Mid-century modern furniture has always been popular, simply because it’s just so good. Loved by Kelly Wearstler, Dakota Johnson, and Rosie-Huntington Whitely, mid-century isn’t going out of fashion any time soon.
Made famous in the States after WWII, mid-century modern interiors keep it simple with clean lines, minimalist designs, and neutral tones. But, since we love to shake things up a bit, my ideal interior style period sits nicely between mid-century modern and space age, where we keep those smooth lines, but add in a few pops of colour, or even a great pattern.
These chairs will literally make a room, so if you’re very lazy with your interiors, it’s easy to have one or two of these statement chairs to command attention, and then you can skive off with the rest of the room.
Behold, my favourite chairs first designed around the 1970’s, that will cost you an arm and a leg, but will last you a lifetime. As I said, mid-century modern isn’t getting ugly anytime soon.
Now, I’m not going to explain these chairs to you, because you have eyes presumably, and hopefully you can see out of them. I’m also not going to give you a history lesson because A) they’re all from around 1970, B) history lessons are boring, and C) I don’t know anything about interior design. So, what I am going to do, is come up with fantastic scenarios in which feature these glorious chairs, and whichever scenario you align with the most – that’s the chair you’ll buy. And then I can come over and sit in it, and you can take great Instagram-worthy photos of me on your chair, that’ll I’ll put on my Instagram and pretend it’s my chair. Gotcha? Cool. Pick your fighter…
Soriana Lounge Chair by Tobia Scarpa
Welcome. You’re on the set of the movie Cars 4. Alexander McQueen is now a multi-millionaire due to his several-time wins of the Piston Cup, his sponsorship deals, and also his extortionate pay check from Cars 1, 2, and 3. He has finally married the love of his life, Sally Carrera, who turns out to be true to form (she is a Porsche after all) and turns out to have very expensive taste. After a long day of filming on a dirt track, he comes home to his elaborate 70’s themed sunken lounge, within which sits 4 cream Soriana Lounge chairs. Since he is a car, and he does not sit on chairs, the Soriana Lounge chairs are simply a very expensive set of decorations, but he likes them anyway because of their metal smiles, and back-buttoned eyes. His maid comes in with a tall glass of petrol to relax him after a long, hard day. He takes deep breath. “Welcome home,” says Owen Wilson.
Togo Fireside Chair
Your name is Andrea and you live in Amsterdam with your boyfriend. Your boyfriend is an up-and-coming artist, who was very loose and romantic when you first met him, but as his career took a turn for the stars, his mood took a turn for the worse. Now he will only eat food that has been grown from the local community vegetable garden, and he refuses to wash his paint-stained clothes and hands as it “interrupts the flow of his subconscious”. They live in a very white double-storied apartment, with his studio out the back. However, lately his studio has turned into the whole apartment, and there are blue fingerprints all over your bone china tea set from your grandmother. Finally, after a big blowout, you’ve had enough. While your boyfriend – let’s call him Francesco – is out at a gallery opening, you pack up your stuff, and put it in your mate’s van who’s waiting outside. Turns out your mate is actually the love of your life, but you don’t know that yet. You go back into the apartment, walk into his studio, pick up pots of paint, and proceed to transform the entire two-story apartment into a Jackson Pollock painting. Finally, you take a deep breath leave the apartment. You jump into the passenger seat of the van, and slam the door. You take a deep breath. Your mate says, “Ready?” You say, “Wait, I forgot one last thing….” You take the Togo Fireside chair.
Sesann Armchair by Gianfranco Frattini for Tacchini
A space age chair first designed in 1970, it’s the year 2021, but you’re living in 3021 because you’re killing your life. Your name is Drake, and you have completely redesigned this ginormous private jet that some random man bought you because he’s a suck-up probably, but you’re not going to judge him for it, because now you have a Boeing 747 as a private jet, when Kanye is flying around in some dinky little Bombardier. Anyway, you’ve redesigned the entire interior cabin, which includes 4 bedrooms with silk sheets (probably), 4 ensuite bathrooms (the master bathroom having a golden throne), a cinema room, a gambling room complete with extra oxygen, branded water bottles with my little Owl logo on it, lava lamps on every available surface paired with mood lighting, and all the seats having been changed to Sesann armchairs – perhaps the classiest addition to this abomination – ahem, sorry – this amaaazing PJ that you designed all by your own self. As Drake. The chrome piping on the seats are excellent to attach seatbelts too, and your sugar daddy only had to pay an extra 2 mil to tip off the Health & Safety Board so you could get away with it. Anyway, you don’t think you can use the jet so much anymore, because you still have to pay for fuel and you’re currently being sued for over $2 billion USD due to people dying at this concert you played in. You did have a really good time at the strip club afterwards though. Do you think you can ask for that $1 million dollars back that you threw in the air? They’d give it back to you, right? Right?
LC3 Armchair by Le Corbusier
It’s tiring working as an architect, but it’s okay because you love the job. It’s 9PM and you’ve been working on a brief for a client since last Tuesday. You stoop to retrieve the small bottle of Bourbon from the drawer in your desk – honestly, you need a drink after dealing with this client. Forever changing his mind on where he wants the bathrooms positioned, and every time he changes his mind, we have to re-do the entire plumbing system to accommodate. Every hour spent deliberating is one we can charge, but still, it’s frustrating being stuck on the same problem, day in, day out. Especially when the client yells at you for taking too long, and then changes his mind yet again. Yes, it’s been a long day – a long month even. You collapse into your LC3 armchair, your favourite armchair, one that you bought with your first big paycheck, and a chair you’ve loved ever since. Cubist, and rigid-looking, the chair is deceptively comfortable – you’ve fallen asleep in it a few times on nights like these, only to be found the next morning by an embarrassed intern, or your blushing assistant. You drain the glass and nestle back into your chair, thoughts lost in projects you waste time dreaming about when you’re bored to tears of the projects you’ve got. Dreaming of open-air archways for windows and infinity pools off cliffs, your head lulls back onto the chair, mouth wide open, fast asleep, ready for someone to wake you up the next morning for a long day of rearranging bathroom locations.
Camaleonda Armchair
You can’t believe that Clint the intern got your coffee order wrong – doesn’t he know that you have better things to do that go down to the café and order another coffee (your correct order)?? Honestly, you have to write a whole article today on the newest variety of women’s sex toys, and you have to try them all out in the ladies’ bathroom – editor’s orders. Then, you have to go to this try on the newest Valentino collection in store, so you can pick out what you want from the newest season, and you know that nothing looks good on you unless you’ve had your Soy Caramel Latte With An Extra Shot Hold The Caramel And Add One Extra Pump Of Vanilla With Extra Splenda. Then, after that, you have to go over to your friend’s house to “interview” them about their newest line of gloves for pet snakes they’ve released, but really you’re just going over there to bitch about your mutual friend’s new boyfriend, who got so drunk at Annabel’s last weekend that he spilled a whole martini over your new Versace Medusa’s. Like, does he not know there’s a waiting list? Finally, after that long stressful day, you have to go and get your nails done at your favourite manicurist, whose services are so expensive that they’ve now bought themselves Camaleonda chairs for clients to wait in while their manicurists finish chatting amongst themselves and outwardly bitching about the new clients coming in. You love your manicurist, but she hates you. She once even told her friend that you have super fat ankles, from across the room, while there were three other people waiting. One of them smiled at you sympathetically, and you told her to fuck off. You don’t need her pity – you work at Love Magazine.
DS-1025 by De Sede
It’s the year 4587YI and you’ve just completed your third rotation of the planet AXA3000. You’re a little bit bummed out because your boyfriend was just eaten by a Terraniop while he was surveying a new launch pad site a couple planets over, which is really annoying because he was going to take you out to eat some laksa at your favourite restaurant, and now you’re calling up all your LoveAstra matches trying to find a date that can come with you to the laksa place so you can eat your favourite meal, and hopefully find a new boyfriend to pay for it. One of your matches named Mark is free tonight and you both meet at the laksa place coordinates at 1900 hours. Mark spends the whole time drinking Asahi’s and quietly burping under his breath, while talking non-stop about this weird car race thing called Formula-E, where they race along the rings of Jupiter while trying not to get smashed by debris. Honestly, all you heard is “Sebastian Vistra this,” and “Lando Norra that,” and honestly all you did was blink at him while you slurped up your laksa and tried to tune him out. At the end of the meal, Mark slapped both hands on the table, said thank you for the meal, and it would be lovely to see you again, but he had to shoot off. What a fucking disaster. You go home after paying the whole bill, thinking you should have just gone by yourself, and that you’re going to delete that bloody LoveAstra widget off your tablet. When you get home, you open the blinds to watch the galaxy float around you. You’ve had enough for one day. You shrug off your Courrèges cream vinyl mini dress and throw it over your DS-1025 chair, because that’s all that chair is good for. You can’t sit on it because you just slide right off, so you use it as the clothes chair, where you put clothes that are too dirty to put back in your wardrobe, but too clean to send off to Laundry Galactica. You settle into your very expensive age-defying cryo pod for a good night’s sleep, and as you doze off, you wonder if your ex-boyfriend left anything to you in his post-mortem legal documents. Maybe you should download Raya…
Baloon Chair by Armani Casa
Your name is Ginevra and you live most of the time in Rome, but have an apartment in Milan, a house in Positano, a castle in Tuscany, and a villa in Porto Cervo. And that’s just the places in Italy! Right now, you’re pacing around the living room in Rome, on the phone with the DHL customs people, gesturing wildly with your Versace espresso cup. The maid is shuffling nervously at the doorway, afraid to interrupt and simultaneously afraid for the €41,000 white silk carpet. Unfortunately, your new cream alligator Birkin bag you had sent from the States has been diverted to the Customs Department of Exotic Land and Marine Animals, and you just absolutely need it before you take the jet to Porto Cervo for your friend Serena’s gala. You collapse onto the Camaleonda sofa and hold out your (thankfully) empty espresso cup to the maid without looking at her. You have no idea who bought this couch, or even in fact who designed any of the interiors in your places of leisure. All you know is that every 4 years you decide to change the aesthetic, and you don’t know where any of the furniture goes and you don’t particularly care. In a year and a half, you’ll be bored of all the white and change it all to tan. The Armani Casa Baloon Chair was never even sat on.
Le Bambole by Mario Bellini
Yeah, you’re a crypto bro, who made your money through Elon Musk’s Balls and NFT’s. Honestly, it started out as a bit of a joke – who’s going to make serious cash through a serious financial scheme named Elon Musk’s Balls? But then it worked out, and you did. Now you own a Lamborghini, and you have a hot influencer girlfriend who you struggle to relate to. You have a Brooklyn townhouse that’s made out of red brick, with wide windows and lots of natural light. You even have several Le Bambole chairs, which girls-who-aren’t-your-girlfriend always comment on when they come back home with you from the bar. You kind of miss having a real purpose, with all this free time on your hands. Back in the day, you used to work at a ship yard, and you took a lot of pleasure out of working with your hands and watching them create something that wasn’t there before, if it hadn’t been for you. No machines involved. No computers involved. And now you’re driving past the shipyard in your lambo, your mates waving at you as you pass, and wishing that you could be chatting with them while your worked, or you were on break, talking about Fred and his wife’s mission to have a baby after 4 years of trying, or Mikey’s latest struggle to pick up women at the bar, and his atrocious pick-up lines. Instead, no, you drive home from an afternoon swimming in the pool at your girlfriend’s house, to sit on those damn Le Bambole chairs, and reminisce about never fucking have them at all.