The Atlantic - 04.2020

17

Dispatches

MATERIAL WORLD

wo years ago,

while trying to rent

and furnish a new

apartment, I was

defeated repeated ly

by the answer to

the question How much could

it possibly cost? Getting a key

cost $3,200 when it required

paying a broker fee to some

guy named Steve. Four planks

of wood and some metal pip-

ing cost $1,499 when they

were a West Elm bookcase. I

had moved and bought fur-

niture before, of course, but

the financial horror is fresh

every time. This go-round,

the kitchen chairs were what

broke me.

Like a lot of young people

aspiring to move upward, I

was in the market for some

furniture crafted by Charles

and Ray Eames, the mid-

century designers who helped

introduce modernism to the

United States. The couple’s

work has been central to the

furniture style’s American

revival in the past 20 years,

but if you encounter high-

end interior design mostly

on Instagram and Pinter-

est, you probably know the

Eameses by their chairs. The

most famous pieces include a

leather lounger-and-ottoman

set with a curved wooden base

that’s particularly beloved by

men who work at start-ups,

as well as a series of dining

chairs with colorful molded-

plastic bucket seats. Argu-

ably the most recognizable

of the latter is nicknamed the

“Eiffel” for its trussed-metal

leg structure; one of the most

popular reproductions costs

$595 from Herman Miller,

the design’s original manu-

facturer. I needed at least four.

Nearly as quickly as the

internet dashed my hopes of

owning the coveted chairs,

it came to my rescue—by

showing me the wares inside

its coat. In the days after I’d

spent a few minutes browsing

for the real thing, ads on Ins-

tagram, Facebook, and Google

offered up identical chairs at

virtually every price level from

discount decor retailers such

as Wayfair and Overstock. I

could pay $35, $60, or $

each for chairs with no dis-

cernible differences from one

another, or from the “Eiffel”

they were legally aping (abet-

ted by copyright and patent

laws that make it difficult to

protect design as intellectual

property). Absent any real

information about what I’d

actually need to spend to end

up with something decent to

sit in, I was left to decide how

much it was worth to me to

announce to my visitors and

Instagram followers that I’m

also a mildly unimaginative

person who appreciates Eames.

The presence of many

nice-enough choices without

any meaningful way to distin-

guish among them is a fun-

damental dysphoria of mod-

ern consumerism. Anybody

can track in intimate detail

how the wealthy and stylish

spend their money via social

media, and just when you’ve

learned exactly what you can’t

have, the internet swoops in

to offer a look-for-less utopia

of counter feits, rip-offs, and

discount cashmere sweaters,

perfectly keyed to the perfor-

mance of a lifestyle that young

Americans desperately want

but can’t afford.

It was 2017, and Venkatesh

Rao, a writer and management

consultant, was having lunch at

a fast-casual vegan chain restau-

rant in Seattle when the phrase

premium mediocre popped into

his head. It described the sensa-

tion he was having as he tucked

into his meal—one of a not-

unpleasant artificial gloss (air-

line seating with extra legroom;

“healthy” chickpea chips that

taste like Doritos; $40 scented

candles) on an otherwise thor-

oughly unspecial experience. I

had a similar eureka moment

in early 2018, when the port-

manteau premiocre came to

me while I was trying to parse

the discriminating features

among mid-priced bed linens

from several start-up brands. I

found Rao’s observation while

checking to see whether, against

IT’S ALL SO ... PREMIOCRE

A guide to the new age of Potemkin luxury

BY AMANDA MULL

T