TIME EUROPE
June 26, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 25
The Redesigning of America
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Ironically, the design revolution has been given a leg up by not so special chain stores like Pottery Barn and Ikea, which descended on Middle America in the mid-'90s. They began with the premise that you didn't have to be an aficionado or hire an interior designer to have a good-looking life. They made do-it-yourself decorating safe. "There was this disconnect in American culture," says Hilary Billings, a key product developer at Pottery Barn at the time, who now heads the online boutique RedEnvelope. "You could open these magazines that showed beautiful homes and interiors, but you couldn't have them."
Neither too expensive nor too outlandish, these stores offered a way to dodge thorny design decisions ("Can I like a black leather couch and Shaker armchairs?") and still have a space that wasn't bland. Chains like Pottery Barn, which accounted for two-thirds of upscale parent Williams-Sonoma's sales growth last year, raised the bar on good design. If any fool could put together a stylish home at his local mall, what excuse could you have for owning such a lame-looking couch? More important, should a cool-looking couch cost so much?
The answer is right down the road, at one of the new Target stores springing up around the U.S. The champion of America's new design democracy used to be style-blind. Then Target's executives recognized that competing just on price with the likes of Wal-Mart was a losing proposition. So the store was reinvented with a simple formula: get a big-name designer to do $20 knock-offs of the same stuff he or she designed for the SoHo sophisticates. Thus Michael Graves, known for his work for upscale design firms like Italy's Alessi, supplies Target with stainless steel teakettles, blocky wood patio furniture and plump-handled spatulas. Ask Alberto Alessi if it bothers him that Graves is recycling his commissions for a fraction of the price, and he shrugs: "Our real goal should be to talk to the masses."
The American masses have delivered for Target, with double-digit sales growth since Graves' products hit the store last year. "Customers really respond to products that involve new thinking and connect with their souls," says Target vice president Ron Johnson, who launched the Graves line before switching over to Apple's business-development team. Not surprisingly, the department-store chain has become the talk of the advertising executives on Madison Avenue, not to mention the folks on Main Street. And this year, as Target nears the opening of its 1,000th store, Graves has been joined by the doyen of design, Philippe Starck, another Alessi regular, and the hot young design team Blu Dot. Says Dziersk: "This is the principle that began with the Bauhaus: everyone should have access to beautiful things."
We have technology to thank for that access. "We used to wish we had the technology to do things," says Ian Schrager, the man who pioneered the affordable-boutique-hotel trend. "Now technology is giving us things we don't even know how to use yet." London hotel guests in Schrager's St. Martin's Lane can alter the color scheme of their room simply by adjusting a knob next to the bed. Computerization and new materials have made production of just about anything cheaper and more efficient, and quality easier to maintain.
The combination means that form no longer has to follow function for a product to be profitable. Carmakers like Toyota can afford to gamble on a quirky-looking car like the new Echo, jam it with extras and sell it for less than $10,500. Sony miraculously rescued its personal-computer business by introducing the ultraslim Vaio, a silver-and-purple machine that, when you come right down to it, does little more than any other laptop; it just looks and feels a lot better.
Nothing underscores the technological revolution better than plastics, long viewed as cheap and ugly. Not since the early 20th century popularity of Bakelite has plastic been so loved. Polypropylene, for instance, the plastic that has been around since the '50s, can be molded so smooth it is almost sensuous, and it takes dyes like silk. German design firms Authentics and Koziol have made much hay out of plastic's new pizazz. Koziol's spaghetti forks with a smiley face, ice-cream scoops with eyes and the "Tim" dish brush with legs are some of more than 300 "cutensils," as they're known, that flew off shelves of American stores last year.
"I had no doubt these would sell in Chicago, New York and Boston," says Elliott Zivin, president of Koziol's U.S. distributor, Majestic. "But they're selling like crazy in Bogalusa, La., and west Texas." So much so that Zivin is bringing in 100 more plastic "blobjects" — another nickname — this year. Shopping for household items is no longer dutiful; it's part of a person's articulation of his or her personal style. Everything is an accessory. It could be coincidence that manufacturers started to think more about making household products fun not long after men started shouldering some of the burden around the home. It could be.
Corporate demand for these new design strategies is surging. Fitch's Bill Faust says his design shop got so many big corporate clients that he went back to school to pick up a business degree. "Designers are being invited to the table more and given a voice in making business decisions," says Faust. "I wanted to give the executives more of a reason to consider a design than 'We think this is cool.'" Well, cool could be enough. Kodak has ditched the black-box camera. Swingline has streamlined its standard stapler. Any company without inhouse talent is reaching for a hot design consultant. "Manufacturers recognize that consumers are looking for more than functional benefits," says Barry Shepard, co-founder of SHR Perceptual Management, the design consultancy that helped conceive the Volkswagen Beetle. "A product that matters needs to say something about the person who owns it."
And it doesn't have to say it for long. Buying a cool toothbrush is a way of expressing your personality without making a huge commitment other than to dental hygiene. Starck was one of the first to sense this with his translucent Brancusi-esque dollop of a toothbrush for Fluocaril in 1989. Now pharmaceutical companies have released a plethora of toothbrushes — ridged, twisted, tapered, with bands, dots and swirls. The same philosophy applies to dozens of products we used to regard as banal — garbage cans, toilet brushes and cheese graters. They're cute, they're cheap and they're disposable.
Cheap is O.K. by Starck, whose cheerful whimsy with juicers, bottle openers and hotel rooms did much to spark America's current fling with design. He says he wants good design to be a commodity — but without being wasteful. He points out that every time he designs a chair, it's less expensive than the one he designed before. "I want everybody to have the best products for the price of any bulls___ in the grocery store," he says.
Inevitably, not all the design efforts out there reflect the sensibility of an artist, and even many that do are downright, well, dysfunctional, like the Lexon radio on the cover of this magazine, which despite appearances is not waterproof. "Functionality has become more dimensional," says Susan Yelavich, assistant director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, which opened its first National Design Triennial in March. "Function now embraces psychology and emotion." Or, as Karim Rashid puts it, "The more time we spend in front of computer screens, the more the look of our coffee cup takes on added importance."
The question now is whether the design economy can be sustained or whether, when America's wave of prosperity recedes, they'll all edge back to plain-vanilla functionality. If he were around, Raymond Loewy would remind us that he got his start during the Great Depression, so perhaps the real design revolution is still to come. If so, Constant Nieuwenhuys is looking more prophetic than ever.
With reporting by Sheila Gribben/Chicago and Julie Rawe/New York
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June 26, 2000
COVER
The Redesigning of America
High style isn't highbrow. In fact, it's everywhere, for everyone, in everything from can openers to CD racks to cars
One Designer to Watch
Marc Newson wants to curve the world
EUROPE
The Big Chill
The arrest of one of Russia's most outspoken media moguls casts doubt on Putin's promised "rule of law"
Wit That Hits Home
Puppet on a short string
Identity Crisis
Greek church and state clash as new ID cards drop religious affiliation
Tell — But Don't Show
A new law will change the look of French journalism
AFRICA
"Whatever I Do, It Will Never Be Good Enough"
An interview with King Mohammed VI of Morocco
The Warm Embrace
Europe is showing signs that it's keen to better its often uneasy relations with the Maghreb nations
MIDDLE EAST
Chance for the Son To Shine
Syria's Bashar Assad can better his father's miserable legacy
BUSINESS
The Missing Link
A $4 billion engineering feat fulfils a century-old dream of joining Sweden and Denmark — and business is set to boom
Workers of the World, Speak Up
At last, people on the factory floor have entered the globalism debate
TRENDS
Wheelie Good Fun
Shiny, compact and cool, scooters have become Europe's ubiquitous accessory
THE ARTS
The Talented Mr. Ridley
Gladiator director Ridley Scott, enjoying a long-awaited thumbs-up from the crowds, talks about life, death — and why filmmaking is a blood sport
Déjà View
Some leading contemporary artists offer a fresh take on the old masters
Too Many Variations
A fine performance by Donald Sutherland can't save a flawed work
Irreconcilable Differences
Twins recount their lives on opposite sides of war
DEPARTMENTS
World Watch
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