Interior Design - April 25 2021

 

Interior Design

April 25 2021

When I was growing up

it was burnt orange shag

and almond appliances.

Today, it's the all-white interior.

Cleanly ruled lines

uncluttered and sleek,

like a surgical suite

where no one's ever lived.

But this is the nature of fashion,

which is all about keeping up

seeking status

happy nothing lasts.

Knowing that we're seekers of novelty

and followers of trends.

That change is inevitable

    —   even change

for its own sake.

That obsolescence

is the essence of commerce,

and if we are no longer citizens

and have less and less in common

then at least we can be consumers,

exercising our sovereignty

by shopping and buying.

But really, I'd rather have shag

than that cool sterile look.

Which reminds me of the dead-eyed glance

of a high-fashion model,

her hands-on-hips strut

and hard aloof exterior.

Perhaps this cold hermetic white

is a statement on our time,

a desire to escape

from a dangerous world,

an illusion of control

when events seem to be spiralling

with chaos at the door.

But all it does is hurt my eyes,

too angular

and inhospitable

and almost brittle in its brightness.

Like my draw-string sweatpants

and soft cotton hoodie

I prefer comfort over looks,

modest and constant

over status and staged.

So instead of aseptic white

and futuristic spaces,

there are scattered magazines

and pillows piled up

and thick Persian rugs.

Inviting furniture

that says come and sit,

sinking in

to an overstuffed sofa

or big leather chair.

And warm wood everywhere,

along with soft adjustable light

from funky lamps

and quirky overheads.

It's still a refuge from the world;

but one that welcomes you in

and feels like coming home.

This poem makes it seem as if I prefer clutter, a homey domestic mess. Yet I'm as much a minimalist as the fashionistas of contemporary interior design. So why does minimalism have to mean no warm colours or soft materials? And what's wrong with enough tchotchkes and randomness to at least give the place that look lived-in?

I realize, of course, that all the pictures in the Home Beautiful magazines and real estate sections of newspapers are staged: no one actually lives like this! But I've still felt compelled for a long time to write something about this unappealing trend: about the cold alienating feeling I get from the all-white interior, which seems more about show than daily living; and about my more general revulsion at fashion – which is also more about show than comfort – and doesn't exist without an unsustainable economy based on consumerism and waste. Waste, especially. Because it's an unavoidable consequence of the uncritically accepted ethos of obsolescence that is at the heart of fashion. Because it's inextricable from being “fashionable”; from the pursuit of newness, of the latest thing.

I was very pleased to have ended the poem with “home”. It's a powerfully evocative word. It contains its own poem in a mere 4 letters. The entire piece converges there, because it's all about the nature of a house. Is it a showplace, designed to convey a certain image? Or is it a home, a place where you can actually live and be comfortable?