Feature: What's In a Name?
March 1, 2004
“Ten
years ago when I started out, the furniture business seemed so loosey-goosey,”
says Desplaines of Antoine Proulx. “In many cases, you needed a hovercraft to
get through the showrooms because most were piled with $5,000 chairs lined up
against the walls. That’s not the case anymore.” These days Desplaines equates
what is happening in fine furniture with his early days when he was working for
fashion iconoclast Yohji Yamamoto. “Today, the showrooms are done as vignettes
by designer, by collection. You know when you’re in the Ted Boerner space or the
Antoine Proulx area. It’s all marketed, advertised and put together the way
fashion has always been.”
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Kevin Kolanowski’s Vreeland chandelier of hand-stitched organic mica
squares is his “bold tribute to couture craftsmanship and legendary taste.” At Thomas Lavin.
(Click image to enlarge)Naturally, the furniture industry believes there
are benefits to alliances with interior designers. Most believe that designers
are tastemakers who often create furniture around design problems they have
found within their own work. “It’s really a matter of bringing the vision and
design integrity of somebody who struggles on a daily basis with the challenge
of making spaces pleasing and inviting, and giving them the opportunity to work
in a different medium,” says Jason Phillips, president of McGuire, a
Kohler-owned company that works closely with designers Orlando Diaz-Azcuy and
Barbara Barry.
Nevertheless, notes former Baker president Christian Plasman,
who brought Barbara Barry to the brand, “picking a star designer doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re going to be successful. There is a point where star
quality has value if you want to create a buzz around your product, but it still
has to be a good design. A bad design even by a star designer is not going to
sell.” Or as Bernhardt owner Alex Bernhardt Sr. says, “Meritorious furniture
always wins out because the consumer has to look at the piece and like it before he or she looks at the brand name.”
But, as with fashion,
most designer names have become a very efficient means of categorizing buyers.
“I walked into a store the other day and someone was trying to put me in
something and I said, ‘No, I see myself as more of a Gucci client,’ and she knew
exactly what that meant—sexy, tailored, edgy. It was a way to telegraph my
sensibility in a dressing room without saying too much,” says Madeline Stuart,
who thinks furniture buying operates on a similar principle. “People say so much
by the sofa they pick, the lamp they select, or the rug they put on the floor.
They are establishing themselves, their social and economic stature. So every
choice for people who take this seriously—the cut, the finish, the materials
used—is highly considered and meant to convey a myriad of impressions.”
Most
agree that manufacturers have carried the concept a bit too far with lines
“designed by” Arnold Palmer, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway and even Elvis
Presley. “My immediate thought is, what credentials do these people have?” asks
Bernhardt Sr., whose 114-year-old signature firm established its own partnership
with Martha Stewart three years ago. “I assume the logic is to latch onto a star with high name recognition. But for me it falls apart
unless there is some credibility behind the name.”
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