A chair with an opinion

I wasn’t looking for a chair.

I was looking for a lamp, in a second-hand shop, on a slow Sunday.

Then I saw it.

Sagging seat. Mauve fabric with a faint geometric pattern. Wooden arms with a strange, rounded bulge at the ends, like they’d been designed by someone who’d only heard chairs described.

The tag said 1987.

It was the ugliest thing in the shop!!!

I stood there for ten minutes, and I wanted it.

That’s when I got suspicious of myself.

Ten years ago, I would have walked past it without blinking.

Nothing about the chair had changed.

Something about me had.

Here’s how I think it works.

Ugly isn’t a fixed quality. It’s a reaction to what’s currently considered good.

When a style is everywhere, it’s invisible. When it’s brand new, it’s exciting. When it’s about twenty or thirty years old, it’s embarrassing, because it reminds us of a time we’ve just left behind.

Then the embarrassment fades.

What’s left looks bold, slightly odd, and honest in a way polished things often aren’t.

The chair isn’t suddenly better.

We’re just tired of everything looking agreeable.

When every room is soft, neutral, and carefully photographed, a chair with a weird bulge on its arms feels like someone with an opinion.

That’s the real pull!!

Not nostalgia for 1987, which I barely remember.

It’s a hunger for objects that don’t look like they were approved by a committee.

I’m not saying buy every ugly thing you find.

Ask whether it’s interesting, or just ugly.

The difference is whether you’d still want to look at it in a year.

I haven’t bought the chair yet.

But I went back to look at it twice, and that, in my professional opinion, is how every bad decision begins!!