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Are Trends Sooo Over?
15 Plays1 year ago
This week, Ben is joined by Dan Rubinstein, design journalist and host of the Grand Tourist podcast, to discuss TRENDS. But first of all . . . do they even exist anymore? Or are we living in a post-trend world ruled by the math of the algorithm and the magnetism of sui generis celebrities? Ben and Dan consider trends through historical and pop-cultural lenses, using a very curious object as the jumping-off point: a pewter brooch in the shape of a Norse shield designed by Jorgen Jensen, son of Scandinavia’s trendiest modern silver maker Georg Jensen.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects'
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
This is the podcast about art, decorative arts, and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
Art History Trends: Past and Present
00:00:21
Speaker
Now, it may shock you to hear that I have never really been a trendy guy.
00:00:26
Speaker
I totally skipped out on bell bottoms and trucker hats, but I do spend a lot of time thinking about trends from the past.
00:00:33
Speaker
And another term for trends from the past is art history.
00:00:39
Speaker
Now, one of the fun questions you can ask about art history is why did the artists do it this way?
00:00:44
Speaker
And why did people like it that way?
00:00:47
Speaker
What made Art Deco happen when it did?
00:00:49
Speaker
Why did everyone go nuts for Roman architecture in the late 18th century?
00:00:53
Speaker
And the answers to those questions sometimes seem to have a lot in common with the answers to similar questions that we could ask about contemporary trends.
00:01:01
Speaker
You know, why did minimalism explode in the 90s?
00:01:05
Speaker
What made everyone fall in love with Scandinavian design?
00:01:07
Speaker
Why did men's brooches start to make a comeback?
00:01:11
Speaker
And actually that last question is especially apropos because today's curious object is a
Dan Rubenstein on Brooch Trends
00:01:18
Speaker
brooch.
00:01:18
Speaker
And joining me to talk about topsy-turvy trends
00:01:21
Speaker
And about this brooch in his collection is Dan Rubenstein.
00:01:25
Speaker
Dan is a design journalist and happens to be a podcaster himself hosting the Grand Tourist podcast where he interviews influential people across the world of design and art and fashion and lifestyle.
00:01:38
Speaker
Dan, welcome to the podcast.
00:01:40
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:01:41
Speaker
So it's always such a treat to be on someone else's podcast.
00:01:43
Speaker
So I'm always super excited for this.
00:01:46
Speaker
Are you prepared for some rapid fire questions?
00:01:49
Speaker
I am.
00:01:49
Speaker
I am 100% ready.
00:01:51
Speaker
We'll see about that.
00:01:53
Speaker
What design trend did you see coming before anyone else?
00:01:57
Speaker
Before anyone else?
00:01:59
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:02:02
Speaker
Don't be modest.
00:02:03
Speaker
I would say I'm going to go with brooches.
00:02:05
Speaker
I would say that I got a lot of emails and DMs from people kind of saying, you know, sending me articles from the New York Times saying, you know, that extol the era of the brooch.
00:02:16
Speaker
for gentlemen, whether or not it was, you know, at the Met Gala or what have you, or some award show saying that, you know, I had gotten there first.
00:02:26
Speaker
So I will say that as a sort of fashion design trend, maybe I was a little bit ahead of the curve on that.
Dynamic Design Cultures: Focus on Paris
00:02:33
Speaker
What was your last international trip?
00:02:36
Speaker
My last international trip was to Milan in April for Milan Design Week and the Salone del Mobile.
00:02:43
Speaker
And I go every year.
00:02:45
Speaker
I've been going since, gosh, something like 2010, 2009 maybe.
00:02:52
Speaker
Okay, this next question may be redundant with that, but what city right now has the most dynamic culture around design and craftsmanship?
00:03:02
Speaker
I'm going to switch gears and say Paris.
00:03:06
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:03:07
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:07
Speaker
Mostly because you mentioned craftsmanship.
00:03:10
Speaker
And I think as much as Milan is the city of design, there's a lot of craftsmanship that still takes place within Paris and the Paris city limits and greater Paris than perhaps Milan does itself.
00:03:24
Speaker
Most of the furniture made in Italy is...
00:03:27
Speaker
made in Northern Italy, but it's not necessarily in the city of Milan.
00:03:31
Speaker
So if I were to say the city that has really a lot of craftsmanship and a sort of spirit of beautiful design, I would say Paris.
00:03:40
Speaker
There's always that Paris is kind of like New York in the sense that a lot of Europeans tell me like, oh, I love New York because you guys still have a shop that sells nothing but buttons in the Garden District.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I think in Paris there are still, you know, there's still that one atelier that does something that no one else really does anymore and they're still kind of chipping away at it, at some craft, at some little bit of expertise or some gallery somewhere.
00:04:08
Speaker
And I think Paris is still a sort of stronghold for all of that to come together.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, although tragically, that famous button store, I think it was called Tender Buttons, actually closed not long ago.
00:04:21
Speaker
So we may be falling off that list.
00:04:23
Speaker
It's the end of the world.
00:04:25
Speaker
Okay, what's your favorite chair?
00:04:27
Speaker
I feel like every design person has to have one, right?
00:04:30
Speaker
I am a design omnivore.
00:04:32
Speaker
I like everything.
00:04:34
Speaker
The longer that I've spent in design, the more agnostic I've become about all different types of design options.
00:04:41
Speaker
People ask me, like, who's your favorite designer?
00:04:43
Speaker
Like, if you could design a house, then who would design it for you?
00:04:46
Speaker
I could live in almost any style of home.
00:04:49
Speaker
I could live in a mid-century Connecticut white box glass house modern home.
00:04:54
Speaker
I could live in a Rococo fantasy.
00:04:57
Speaker
I could live in an English country estate.
00:04:59
Speaker
I could live in a 80s postmodern high-rise New York apartment.
00:05:04
Speaker
I could live through any of it.
00:05:06
Speaker
Wow.
00:05:09
Speaker
The other factors that affect how I actually live are usually space, my husband, my budget, all of that put together.
00:05:18
Speaker
But yeah, I've covered design in so many different eras now and for so many different publications that I really have grown to appreciate it all.
00:05:30
Speaker
So I can't say that I have a single favorite.
00:05:34
Speaker
All right.
00:05:35
Speaker
Well, that's a very diplomatic answer.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:39
Speaker
What's an Instagram account that we should all be following?
Recommended Instagram: 'Jet Set Classics'
00:05:42
Speaker
Oh, I'm really obsessed with this.
00:05:45
Speaker
I have no idea who runs it.
00:05:46
Speaker
I don't know anything about it.
00:05:49
Speaker
I just started following them.
00:05:50
Speaker
They don't follow anyone back.
00:05:51
Speaker
So it's very much a mystery to me.
00:05:54
Speaker
It's called Jet Set Classics.
00:05:57
Speaker
And it's nostalgic, ultra classy, escapist worship of wealth.
00:06:05
Speaker
And sometimes it goes very vintage and very bizarre.
00:06:09
Speaker
and sometimes not.
00:06:10
Speaker
And so it's, it's kind of a, it's definitely a sexy mood.
00:06:14
Speaker
And I'm staring at the screen right now.
00:06:17
Speaker
And, you know, there's like a picture of a young Berlusconi, like in a private jet from like the eighties or something.
00:06:24
Speaker
Like it's all very kind of Euro centric wealth with nostalgia, kind of all mixed together, whether it's like a Ferrari or it's a,
00:06:36
Speaker
you know, a classic bistro in Paris from with a photo from the 90s or something like it's it's kind of nostalgic mixed with luxury.
00:06:45
Speaker
What's one book that listeners should read about design history?
Favorite Design Book: 'The Best of Nest'
00:06:50
Speaker
I'm currently looking around my large volumes of books that surround me every day at home on my wonderful Vitsu shelving, which I recommend anybody who owns a lot of books to convert their library using Vitsu shelving.
00:07:08
Speaker
Let me take a look around here.
00:07:11
Speaker
Oh, God, when you have 5,000 volumes, I can't really say that there's anyone that... I know, I know.
00:07:16
Speaker
I didn't say these were going to be easy questions.
00:07:18
Speaker
They're not easy questions.
00:07:19
Speaker
Oh, I would say one of my favorite design books that I have is The Best of Nest.
00:07:26
Speaker
Nest was sort of a cult classic magazine.
00:07:30
Speaker
It had a short run.
00:07:31
Speaker
It was sort of a revolutionary interior design, you know, shelter title, but it's super bizarre for its time.
00:07:40
Speaker
It had, you know, sort of die cuts, meaning like the, it wasn't just a perfect rectangle.
00:07:44
Speaker
It was, you know, it had all sorts of cuts to it, to the paper.
00:07:48
Speaker
Today, you know, when we look at magazines like, you know, Apartamento that have a very particular look, casual look on things, Nest kind of took...
00:07:58
Speaker
the very polite idea of like an architectural digest home and kind of turned it inside out.
00:08:03
Speaker
This book is, it came out from Fiden a few years ago.
00:08:07
Speaker
It's something everyone should have, especially if you're like an interiors aficionado.
00:08:11
Speaker
What's your favorite museum to visit?
00:08:13
Speaker
The museum that I'd love to visit, being a New Yorker, is still the Met.
00:08:18
Speaker
They're really, to me, everything else is, I love all the museums in New York, but the Met to me is still, if I could only visit one more museum before I die, it would be the Met.
00:08:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:29
Speaker
I want to give you a series of fashion and style trends and just get a quick thumbs up or thumbs down pro or con.
Rapid Fire Fashion Trend Opinions
00:08:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:37
Speaker
These are truly rapid fire.
00:08:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:40
Speaker
Cargo pants.
00:08:41
Speaker
Thumbs down.
00:08:42
Speaker
Sneakers.
00:08:44
Speaker
Thumbs up.
00:08:45
Speaker
Scandinavian furniture.
00:08:47
Speaker
Always thumbs up.
00:08:48
Speaker
Oversized blazers.
00:08:50
Speaker
Thumbs up for ladies.
00:08:51
Speaker
Thumbs down for men.
00:08:53
Speaker
Good nuance there.
00:08:54
Speaker
Skinny jeans.
00:08:55
Speaker
How skinny.
00:08:59
Speaker
That's the eternal question, isn't it?
00:09:01
Speaker
That's my answer.
00:09:02
Speaker
How skinny.
00:09:03
Speaker
All right.
00:09:03
Speaker
Shabby chic.
00:09:05
Speaker
Boo.
00:09:06
Speaker
And normcore.
00:09:08
Speaker
I would say it's past due.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:13
Speaker
It's goodbye.
00:09:14
Speaker
We loved it, but goodbye.
00:09:16
Speaker
Good riddance.
00:09:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:18
Speaker
One last rapid fire question for you.
Art that Evokes Emotion: Walton Ford
00:09:20
Speaker
What was the last object or work of art you saw that gave you goosebumps?
00:09:25
Speaker
So I don't know the name of it, but it's a large painting by Walton Ford from Casmin Gallery that I saw at Tafoff.
00:09:34
Speaker
And Walton is going to be, at the time we were recording this, he's going to be my guest on the podcast next week.
00:09:43
Speaker
And it's just this amazing photo of one sort of big sort of animal probably –
00:09:50
Speaker
I think it's a wolf or another dog with like another animal in its mouth.
00:09:53
Speaker
And it's like super evocative and colorful.
00:09:57
Speaker
And it really just kind of grabs your attention no matter what.
00:10:00
Speaker
And it's just this incredible work that I think kind of speaks to everything that he, that Walton, you know, sort of stands for.
00:10:08
Speaker
And he's having such a moment.
00:10:10
Speaker
And I think his work is really fantastic.
00:10:13
Speaker
Terrific.
00:10:13
Speaker
Well, with that, I will release you from the rapid fire questions.
00:10:21
Speaker
And we will be right back with Dan Rubenstein.
00:10:24
Speaker
And first, I just want to say thank you for listening.
Listener Engagement and Feedback
00:10:27
Speaker
I would be really delighted to hear from you, especially if you have ideas for episodes you'd like me to do.
00:10:33
Speaker
Y'all have introduced me to so many curious objects, and I love them all, so please keep them coming.
00:10:38
Speaker
You can email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com.
00:10:42
Speaker
You can find me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:10:45
Speaker
And of course, I really appreciate it when you leave a five star rating and a review for the podcast on your podcast app.
00:10:51
Speaker
Someone recently wrote, I've been listening to Curious Objects for several years and always enjoy coming back to hear great stories about beautiful and interesting objects.
00:10:58
Speaker
I'm not a collector of fine things, nor am I an academic, but I always feel like this podcast is meant for anyone that enjoys learning history from things.
00:11:06
Speaker
really warms my heart.
00:11:07
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:11:08
Speaker
And it means a lot to hear that you're enjoying the show.
00:11:11
Speaker
These reviews also are a really big help in bringing new listeners to the podcast.
Contemporary and Historical Trend Connections
00:11:19
Speaker
So, Dan, I wanted to talk with you about trends because you're very active in the contemporary design world.
00:11:27
Speaker
I'm very active in the antiques world.
00:11:29
Speaker
I feel like there's a cloistering that happens that can be kind of counterproductive.
00:11:34
Speaker
I mean, even the word antique has this legal definition of 100 plus years old.
00:11:39
Speaker
You know, of course, these things weren't antique when they started.
00:11:43
Speaker
In fact, they were very trendy.
00:11:45
Speaker
And you can look at these trends year by year and decade by decade, going back as far as you want.
00:11:49
Speaker
And what's happening with trends today might be a little different, but also maybe not that different from how they've come about in the past.
00:11:58
Speaker
So I thought we could talk about a few different trends and try to connect the past and present in some kind of way.
00:12:05
Speaker
And you suggested a curious object that I think is such a great example of trends layered on top of trends.
00:12:13
Speaker
So start us off by telling us, what is this piece?
Jorgen Jensen's Pewter Brooch
00:12:17
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:12:18
Speaker
I'm so excited to be here.
00:12:20
Speaker
So the piece that I wanted to talk about today, and I'm really excited to chat about this with you because I purchase brooches from my own collection.
00:12:29
Speaker
It's never really about the amount of money that they cost.
00:12:32
Speaker
For me, it's all about, are they wearable for me?
00:12:35
Speaker
Am I going to enjoy wearing them for special occasions and things like that?
00:12:39
Speaker
So I tend to pick ones that are a little bit minimal, ones that are not too flashy.
00:12:44
Speaker
And one of the first ones that I bought during the pandemic, during lockdown, I believe it was, and it's a pewter brooch by Jorgen Jensen, who I believe was George Jensen's son.
00:12:58
Speaker
And it kind of looks like a medieval shield of some sort with kind of like a lip around the edges and some
00:13:09
Speaker
very basic kind of, like a motif on it that kind of looks like it could be, to my eyes, like some sort of Viking shield or something like that.
00:13:18
Speaker
I know very little about it.
00:13:20
Speaker
It didn't cost me very much money at all, but it really spoke to me and I do love wearing it.
00:13:25
Speaker
And as you're someone who knows a little bit about silver and that whole era, I was wondering if you knew anything about it.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:35
Speaker
Well, it's not really in my area of specialty precisely, but of course, as a silver person, I do encounter George Jensen silver all the time.
00:13:47
Speaker
And it's such an interesting entree into a conversation about trends because we all know George Jensen silver as this sort of epitome of Scandinavian modernism.
00:13:59
Speaker
It's this incredible simplicity, this geometric
00:14:03
Speaker
mentality.
00:14:04
Speaker
And yet this brooch, which is by the next generation, right?
00:14:09
Speaker
And it's not silver, it's pewter.
00:14:11
Speaker
But it's very different.
00:14:14
Speaker
You know, I totally agree with your assessment.
00:14:16
Speaker
It looks like a Norse shield.
00:14:17
Speaker
And I'm sure that's what it's referencing, which is such a cool thing to put on your clothing, right?
00:14:23
Speaker
And yet it couldn't be a more dramatic departure from the kind of spare, austere lines that you would expect from a piece of George Jensen silver of, you know, 20 years before.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I think that that just goes to show you that, you know,
00:14:41
Speaker
Even if you have a famous last name in a particular field, time moves on and people are looking for different references.
00:14:50
Speaker
And it's also just like a little bit of a curious bit of history that we know George Jensen, we don't necessarily, people don't know his sons or...
Brooches as Wearable Art
00:15:00
Speaker
other people in his family if you're not a total expert.
00:15:02
Speaker
And I just sort of love it.
00:15:04
Speaker
And a lot of the brooches that I collect just because they're not that valuable.
00:15:08
Speaker
A lot of them come from artists and designers.
00:15:13
Speaker
So many people have worked in jewelry that
00:15:17
Speaker
I don't know much about any of them and every once in a while you get someone that is just sort of kind of forgotten and to me that these brooches are, you know, the ultimate and curious objects because they're small, you're constantly sharing a little work of art with people, which is something that I think is nice because, you know, if you buy a painting or a sculpture, you bring it home, you put it on your wall, but, you know, wearing something like a brooch or any kind of jewelry,
00:15:41
Speaker
People are always able to point it out at a party and kind of say, what is that?
00:15:45
Speaker
Where did you get it from?
00:15:46
Speaker
Who made it?
00:15:47
Speaker
Or they touch it, which they shouldn't.
00:15:49
Speaker
But, you know, it's kind of like art that you share, which I think I kind of find interesting.
00:15:53
Speaker
Is there like a perfect party to wear this brooch to?
00:15:58
Speaker
I like to wear this in more casual situations sometimes with like a denim jacket only because the pewter is not very shiny.
00:16:08
Speaker
It's not very formal looking.
00:16:09
Speaker
But I don't sort of get into the Madeleine Albright mindset of like, the shield has to protect my heart, and so I only go into situations where I need to protect myself, or I don't wear a spider when I'm trying to be predatory or anything like that.
00:16:26
Speaker
I don't wear it when I'm around other rivals and things like that, or what have you.
00:16:31
Speaker
So I don't really prescribe to that sort of Madeleine Albright view of brooches, but her name does come up a lot.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah, I would say it's more casual.
00:16:40
Speaker
And I think sometimes it's nice to wear things like a little brooch that's not very ornamental or too fancy for slightly more casual jackets and things like that.
00:16:51
Speaker
I saw Jill Biden the other day walking into lunch, and she was actually wearing a brooch that I wish I had gotten a closer look at, but it looked like an American eagle, a bald eagle in gold clutching a big pearl.
00:17:04
Speaker
And I'm so curious, maybe some listener will know what that piece was.
00:17:10
Speaker
But...
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any question that the brooch has come back in force.
00:17:17
Speaker
And you said earlier that you were really ahead of the curve on that one, which your collection gives a lot of evidence to support.
00:17:27
Speaker
So I'm curious, I mean, what happened?
00:17:31
Speaker
I mean, if we're trying to understand how trends work, like what happened with the brooch trend to make it a trend?
Men's Brooches: Trend and Fashion Norms
00:17:39
Speaker
I just think it's a matter of like,
00:17:41
Speaker
Jewelry for men has been something that has been evolving for so long.
00:17:46
Speaker
And in the past 10 years, androgyny in fashion has become huge.
00:17:51
Speaker
You see more and more fashion brands being more unisex, trying to blur the lines between genders in fashion and what's appropriate.
00:18:01
Speaker
You see men...
00:18:02
Speaker
you know, holding small purses, you know, all of these things have been kind of, these lines have been blurred more and more and more.
00:18:11
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it's hard for a lot of men to wear jewelry that isn't very expressive.
00:18:19
Speaker
And I think brooches are great because you can just wear a black blazer or you can wear a tuxedo and really, and a watch,
00:18:30
Speaker
And don't have to worry about anything and just put one brooch on it that, you know, maybe your stylist picked for you if you're going to the Oscars or something.
00:18:37
Speaker
And voila, you have jewelry.
00:18:39
Speaker
You know, obviously it's nothing that new because people have been, men have been wearing, if it's not a brooch, it's a medal.
00:18:48
Speaker
Or it's a flag pin or it's whatever.
00:18:50
Speaker
So it's not that hard to wear.
00:18:53
Speaker
They're really easy to wear.
00:18:55
Speaker
And so I think it's a nice point of entry into jewelry, even though I've always been told that watches and the watch world is just jewelry for men.
00:19:06
Speaker
But for those who want to kind of take the extra step, but they don't want to wear rings or things like that, that this is kind of a nice entry point.
00:19:15
Speaker
And to be honest, I don't even remember why I started.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:19
Speaker
Collecting pins or what?
00:19:21
Speaker
I think I was just looking at different things and then just realized that, wow, if you're collecting something during the pandemic and you're looking at stuff on your phone, pins are great, especially if you have a small New York apartment.
00:19:33
Speaker
You can collect many of them, put them in a shoebox and have dozens and dozens.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:37
Speaker
Well, so you're describing what sounds like a pretty organic process of the bridge sort of emerging because it fits in with larger societal trends with it's a practical thing for a lot of people to start to acquire and to put into use in their wardrobes.
00:19:54
Speaker
I mean, some trends really are organic like that and others feel a little bit more directed.
00:20:01
Speaker
I mean, there are historical examples of, you know, trends that are sort of dictated by authoritarian regimes, right?
00:20:09
Speaker
And so there's sort of the whole range from totally organic to totally inorganic.
00:20:15
Speaker
Look, I mean, on your podcast, you've talked with so many designers and artists who obviously as part of their work, part of their career, they're trying to identify trends or to set trends or to predict trends.
00:20:28
Speaker
I mean, have you found any general rules for how a trend emerges?
00:20:34
Speaker
I think some of the strongest trends in history just started with people being themselves and having a unique look.
00:20:41
Speaker
One person decides that they really love ceramics and they build a beautiful house and then they sort of interpret it in their own way and then it's in some magazine or in some newspaper and then all of a sudden everyone starts copying them.
00:20:53
Speaker
When it comes to trends and how they emerge, like I've never met an artist or a designer that ever talked about, you know, what they were doing was hot at the time and they decided, oh, I'm going to do that too.
00:21:04
Speaker
Like they are all, the reason why I'm talking to them is because they're very well known now and they're very successful.
00:21:09
Speaker
But I think successful people in the world of art and design, whatever they've created kind of came naturally to them.
Personal Expression in Trend Formation
00:21:18
Speaker
Sometimes that's them being at the right place at the right time in history.
00:21:22
Speaker
But oftentimes it's like from the 30,000 foot view, from a sort of a macro view, you see these trends emerge.
00:21:28
Speaker
But at the micro view, everyone is just kind of doing things that come naturally to them.
00:21:32
Speaker
So...
00:21:33
Speaker
I would say from the Grand Tourist, I've interviewed dozens of artists at this point and designers.
00:21:41
Speaker
It's really coming from their own personal experience and then producing something in a specific way.
00:21:48
Speaker
Because the people I have are on the more successful end, they're the people who are copied rather than the other way around.
00:21:54
Speaker
But what I find remarkable is that, and this is only come into focus now that I've interviewed well over 100 people for the podcast,
00:22:02
Speaker
that there's actually way more in common in terms of like people's approach to life and work and career in ways that I didn't expect previously.
00:22:12
Speaker
So you could talk to an architect, a photographer, an artist, and, you know, interior designer or whatever, and kind of pull them into the same room.
00:22:25
Speaker
And there's a lot of commonalities in terms of like how they approach life and how they got to where they are today.
00:22:31
Speaker
That's really interesting.
00:22:32
Speaker
I mean, I think about, so for example, in the fashion world, you know, we hear about trends that are kind of set on the runway, and then, you know, that follow into a retail space the next season, right, or six months later, or a year later.
Runway Influence vs. Public Fashion
00:22:48
Speaker
And so in that sense, there is kind of a corporate structure that is, you know, led by designers and by a multitude of other people who come together to try to create something appealing, something fashionable, something stylish.
00:23:04
Speaker
And then it's kind of maybe a chicken or egg situation, but eventually that filters into the public market.
00:23:13
Speaker
And so people who know, who are watching the runway can kind of see what the trend is going to be.
00:23:20
Speaker
So it sort of raises this question about, for me, about whether trends sort of happen top down or bottom up, if that makes sense.
00:23:29
Speaker
Now, you've just described the idea of independent artists sort of working according to their own impulses and their own sort of creative interests.
00:23:40
Speaker
But if I think about historic trends, like in the antiques world, for example, there might be a wave, right, of interest in, say, you know, if we think of high Baroque style, right, which is very popular in the 17th century, but then it comes back in the Rococo period in the middle of the 18th century.
Influence of Historical Figures on Trends
00:24:00
Speaker
Is that organic?
00:24:01
Speaker
Or is that because Thomas Chippendale published the
00:24:04
Speaker
the director in 1754 and everybody loved his work and started emulating him.
00:24:11
Speaker
I mean, how much of this is sort of driven by individual creativity and impulse and how much of it is sort of creators reacting to the spaces that they're living in?
00:24:22
Speaker
I would say that the only thing I would add, these are all valid questions.
00:24:26
Speaker
I would say what I would add to that is there's a kind of a wisdom of crowds going on.
00:24:32
Speaker
No one creative work, whatever it is, becomes successful on its own.
Roles in Design Industry Success
00:24:40
Speaker
So, you know, we talk about music and we talk about the Beatles, right?
00:24:43
Speaker
So yes, the Beatles themselves, like they are the ones that created the sound.
00:24:48
Speaker
It's just a limited number of them in a room, in a studio making an album.
00:24:52
Speaker
But we also have to not forget that there was probably someone at a radio station who decided to start playing some of the early ones.
00:25:00
Speaker
There is a record producer.
00:25:02
Speaker
There was a lawyer that got them the right contract at the right time.
00:25:06
Speaker
There was, you know, there is so much else going on around any sort of creative person.
00:25:13
Speaker
So in the design world, you have a designer who can design anything, right?
00:25:17
Speaker
Like let's take Philippe Starck.
00:25:19
Speaker
He can design furniture.
00:25:20
Speaker
He can design a lamp.
00:25:21
Speaker
He can design a boat.
00:25:22
Speaker
He can design a pen.
00:25:23
Speaker
He can do anything.
00:25:24
Speaker
But he has a huge studio.
00:25:26
Speaker
And of course, we always forget for a lot of artists in history, you forget that a lot of them had lots of help.
00:25:31
Speaker
It's not just one person.
00:25:33
Speaker
But there's like the brand, there's the marketing person, there's someone in sales that says, you know what, we need a chair.
00:25:39
Speaker
Can we get someone to design a chair before they even get to Philippe Stark?
00:25:43
Speaker
There's a brief that they might give to the designer.
00:25:45
Speaker
There's once the designer introduces the piece that maybe they worked on
00:25:51
Speaker
that piece with engineers to make it feasible, there were press that saw things that pushed it forward.
00:25:57
Speaker
Like, I think sometimes we have to remember that creativity and trends and like the way in which we kind of like live our lives aesthetically and culturally, it's, we sometimes give too much credit to just to one creator, right?
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:13
Speaker
And with the podcast, yes, I'm the interviewer.
00:26:16
Speaker
I'm the commonality between all of my episodes.
00:26:19
Speaker
But for 99% of them, it's really not about me at all.
00:26:23
Speaker
It's always about the guests.
00:26:24
Speaker
The guest makes all of the decisions.
00:26:27
Speaker
They don't make all the decisions, but they're the ones creating 90% of the content.
00:26:32
Speaker
I'm just editing what they're giving me.
00:26:34
Speaker
And I can tell you, like after listening to so many people, so many really famous people can tell you like, this person saw my paintings and gave me my first show when no one else would.
00:26:46
Speaker
And those people sometimes are the ones you could say they created trends, not necessarily just the creator.
00:26:55
Speaker
And I think that's what makes our current moment in culture kind of fascinating is that we now have social media and so we rather than gatekeepers and we have to ask ourselves, is this sort of like the wisdom of the viral crowd, is that better than the individual gatekeeper who discovered someone and with one flick of their wrist make someone's career by giving them a show or what have you?
Social Media's Role in Trend Formation
00:27:23
Speaker
rather than some people who are just famous for being huge on social media through some magic invisible hand of the market.
00:27:31
Speaker
So I think that's what's kind of interesting today.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker
Well, and of course, how much of that power is now vested in the mysterious all-powerful algorithm?
00:27:40
Speaker
Right.
00:27:41
Speaker
Which determines what we're seeing in the first place.
00:27:44
Speaker
Right.
00:27:44
Speaker
Exactly.
00:27:45
Speaker
So it's, you know, it's something that is constantly evolving.
00:27:48
Speaker
But I think we're in uncharted territory in terms of like,
00:27:52
Speaker
art and design and culture and how all of this is now being dictated in ways that we just never had before in civilization.
00:28:01
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:28:29
Speaker
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00:28:29
Speaker
So, okay.
00:28:30
Speaker
So I wanted to pick your brain about a couple of specific trends and we'll sort of see where we get with these, but just to have a couple of examples that we can point to and think about in the terms that we've been talking about.
00:28:43
Speaker
And the natural place to start for me, because I'm coming out of the antiques world, is minimalism.
Minimalism vs. Antiques Trade
00:28:51
Speaker
which is maybe the trend that has most infuriated antiques dealers above and beyond any other trend in history, because minimalism is almost by definition antithetical to their trade.
00:29:05
Speaker
And that's partly because, you know, we think about a lot of antiques as being very fussy, but of course, not all antiques are fussy.
00:29:13
Speaker
They're very simple geometric antiques as well.
00:29:16
Speaker
But if you're really embracing the idea of minimalism, it means fewer pieces.
00:29:22
Speaker
It means sparser rooms.
00:29:23
Speaker
It means, you know, less for an antique dealer to sell you.
00:29:27
Speaker
So it's bad for business.
00:29:29
Speaker
But that trend and all the hay that was made out of that seems to have kind of petered out.
00:29:36
Speaker
It's maybe been replaced by a reactionary...
00:29:40
Speaker
a kind of maximalism um although now i'm not sure if that's even really in vogue anymore it's i i don't feel like i have my finger very well on the pulse of this but there it does seem to me over the last couple of decades to have been a move generally speaking toward minimalism and generally speaking back out of it and i wonder if you think first of all if that's an accurate
00:30:04
Speaker
assessment.
00:30:05
Speaker
And, you know, if you have any intuition about what's really underlying that movement.
00:30:12
Speaker
I would say that sort of trends are largely dying more and more in terms of interiors and how people live.
Are We in a 'Post-Trend' Era?
00:30:21
Speaker
I think we're kind of almost post-trend at this moment, because if you want to set out to design a home, right, in this, let's say you did it in the 70s,
00:30:30
Speaker
The sources that you had available to you were antiques dealers that were local, the brands that sold furniture in your city or in your region.
00:30:42
Speaker
And your inspiration came from like one of three sources, right?
00:30:45
Speaker
You may have like, I don't know, Architectural Digest, the New York Times and whatever.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:52
Speaker
Today, you have not just social media and an endless scroll of inspiration, but this idea of to the trade only is kind of largely dead at this point.
00:31:03
Speaker
The modern era of international trade and being able to go on a phone and buy something on a brooch from China.
00:31:11
Speaker
some auction house in Belgium and have it sent to you overnight from via FedEx is like a totally new phenomenon in history.
00:31:18
Speaker
And so you kind of can do whatever you want.
00:31:20
Speaker
There is no restriction on what you can do and how you can do it and where you get your stuff from.
00:31:29
Speaker
However, all that being said, like –
00:31:32
Speaker
I think now we're, we kind of had this maximalism moment.
00:31:36
Speaker
Now we're kind of coming back to center a little bit.
00:31:38
Speaker
Most of the homes that I see that I think are popular on Instagram are not minimal, not maximal.
00:31:45
Speaker
They're not, we're not, we're not all trying to be Renzo Monjardino anymore.
00:31:50
Speaker
Like we're, it's somewhere in the middle.
00:31:54
Speaker
And yeah,
00:31:55
Speaker
I know a lot of young designers, interior designers, especially in New York, you know, I've interviewed many of them and they all mention, you know, Jean-Michel Franck in that era of sort of deco and where it's collecting was strong, but it wasn't too fussy, but it wasn't too minimal.
00:32:12
Speaker
It was somewhere in the middle, somewhere in between.
00:32:15
Speaker
And I think that's sort of striking a chord with people.
00:32:17
Speaker
It's more about people want to be able to touch on anything.
00:32:21
Speaker
I can say that a lot of interior designers want to do minimal anything.
00:32:25
Speaker
Architects always want everything to be super minimal and interior designers want things to be as maximal as possible because that's how they make their money off of percentages of what goes on.
00:32:35
Speaker
So I don't think minimalism will ever truly be there, but yeah,
00:32:41
Speaker
You know, I also think there is something to the pandemic and to the way we live our lives now when we're at home a lot more than we used to be.
00:32:48
Speaker
And it's very hard to raise kids or run a podcast from your home if everything around you is very uncomfortable and very austere.
00:32:59
Speaker
In the past decade, we've seen a lot of people returning to cities and not necessarily embracing a sort of suburban life anymore.
00:33:08
Speaker
Instead, we're kind of in this moment of the second home, right?
00:33:12
Speaker
Where sometimes the first home that people buy is actually a second home, not a primary residence.
00:33:17
Speaker
So I think all of these things have this sort of effect on, on how people choose to live.
00:33:23
Speaker
And I don't think it's about, I don't think it's possible really.
00:33:26
Speaker
It's very rare for me to find a home that's like truly minimal, um, anymore.
00:33:32
Speaker
Uh, mostly because let's face it, like real estate in cities are very expensive.
00:33:37
Speaker
They're small.
00:33:37
Speaker
It's hard to have own everything if you need to put it in a small space.
00:33:41
Speaker
So I would say we're, we're kind of post trend on that.
00:33:44
Speaker
Uh, uh,
00:33:46
Speaker
One of the problems we have in design is we don't have enough words to describe things.
00:33:49
Speaker
We keep using words like minimalism and maximalism.
00:33:52
Speaker
And it's really hard for us to really describe moments that we're
Challenges in Naming New Trends
00:33:57
Speaker
in.
00:33:57
Speaker
And there used to be a time where every 10 years you had a new trend and it had a formal name because someone gave it a name.
00:34:05
Speaker
And we could all stick to that for a decade and then move on.
00:34:07
Speaker
But now there's so many trends out there, no one even bothers to name them anymore.
00:34:11
Speaker
And there's no authority in terms of who gets to name what.
00:34:16
Speaker
So that's interesting because I've sometimes thought, well, we have these major art historic periods that we think about.
00:34:23
Speaker
I mean, Belle Epoque or Art Nouveau or Art Deco or Neoclassical, Rococo, what have you.
00:34:32
Speaker
And a lot of these terms, they feel like the sort of thing that art historians have come up with after the fact to describe something analytically.
00:34:42
Speaker
And so I've sort of assumed that as we move far enough into the future, you know, we'll have art historians coming up with names for the trends that we're experiencing now.
00:34:53
Speaker
But you're saying maybe we're actually at a point where the vocabulary is just not sufficient to the task anymore.
00:35:01
Speaker
No.
00:35:01
Speaker
And I also think the way, I think locality has a lot to do with it.
00:35:05
Speaker
You know, I remember when I was working at Surface Magazine, we were talking, it was, everything was about locality, Mexican design, Brooklyn design, London design, English design, like whatever it was,
00:35:18
Speaker
It was always very localized to a culture, to a city, to something like that.
00:35:25
Speaker
Or to the faraway land of Brooklyn, as it was like such a moment when there was such a thing as Brooklyn design.
00:35:33
Speaker
Today, like the only space that matters is sort of cyberspace.
00:35:38
Speaker
We're much more likely today for wealthy people today, or even just upper middle class people today, to have one home in one country and we're in one state and one in another.
00:35:49
Speaker
And so people of wealth, especially in the United States, they have a lot of wealth and there's this explosion of wealth.
00:35:58
Speaker
So when you have a lot of money and you have a lot of homes,
00:36:02
Speaker
the number of homes is for the upper one-tenth of 1% is really high.
00:36:07
Speaker
So you don't really have to think as much, especially if you're hiring an interior designer, because nothing seems final to you.
00:36:15
Speaker
Nothing you have to really truly live with if you have three or four homes, right?
00:36:19
Speaker
It's just however suits the mood of wherever you are.
Blurring Regional Design Distinctions
00:36:22
Speaker
So if you're a New Yorker and you have a place in Paris and you have a place in New York and you have a place in the Caribbean, it's sort of like
00:36:31
Speaker
you're bringing your tastes to all these different places through these interior designers.
00:36:35
Speaker
Interior designers used to be much more localized to the region where they work, but now people fly all over the place to do things.
00:36:44
Speaker
And so that's just as like another nail in the coffin when it comes to trends.
00:36:48
Speaker
Like I could show you three apartments and one will be in London and one will be in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the other one will be maybe in Tokyo.
00:36:57
Speaker
And it may be kind of hard to tell the difference between some of them.
00:37:01
Speaker
Or way harder now than it was maybe 30 years ago.
00:37:05
Speaker
You know what that reminds me of a little bit?
00:37:07
Speaker
Having a large collection of brooches.
00:37:09
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:10
Speaker
You can select one for whatever event.
00:37:12
Speaker
You don't have to be wedded to the same thing every day.
00:37:15
Speaker
Exactly.
00:37:16
Speaker
You can try things on for size.
00:37:18
Speaker
pick your own trend for this particular evening.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:24
Speaker
And today when designing a home, you can really kind of do whatever you want.
00:37:29
Speaker
And you really, if you want to live in a home that is 100% 18th century Americana, like you can, like it's not that hard today to kind of embrace that.
00:37:42
Speaker
Whereas our parents, that wouldn't be possible for them.
00:37:46
Speaker
Well, let me try one more trend on for size and see what you have to say about this one, eclecticism.
Popularity of Eclecticism in Design
00:37:52
Speaker
And so this is an idea, you know, the kind of, you know, mixing and matching of diverse materials that, you know, becomes very popular.
00:38:01
Speaker
I think of this in the context of the great Kunstkammerz of the 17th century, where there's this effort to find the most interesting things from all over the world and put them in the same room or even in the same cabinet.
00:38:13
Speaker
And then that sort of loses a little bit of steam for a while, but it picks back up again in the Victorian period and then maybe lose a steam again.
00:38:23
Speaker
But today, I mean, it's such a trope, the idea of, you know, designing a room that has both new and old.
00:38:32
Speaker
Sort of that whole idea has been so popular for so long, I feel like it's almost jumped the shark.
00:38:37
Speaker
I mean, you've got art fairs now like Tfaf that in New York last month presented this incredible array of modern and contemporary galleries, but then also a handful of antiquity galleries.
00:38:53
Speaker
And they've been doing that for a number of years now.
00:38:55
Speaker
And that's, I think, a really sort of extreme form of eclecticism that they seem to think works really well and the fair goers seem to think works really well.
00:39:06
Speaker
Are we in a, an eclectic moment now?
00:39:09
Speaker
That's really hard to say.
00:39:11
Speaker
I, I view it through a design writer's lens.
00:39:13
Speaker
So I can tell you that when we don't know what to call it, we just call it eclectic.
00:39:17
Speaker
Like we don't know what, if we, if something is just spare, spare, we just call it minimal.
00:39:24
Speaker
If it's something that has just a lots of stuff in it, we call it maximalism.
00:39:28
Speaker
Um,
00:39:29
Speaker
I can't say that we're living in an eclectic era, but I think if we're post-trend, right, then it kind of might be closer to eclectic rather than to minimal or maximal or whatever.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:44
Speaker
But yeah, it's one of the problems when you're kind of in a post-trend era is that like...
Describing Trends: Challenges for Writers
00:39:50
Speaker
one man's eclectic is another man's maximal or whatever.
00:39:53
Speaker
Like it's very, we sort of don't have enough words to describe what we're doing or what we're looking at.
00:40:00
Speaker
And so sometimes we just sort of use these terms because you don't really have a way of describing things.
00:40:06
Speaker
Or we're all used to talking about design in the way that we learned about art in high school.
00:40:14
Speaker
So we're used to learning about art where like first there was the Renaissance and then came Romantics and then was Impressionism and then was Modernism and then was whatever.
00:40:28
Speaker
And we could say like these paintings were this era and these statues were that era and everything has a little label to it.
00:40:38
Speaker
And then when we get into your design, you have like period art deco and modern mid-century modernism and post-modernism.
00:40:47
Speaker
And we're used to giving everything to fit in a neat little box.
00:40:52
Speaker
And then when it comes to this world now where our eyeballs are just sort of like
00:40:56
Speaker
inundated with images of interiors and rooms and architecture and products and objects, we're like, oh, I got to give this a label.
00:41:04
Speaker
And then we just kind of always wind up with calling it minimal, modern, maximal, eclectic.
00:41:11
Speaker
But like really words have started to fail us.
00:41:14
Speaker
And so we only, in English, we only have like three or four.
00:41:17
Speaker
And so that's, we kind of keep thinking about
00:41:22
Speaker
interiors like we think about art.
00:41:26
Speaker
And really it's not a great thing to do because it's just sort of, A, it's kind of irrelevant, but it's also the words don't really have any power or specificity like we did growing up, you know, maybe learning about the art world through a slideshow or someone's saying like, this is impressionism.
00:41:47
Speaker
This is romanticism.
00:41:49
Speaker
This is, you know, early Renaissance, you know, you go into the medieval wing of any museum and it's all, you know, small paintings of Jesus with gold on it.
00:42:01
Speaker
Like it's all the same.
00:42:03
Speaker
They're all kind of using the same techniques.
00:42:04
Speaker
They're all using the same materials.
00:42:08
Speaker
So words are kind of failing us.
00:42:09
Speaker
And I think I can speak for all design writers.
00:42:13
Speaker
We don't always have the right words to use.
00:42:16
Speaker
And it kind of makes these questions come up over again and again.
00:42:20
Speaker
Is it sort of, is it liberating to be in a post-trend world where you're not constrained by the mores that are sort of shared across your slice of society?
Individuality Over Traditional Trends
00:42:34
Speaker
I mean, art demands constraints, right?
00:42:37
Speaker
You have to have a set of rules to work within in order to express your creativity.
00:42:41
Speaker
I mean, are we just totally untethered and adrift far from shore?
00:42:48
Speaker
How do you see that?
00:42:49
Speaker
I think we're living in a personality economy where it's really the people that are driving the conversation, not the objects.
00:43:00
Speaker
The people are unique and the people's personalities and the way they communicate is what's getting transmitted, not how we transmitted all of these trends in the past.
00:43:17
Speaker
So I wrote Kelly Wurstler's last book, right?
00:43:20
Speaker
I couldn't tell you exactly what box she fits into with her interior design, but people just have to say Kelly Wurstler.
00:43:28
Speaker
Like it's her, it's her and only her.
00:43:32
Speaker
So all of the designers have a very unique background.
00:43:37
Speaker
outlook to their designs because we live in an era where everyone can kind of pull from anything.
00:43:42
Speaker
So, and this extends to media too.
00:43:45
Speaker
Like what's really popular in media is not necessarily a magazine like my old house and garden that I used to work for in the US, which no longer exists.
00:43:55
Speaker
But, you know, magazines that are like personality, they're driven by personalities.
00:43:59
Speaker
They're not necessarily driven by interior design and architecture magazine.
00:44:05
Speaker
It's very kind of like
00:44:07
Speaker
We're talking about people and social media and it's very personality driven.
00:44:11
Speaker
So I think that kind of is a big factor.
00:44:14
Speaker
Well, I have to say as an antiques guy, that actually feels very encouraging because if you want something that has personality and that can communicate personality and capture it, express it.
00:44:28
Speaker
you know, surely you want something ancient, something, something with that character, you know, something different from anything that anybody else can have, because there's only one of them.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, you and I have talked about this in the past.
00:44:42
Speaker
I think what some of the great dealers now, it's not always about what you have, but how you present it.
00:44:52
Speaker
And I think that a lot of the design galleries and antiques dealers and...
00:44:58
Speaker
this is where a lot of the disciplines are starting to merge together, right?
00:45:02
Speaker
It's really about how you package and present and create a narrative around what you're showing.
00:45:08
Speaker
It's not just an object by itself in a white box, right?
00:45:12
Speaker
It's always about the sort of
00:45:14
Speaker
the narrative behind everything and how you're presenting them, that is part of your person, that is obviously comes from your personality.
00:45:22
Speaker
And that creates, that's what you're selling.
00:45:25
Speaker
You're not always just selling the object on its own.
00:45:28
Speaker
And when you wear that Jensen brooch to a party, you know, you're wearing both a piece of jewelry and a fashion accoutrement, but you're also wearing a ready-made story.
00:45:38
Speaker
And when someone asks you about it,
00:45:40
Speaker
You can pull that out and say, you know, there's something really interesting behind this.
00:45:45
Speaker
It's, you know, part of me.
00:45:48
Speaker
It's part of my biography.
00:45:51
Speaker
Now it's all about why things express your own point of view or what you saw in the art and how it connects to your own personality rather than just tell a story signifying how worldly you are or how wealthy you are, your status.
00:46:07
Speaker
It's now just reflecting your own personality.
00:46:10
Speaker
Well, Dan, before I let you go, any advice for listeners who might be thinking about putting together a brooch collection?
00:46:17
Speaker
be prepared to scroll through hundreds and hundreds of really awful tacky things, uh, in, in, on the apps.
00:46:26
Speaker
I use invaluable myself, uh, to, to peruse various different auctions, but, uh, yeah, be prepared to kind of find a bunch of stinkers, uh, before you kind of land on something.
00:46:36
Speaker
Sometimes you have to buy them in a group and then one is good and the rest you never wear.
00:46:42
Speaker
Um, but, um,
00:46:43
Speaker
it's great.
00:46:43
Speaker
You know, when this whole podcasting game is over, maybe I'll start my own, my own collection of brooches.
00:46:49
Speaker
Um, and maybe you could be my first client.
00:46:51
Speaker
I love it.
00:46:52
Speaker
Something to look forward to.
00:46:54
Speaker
Well, Dan Rubensian, thanks so much for joining me on Curious Subjects.
00:46:57
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.
00:47:00
Speaker
Today's episode was edited by Julian Minerva and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
00:47:06
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:47:10
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.
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Speaker
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