This week we watched a film about the life and times of married couple Charles and Ray Eames who are most noted for their chair designs. I have to admit that I actually wasn’t too familiar with their work beforehand, but I found the documentary a very interesting glimpse into their philosophy of design. However, it was the quote: ‘we design the best, for the most, for the least’ that really grabbed my attention, given the topic of my blog around designing for the masses.
This mission statement certainly rang true for one of their first projects; designing splints to aid in the war effort. I really love how they took a material-based approach using the same moulded plywood technique developed for their chairs to produce an intriguingly beautiful design that functioned far better than its metal predecessors.
However, I would argue whether Eames’ chairs are really made ‘for the most, for the least’. This isn’t a criticism of the actual design itself, far from it, I think the plywood moulded and shaped perfectly to the human form is an ingenious design that came from rigorous material and user testing, which I appreciate. But this design also came with a high price point and soon became synonymous with America’s new money middle class who were moving to suburbia. These days the Eames’ original design has now been copied by almost every furniture company on the planet and is much more readily available. Just a quick visit to the chairs section on the IKEA website and you can see hundreds of designs that were clearly inspired by the Eames’ one. So is this a bad thing? Is it ok for companies to blatantly rip-off a someone else’s design for their own monetary gain? To answer this, I’ll direct you to a famous scene from the movie ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, in which Meryl Streep’s fashion editor-in-chief character tells the dumpy and unfashionable Anne Hathaway that the fashion industry picked out the top that she’s currently wearing:
‘You're blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then Yves Saint Laurent showed cerulean military jackets, then cerulean quickly shot up in the collections of eight different designers. And it filtered down through department stores and trickled on down onto some tragic Casual Corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. That blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think you made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry.’
I think, in this case, the same could be said of the chair design. What started out as a high-end product aimed at the upper-middle classes who wanted new and exciting furniture to set them apart from their parent’s generation, has now experienced the same ‘trickle down’ effect. Not only did this ground-breaking design change the way furniture was produced by taking away the need for upholstery and introducing innovative new manufacturing techniques, it became a popular and fashionable item. It was only natural that other brands would notice this and start producing their own chairs in the same way.
So now I could buy an Eames DSW armchair for £395, or a similar looking IKEA one, made from the same materials, for just £55. For better or for worse, this is how all aspects of design work. Copycats will eventually find ways to make the original cheaper and less exclusive so that everyone can enjoy them. This just proves that the Eame’s chair designs must be good, after all; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Morven
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