HOW TO TELL TIME, a.k.a. the décor power of "ALSO NOW"

a.k.a. HOW TO NOT F*CK UP "HERITAGE"

Dear Snoops,

Last week was a primer; a snack (WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW “SLOW DÉCOR”). Today it’s the main meal.

BUT FIRST: ISSUE 2. It’s for sale. PAID SUBSCRIBERS get a 100% discount on pre-orders. From May 21, sales will open to all, and the price will reduce to USD 14.00 if there are any left tbh.

THAT SAID: If you buy it for the full PRE-ORDER PRICE, maybe we’ll fly to you and hand deliver it. Just a thot

THAT SAID: There will be MANY COPIES at SHELTER (for free!) next weekend in NY. So, a sure-fire option for NYers.

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THE POWER OF “NOW”

(WE ARE GONNA GO ON A LITTLE “BRAND IDENTITY” WALKABOUT, BUT IT HAS A DÉCOR-POINT!!!!!)

When we think of Finnish furniture-décor dream-boats “ARTEK” brand-wise, we picture this, from its 2017 zhoosh but really its pretty stable brand-vibe (see 1936 v1 here):

It’s the kind of current classic NEW-EURODESIGN-HERITAGE décorbrand mode, if you consider that just down the euro-continent, there’s, like:

Casual (lowercase), fat, sorta-Futura (a 1927 type!!, so amazing it kinda was the ‘futura’). And, the lovers of these brands tend to be anal, frankly; they love a Vitsœ shelf, they fall to their knees for the purity of Alvar Aalto (“artek” founder!), for Rae and Charles Eames, for that kind of thing, whatever. And, they were so aggressively displeased when also-Finns IITTALA (remember, tons of double letters = prob Finnish!! also - more ALVAR A., because of vase) ditched their casual, fat, sorta-Futura for something older-vibe new:

LEFT: PAST, RIGHT: non-Futura future (WE PREFER!)

Folks were like “OHHHHHHH ur f*cking with HERITAGE!!!!!” e.g. as reported in THE FINANCIAL TIMES:

"Everyone in my bubble was sure it was a joke,” Karoliina Korpilahti, the arts programme director at the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, told me. “People just couldn’t believe it. Everyone was raging.”

Like, f*cking calm down.

But, frankly, it depends what u consider “HERITAGE”!!

IRONICALLY we posit that it is sort of “f*cking with the heritage” of these décorbrands NOT to f*ck around with heritage, because frankly that is what they were all about in the first place. SPIRITUALLY, they are all hertiage-f*ckers as a founding principle. They were about NEW IDEAS ABOUT DÉCOR and also DOMESTIC LIFE; NEW MATERIALS were sort of their materials, etc.

FOR EXAMPLE, PRAISE-BE-TO-ALVAR-AALTO, in 1936 (year after founding artek) was already TOYING!!! et voila:

Shop front, 1 year after founding, and less than a decade into NEON SIGNAGE in Finland. (Thank u to

Kelsey Keith

for bringing this to our attention.)

i.e.:

THE HERITAGE SHOULDN’T BE A STATIC THING. Especially when the “heritage” of whatever was all about MOVING THINGS FORWARD. (And frankly any décor movement has been about moving things forward, it could be argued some other time.)

Alvar A. didn’t write some f*cking constitution on what artek had to be. And, we think a lot of these décorbrands (Herman Miller, et al. too) are prob in a tough spot trying to RESPECT “heritage” and also respect their true heritage, which was A SPIRIT OF CHANGE.

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AND NOW WE HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU

And for that we return to the WAVE HOUSE in PALM SPRINGS. Built 1955:

We’re talking sorta mid-point “MODERNISM” here, if u think that in Palm Springs Schindler did an itty bitty Coachella cottage in 1922. NONETHELESS: this was still kind of “NEW IDEA”-energy… This was not suburban-standard. WALTER S. WHITE is the archi-brain behind it; experimenter with roofshapes and whatever-else, you know?

A homescape like this is STILL sort of seen as OUTSIDE THE “LITTLE BOXES” standard; and if you look at CURRENT DEVELOPMENT in Palm Springs (LIKE THIS SH*T FROM DISNEY) and u’ll agree: WAVE HOUSE still feels FRESH. Which is WILD because: (1) well done WALTER; and (2) we totally have to question why this still feels relevant… like, why? Shouldn’t it NOT?

SOME QUICK NOTES:

• u can rent this place btw, it’s on “boutique” which was, at least to us, prev known as “boutique homes”… but both of these names are bad btw. Because it’s, like, you can say “We stayed in an Airbnb” – you can’t say “We stayed in a boutique”… sounds like u were overnighting on Rodeo Dr. So, did we refer to this house as being “an Airbnb” when ppl asked “what r u up to this weekend” - yes, we did. And Airbnb doesn’t need our free advertising

• IMPORTANTLY FOR US IN THIS CONVO: it was all decked out by DESIGN WITHIN REACH → it should be noted that “within reach” for the Design “Within Reach” literally means “in stock” (THEY SAY: “Accessible means that it can be seen and touched and that it’s in stock.” N.B. not all things are really in-stock there. 9 weeks for Willo Perron three-seater pillow sofa etc. etc. And also LOL!!!!! what a stupid and misleading definition.)

• Also, all upholstered furn. was done up in the better fabrics by PAUL SMITH for MAHARAM, which is also important for this discussion

OUR PHOTO-TAKERY FROM WAVE HOUSE:

MINI PAUL SMITH REVIEW → frankly, it’s a Yes. SO SUE US!!!!! the f*cking house itself, as u can see, is basically in a multi-stripe. So, it jives. and Maharam is QUAL. So, it’s nice sh*t. Wish P.S. would scrub the multi-stripe from most else and just keep it to upholstery tbh.

MINI WAVE HOUSE REVIEW → like, also a Yes. We’re a little suffocated by the nostalgia, which we’ll get to; and there’s a TOTO toilet that won’t calm the f*ck down; but the house is a reminder of a FOUNDING PRINCIPLE OF “FOR SCALE”:

THE ONLY TRULY CHIC HOUSES ARE SMALL or MEDIUM SIZED

Vastness is NOT CHIC. Vastness is like “whose back have u stepped on to get here?????” N.B.: the mediums are so wonderful… EAMES HOUSE (1,500 square feet); VDL (2,000 square feet); Carlo Mollino’s apartment (small! we don’t know the footage). Btw the avg. fam home in the U.S.A. is “bloated-medium” (too much!): 2,480

Honestly there a ton of exceptions to this rule, but do u know what point we’re trying to make? = rich ppl and celebrity mansions these days rely too much on them being “BIG!!!!” as a matter of status. And, so, no thank u

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WE’VE MADE IT TO “THE POINT” a.k.a. THE QUESTION FOR YOU

which is: how do u respect the heritage of a homesphere such as the WAVE HOUSE?

Remember – WAVE House, archi-wise was and remains an outsider; fresh-feeling; etc.

Here is a side-by-side, past and present, to show the DWR interpretation:

QUESTION: Sorry, but like, which do u think is SWAGGIER? Current or 70 yrs ago?

… décor-wise, the current is full of sort of “ode”-style DWR furn that is from or was deemed “in the spirit” of Modernist Era - e.g. that George Nelson bench c.1946; the Eero Saarinen tulip little kitchen set up, c.1956; that Adrian Gaut (great picture-taker!) photo of Mexico City (tho this photo ain’t our vibe), c.2024; (and that sofa from other pics is from 2022; and there’s this lamp in the house too, Kartell c.2022, which is in the color “BORDEAUX” but shouldn’t it be in the color, like, BAROLO or something? ETC. ETC.)

Of COURSE there is a definitive answer: it was swaggier in 1955, even by today’s dominant aesthetic criteria. Because:

(1) Abstract painting and sculpture → also about form-f*ckery, just like the Home

(2) ONE ROLLY CHAIR at the kitchen table?! → radical! Dealer’s choice

Just kind of has a vibe of experimentation and intellectualism and personal-choice-messiness that of course was a factor of this being a person’s choice and not a company’s choices.

But, we think back to MILAN last month, and the HYPER-EXCELLENT integration of some really “CURRENT-EDGY” décor by James Cherry and Green River Project (whatever u think about them) that were spliced into the cacophonously-excellent and 1970s-maxi CASA CABANA:

Or, like, anything that happens at the JACQUELINE SULLIVAN GALLERY, whom we love-admire for the EXCEPTIONAL and CRUCIAL ability to mix OLD DÉCOR and NEW CONTRIBUTIONS in a singular aesthetic that is “GOOD SH*T THAT FEELS FRESH BUT IS MAYBE NOT TECHNICALLY FRESH BUT ALSO MAYBE IS – SEE IF YOU CAN TELL!!!” (and it’s not always clear)

ASIDE: Here is our problem with DWR, really

AS A GENERALIZATION (there are always exceptions): even the ‘new’ things they select to include never really feel fresh. And they are boring as f*ck décor-stylists. And, we just feel like the idea that midcentury modernist design was sort of about new ideas (when its at its best) is totally lost.

Are we wrong here?

So, you step into the WAVE HOUSE and you think: ok, it’s like, polite and bougie. Like, when the most out-there thing in here is a Paul Smith multi-stripe (reminder: does kind of suit!), then u sort of know you’re in trouble.

Even the BOARD GAMES in the cupboard were like, DESPERATELY trying to cling to some kind of simulated nostalgia… that was kind of pathetic:

Like, are we so fragile that we can’t handle just like, a straight-up regular Scrabble? It has to be faux-old-timey-bookshelf Scrabble?

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SINCE U ASKED

… if we were BOUTIQUE or DWR and we really wanted to make a name for ourselves, we ABSOLUTELY wouldn’t have trusted DWR with sole-furnishing (like, same situation for the STAHL HOUSE).

We would have made them collaborate with some fresh-able person, who also loves some old décor. And that would have been, TO US, way more in the spirit of the WAVE HOUSE “HERITAGE!!!” - which was spiritually about freshness.

So, some examples OF PEOPLE WE WOULD HAVE ASKED TO HELP: AUNT (which is Noam Saragosti Juhee Park – Noam who is also director the VDL house*) or LUKE FOSS in Los Angeles; MAX RADFORD or BÉTON BRUT in London; MARIE-ANNE DERVILLE in Paris; UPPERCUT in Antwerp; obvi Jacqueline Sullivan Gall in NEW YORK CITY.

EVEN MARTHA STEWART says “BE FEARLESS. CHANGE IS GOOD.” (MasterClass trailer.)
*THE VDL HOUSE is actually SUCH a good vibe in terms of who people should “RESPECT HERITAGE!!” majorly approved

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THE POINT IS

We sort of wanted to walk into WAVE HOUSE and feel it, in its post-preservation state, but also to remark something like “oh wow! ok…!!!” because of how it reminded us that in 1955, this wasn’t “CLASSIC”, but that it was part of a exciting movement that was EXPERIMENTING. Like, what is the equiv of that but from today?

That’s all.

Super duper curious what u think pls.

UNTIL NEXT TIME (when we will be reporting from NEW YORK CITY). Love and good luck,