Snippets of Style

Once upon a time, way back in the 1990s, America was a land of design philistines. Dwell and Domino didn’t exist. On TV, people didn’t trade spaces, nor did straight guys have queer eyes to help them remake their post-frat-boy apartments. Many of us still thought Ray Eames was a man.

According to the genesis story of Design Within Reach, it wasn’t really the people’s fault. We just didn’t know. The finer things in life, which the enlightened residents of Europe had come to appreciate over decades of Danish-designed, Italian-made existence, weren’t available to most of us. They were cloistered in showrooms open exclusively “to the trade”; only interior designers could give us the golden keys.