does to an extent single out the "buzz" products (think Tord Boontje stuff, and how he has now been picked up by Target).

I don't agree that how Target has staked a place in design is by knocking off anyone. Quite the contrary.

And I'm just tired of defending PB, so I won't. But I loves me some Pottery Barn.