New York Magazine - 02.03.2020

YOU WALK BENEATHa white molded archway. You’ve entered

a white room.

A basketlike lamp hangs overhead; other lamps, globes of brass

and glass, glow nearby. Before you is a couch, neatly tufted and

boxy, padded with an assortment of pillows in muted geometric

designs. Circles of faded terra-cotta and pale yellow; mint-green

and mustard confetti; white, with black half-circles and two little

dots—aha. Those are boobs. You look down. Upon the terrazzo

nougat of the coffee table, a glass tray trimmed in brass. It holds

a succulent in a lumpy ceramic pot, a scented candle with a matte-

pink label. A fiddle-leaf fig somewhere looms. Above a bookshelf

(spines organized by color), a poster advises you towork hard &

be nice to people.In the far corner, within the shrine of an

arched alcove, atop a marble plinth: one lonely, giant cartoon

jungle leaf, tilting from a pink ceramic tube. You sense—in a way

you could neither articulate nor explain—the presence of a mail-

order foam mattress somewhere close at hand.

52 THE CUT | MARCH 2–15, 2020

The TYRANNY

of TERRAZZO

BY Molly Fischer

Will the

MILLENNIAL

AESTHETIC

EVER END?

ILLUSTRATION BY Fala Atelier