On beauty

[constance]

Most people who've known me will know that one of my great guilty pleasures in life is the Pottery Barn aesthetic. The stuff's nice enough, and when I go to PB stores, I always enjoy poking around, but in the end, it's the catalogs that really send me. The whole of the catalog is infinitely more than the sum of its parts: the tidy, color-coordinated rooms carefully strewn with thematic knickknacks, the "quirky" mass-produced odds and ends, everything mix-and-match, everything pretty and put together. When I look at the catalogs, I have to admit, it's not the sofa or the behooked magnetic board I want--I want to take the whole room, including the floors and windows, and transplant it. I gather, from a little informal research over the years, that this is all anyone wants from Pottery Barn.





It's a shot from the Holiday catalog, and isn't it all so nice and clean-looking? Mmmm, it looks like a peppermint candy you can sleep in. Here's the thing, though. The person who decided that the sensible aesthetic thing to do for this shot would be to turn all the books on the shelves spine-in? GENIUS, man. Forget Barcelona chairs and everything Raymond Loewy designed. Forget streamlined stereo equipment. Forget, even, inflatable furniture. I think we're looking at the wave of the future, here, when it comes to beautiful, comfortable, practical design. I'm going straight home to fix all my books, right now, and I hope you do the same.

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[tofty.livejournal.com]

*faints with lust*