Designer's confessional: I don't like Anthropologie
I spend time purchasing with customers occasionally, it's one of the offerings I offer. Buying respectable fixtures may be daunting for someone who knows what he's doing, however to a person who is in no way done it before it can be overwhelming. I can commonly inform in advance of time what's going to and may not work in a given space, and I generally tend to know precisely where to go to locate what is wished. I do not like indecision and I'll in no way walk into a furnishings showroom with a purchaser cold. With me, it in no way a matter of "Hey, allow's pass purchasing for a sofa!"
On the contrary, I'll say something like "I know the exact sofa this room needs. Let's go look at it at Doma ." When we arrive at my friend David's store ( the aforementioned Doma ) he's ready for us because I call him ahead of time. "Hey David," I tell him, "a client and I are coming over to look at Younger Sofas, particularly the 40530 and 40535 ." I don't like to waste time. I'm not a tyrant though. If my client doesn't like my preselections, I can usually tell from his or her reaction which way to go from there.
One of the regulations of getting me paintings with you on fixtures is that I get to pick wherein we shop and what we observe. Every once in whilst even though someone attempts to pull a fast one and tries to lead the manner. I say all the time that the roles I work on are not mine. The rooms and houses I'm working on belong to my clients, my ego does not figure into the manner at all. Well that may be a damn lie. My call and my popularity are written throughout those tasks and I customize quite a few this, much extra so than I probable ought to.
Anyhow, the client in question wanted to use an upholstered chair from that glorified flea market Anthropologie in one of my living rooms. I was mortified. Mortified. It was a chair like this one:
Appalling, it's just appalling. It stuck out like a sore thumb and coordinated with no other color or stick of furniture anywhere in her house. I talked her out of it and we went to see David and found something tailored and orderly.
Anthropologie looks like a thrift store. But unlike a real thrift store, it has the Skinner Box feel of a corporate experiment in how to get people to spend too much money on stuff that just looks bad. Their selections seem to be geared to people too young to remember how horrible the '70s were, but their price points are beyond the means of any 20-something I've ever met. The only people who can plunk down $4000 for an ugly Anthropologie sofa are the same people who should be old enough to know better.
Yet without fail and seemingly with out wondering, the design press swoons over the whole lot of their stores. I just don't get it.
In what universe is that this an appealing or tasteful mild fixture? What fool might virtually pay 5 thousand bucks for it? Why doesn't any one seem to question these items?
Call me old style, however if I'm going to cough up $1700 for a media cupboard,
or $1500 for an armchair,
or $3500 for a sofa, can they look new at least?