 |
Cool Design Now Available to EveryoneIKEA started it. In 1985, the Swedish chain began introducing the United States to mod-looking couches and stylish bookcases you assembled yourself in exchange for an attractive price point.
The home-furnishings industry was floundering, but IKEA grew by leaps and bounds.
Or maybe it was Target that started it.
In the late 1990s, the big-box store began selling Michael Graves designs: shiny kettles with sculptural handles, curvaceous bottle openers, white toasters with egg-shaped knobs.
Soon there was a Graves garlic press in every kitchen, and people were only semi-ironically referring to "Tar-get" as "Tar-jay."
Whoever started it, contemporary design was suddenly available to everyone, even the relatively impecunious.
It wasn't long until retailers with a more traditional aesthetic began spinning off hipper, cheaper versions of themselves aimed at recent college graduates, starving artists and anyone else who ever drooled over an Eames chair he couldn't afford.
more: www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/l... (581)
October 17, 2006 | Viewed 39,559 time(s)
|
|
