Op Ed: MAKE INTERIOR DESIGN AGAIN
Author:Sean YasharA Quarter-Century Audit of the Design Industry by Sean Yashar, founder of The Culture Creative
Having officially marked a quarter deep into the millennium, the time feels appropriate for a 21st-century (so far) design culture audit: What has the design industry gleaned over the last 25 years to help guide it for the next 25? Design, like all arts, is an ever-evolving dialogue. We must reflect to push the medium forward thoughtfully.
From the closed-door institutions of 20th-century interior design to the Y2K-era’s hopeful pursuit for design democratization, we have experienced a striking transformation of the design industry over the last quarter century, and possibly the most influential yet overlooked vibe shift in the history of the profession to date. Today’s interior design culture is in flux, and it deserves inspection and clarity to save it from its current path.
At the turn of the 21st century, in response to growing interest in the mainstream for home content, there was an intentional push by design leaders to open a historically closed interior design world to the masses. For those who can remember, the buzz term in the industry at the time was “democratization of design.” Initially an ideological agenda, the private world of decorating charted a new, more accessible and inclusive course.
The early 2000s were an exciting time to be alive in design, full of experimentation, with the intention to enroll a newfound audience of design enthusiasts through a new form of media I refer to as “design entertainment.” It was delightful to witness the concept of the modern-day influencer, born out of super fans of the Y2K blogosphere. Collaborations, now ubiquitous to the game, were innovative in the ’00s, bringing pop culture into design. How convenient it was to discover once rare archival imagery, digitized and disseminated on Pinterest for public access. Social media transformed design fairs from a midlevel manage- ment grind into exciting travel destinations for enthusiasts to learn, and to see and be seen.
For a golden moment, we were on track to have the decorative arts rise in the mainstream to levels of engagement and praise associated with fine art, film, fashion and music. Not one to gatekeep, early in my career I worked on projects that embraced the opening of the door. Many of my colleagues were similarly excited to share their love of design on a bigger stage for farther reach. What we as a community did not realize was that we were not opening a door per se, but rather Pandora’s box.
Before design democratization, interiors were defined through the merits of authenticity and discipline and judged through a binary of considerations: An interior designer created beauty or not. Quality or not. Details or not. Ideas or not. Even within a wide-ranging spectrum of styles, top talents worked from a baseline of accepted rules, allowing for a strong foundation for the art form to build upon. Whether in dialogue or discourse, inspired design was felt by its rigor: This was good for interior design.
Before design democratization, the decorative arts influenced the zeitgeist while functioning outside of the mainstream. Before there were infinite access points for civilians into the world of design, key markets held products in fortresses called design centers. Design centers were strictly to-the-trade, open to approved professionals only. This time-honored custom upheld the value of the craft of decorating and the prestige of the interior designer: This was good for interior design.
Before design democratization, a client would not collaborate with their interior designer. Rather than clients sharing mood boards, designers would formally present their schemes. A client could be chaperoned for a supervised visit to a showroom, but only to see preapproved FFE. In turn, clients themselves elected not to be actively involved in the process of decorating. Designers of the time functioned with more boundaries, professionalism and trust, delivering reveals at project completion. The popularity of turnkey projects in the prior century was the ultimate expression of decorators’ prowess and artistry. The concept of commissioning an interior was symbolic of the honorable role clients once played as patrons of the arts: This was good for interior design.
Before design democratization, the industry suffered from inequality. Interior design worked from a structure of exclusivity that kept many people out of access. There are explanations for why design was such a private field for so long, but nevertheless a significant consequence of the system was unfair privilege, class disparity and lack of diversity. In some ways, interior design was like polo, a luxury sport for the few who could afford a horse. This barrier to entry made some of the most inspiring interiors, furnishings, design objects, methods, materials and the very culture of decorative arts inaccessible to the general public. Media perpetuated inequalities for decades by narrowly focusing on affluence and the Western canon of beauty, thus promoting exclusionary practices that were at odds with healthy growth of the medium in the 21st century: This was bad for interior design.
Ultimately, the 21st-century movement from exclusion to equity became one of the instrumental forces for the industry’s paradigm shift. While it was important to rectify inequalities, our design leaders overshot the mark, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Our anything-goes design scene of today is a reckoning of our industry’s discriminatory past. Design democratization became a vehicle to quickly level up and embrace the public. While doing so, our leaders forgot to protect the essential tenets of the art form. The mistake is not in the opening of the door but in the execution of the opening.
It is universally accepted that knowledge is power, so it makes sense that the mainstreaming of interior design began as a bipartisan mission at its 2000s start. Design decision makers generally felt that only good could come from educating and enrolling the masses. What was underestimated was the truth behind another adage: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
In a blind rush to mainstream design, our industry leaders hopefully pursued a new category of members, without a measured strategy and proper dosage. In the void of checks and balances to protect honor for the metier, the industry gave birth to a generation of pseudo-experts, consumers rather than future shareholders of the true craft of design. Today, the once patron of the past has become the influencer—flattening, misinforming and competing rather than supporting design. These influencers have emboldened an audience who are not enthusiasts at all; in fact, they have been actively chipping away at the integrity and time-honored traditions of interior design.
Over the last decade we have seen the final remnants of promise of the Information Age fade away completely, replaced by an age of disruption. How did a new age, which was fueled by the promotion of freedom of expression, so quickly lead to the suppression of personal style? In an increasingly disillusioned world, the next generation of designers are becoming sheeple who are led to believe an unbelievable contradiction—that individuality is achieved through consensus aspirations to buy and live with the same exact things. We have more design options than ever before, but there is no denying that much of 21st-century interior design is suffocating from lack of new ideas, desperately clinging to likes over loves.
Without a leadership body like CFDA or a union like SAG-AFTRA, the interior design community was hijacked by “design entertainment,” which was intended to be integrated into the culture, not replace it. Unfortunately, the last quarter century has led to fracture rather than integration. We have to believe that our former design leaders did not realize that the start of the 21st century was a fork in the road between making design accessible or protecting the profession. If they had known, they surely would have added better guardrails.
In an age where the former patron is now the influencer, and the influencer is packaged as the expert, cosigned and endorsed by the media, we have officially entered an upside-down world that is trivializing the design profession. In this dystopic era, the faker is the maker. What is derivative is presented as original. The better one steals, the more applause is awarded. All the while, some of the most gifted creatives are falling back, their voices unmatched to compete with an army of pretenders who are holding loudspeakers in their hands and pushing slop content with the confidence of ignorance.
Design culture is at odds with an industry that prioritizes design entertainment over education. Ask yourself: Has the decades-long campaign to mainstream interior design increased honor for the metier or rather diluted it? Has an all-access pass led to greater appreciation of design objects or more brazen knockoffs? Has the free exchange of ideas led to more innovation or more sameness? Did we achieve the goals that our former design administration put forth at the start of the century, or have we lost the plot?
Was it worth it? The answer for me is no. Design entertainment is not design culture, just as fast fashion is not couture. We must get better at recognizing these two entities for their opposing purposes. If we can give half as much oxygen to integral design as we do design entertainment, our culture could replenish itself after decades of neglect.
Platforms that were once embraced as commons for the exchange of ideas are no longer spaces for dialogue. Social media is hardly social anymore; it is an increasingly isolating experience. Algorithms hold our attention while holding us back from our true selves. They farm our souls, turning us into data cattle. No wonder interior design is in the state it is in. Our domiciles have become a battlefield. Interior designers know best that our homes have the power to energize us or keep us down. Social media’s promotion of banality as taste is designed to keep the masses immobilized and transfixed by the screen machine.
Twenty-five years of access to interior design has led to a society that aspires for what? Pursuit of homogeneity? Each home like the other. Each Pinterest board referencing the same derivative source material. Pins that are often mislabeled, forever rewriting history of authorship that fewer people seem to find important. On observation of Gen Z’s design content, it is hard to justify how a generation more consumed with “mood” and “vibe” than at any prior time is equally obsessed with the glamorization of designer fakes they cutely call “dupes.”
By universal law, we know knockoffs cannot possess the energetic power of the real thing. Devoid of the flair of the author’s stroke of hand, a dupe will never have the aura Gen Z is in search of. If the “wellness” lifestyle that this younger generation promotes was anything more than a marketing ploy, they would not be able to stomach dupes, let alone embrace them as they currently are. It appears these designers may be embracing dupes to virtue signal their stance against capitalism, but to use their slang, “the math is not mathing” on this explanation. The truth is that fake attracts fake in this surrogate design scene.
Praise of the dupe should be a wake-up call, and putting a limit on the design community’s patience for design entertainment is the right path for the industry’s future. We must gatekeep. Not as a regressive step back to the exclusionary practices of the industry’s past, but as a necessity for the survival and growth of interior design in the future. Twenty-five years of observation is enough time to recognize that we must abort mission on the strategy of mainstreaming design.
Gatekeeping was wrong when it was rooted in exclusion, but there were merits to keeping the practice of design private. Content for the least common denominator may cast a wider net for quantitative metrics, but over time it erodes the fabric of the art form. Design democratization made it possible for more people than ever to understand the principles of interior design, but left to their own devices, consumers chose the alluring sell of conformity over individualism, commerce over art. It’s not their fault. Blame the parents, not the kids.
AI is not the issue either, but believing in the fallacy that it can threaten design is. The bigger problem is education. We have a generation so removed from the humanity that is intrinsic to designing that they believe artificial intelligence could replace the profession. If AI gathers collective consciousness, it will most likely create more blandness in design, not innovation. As designer Oliver Furth once shared: “Web-MD did not stop patients from going to doctors.” In fact, search results often include “seek medical attention.” AI should only reinforce the authority interior designers possess.
Rather than exist as unwitting victims of circumstance, I encourage interior designers to act with more integrity for their future selves, to limit their patience for what they put up with moving forward into this next design era. The moment our community collectively recognizes the need to nurture design culture over design entertainment, we can ignite a renaissance of profound appreciation for the profession. Let’s embrace an Imagination Age in contrast to our current misguided focus. Leading with a compass of curiosity, we can rebuild the engine that takes interior design into a positive next horizon.
