Design Beyond Vision

by David Howes

This text is excerpted from The Senses and Interior Design, edited by John Potvin, Marie-Eve Marchand and Benoit Beaulieu, published by Manchester University Press in late 2023. For the complete version of this paper, including references, please see the chapter in the book.

This paper presents a genealogy of the new ‘Age of Aesthetics’ proclaimed by American writer Virginia Postrel in The Substance of Style.[1] It does so from the standpoint of the sociology of consumption to begin with, and then follows up with an anthropologically-inspired critique of certain current trends in design thinking that purport to be grounded in the science of sensory evaluation, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Next, this paper entertains the style counsel of two legendary interior designers, Catherine Bailly Dunne and Ilse Crawford, with a particular focus on their practice as grounded in a ‘science of the concrete.’ It concludes by offering an alternative model for design practice centring on the figure of the interior designer as sensory ethnographer.

The New ‘Age of Aesthetics’

HomeSense is the name of a Canadian chain of discount home décor stores. As the store’s slogan suggests: ‘It makes perfect HomeSense.’[2] This name nicely expresses the theme of this essay: interiorizing the senses. However, it is the cover of the Fall 2000 Pier 1 Imports catalogue that more sensuously captures the spirit – and the message – of what follows. Pier 1 is a home furnishings store that specializes in wood and wicker furniture, textured draperies (velvet, corduroy), faux tribal art, cast iron candelabra, and scented candles – especially scented candles. The catalogue cover shows a miniature slate stone fountain, with earthy hues, suitable for a living room end table, or the garden.[3] Down the right side of the cover is a list of senses, each bordered by a different colour: feel (golden yellow), smell (grassy green), hear (hazy purple), taste (rose red), and see (burnt orange). Splashed across the image of the fountain is an advertising slogan: ‘Get in touch with your senses™’. The implication is that we have lost touch with our senses; shopping at Pier 1 Imports can help us recover them.

The checklist approach to the senses exemplified by the Pier 1 home décor catalogue is emblematic of the current vogue for sensory design and sensory marketing.[4] This trend has been theorized by Virginia Postrel in The Substance of Style. According to Postrel,[5] we live in a new ‘Age of Aesthetics’ – an age in which ‘design is everywhere, and everywhere is now designed.’ Indeed, it is impossible to miss the burgeoning emphasis on the ‘sense appeal’ both of commodities and of the venues in which they are sold, such as HomeSense, Pier 1, or Anthropologie. Attractive design is no longer a luxury: ‘We, … customers, demand it’ (i.e. aesthetic pleasure), Postrel holds.[6] But do we demand it, or has it been inculcated in us by the ‘consumer engineers’ (in Sheldon and Arens[7] apt phrase), who pay lip service to ‘We, customers’ all being Kings or Queens, while slyly manipulating our senses in the interests of moving merchandise?

In the sociological literature, Postrel’s ‘new aesthetic age’ is referred to as ‘the aestheticization of everyday life.’ Mike Featherstone reflects on the derivation of this phrase in Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. In one of its senses, he writes: ‘the aestheticization of everyday life can refer to the project of turning life into a work of art.’[8] Featherstone points to the example of the artistic countercultures that sprang up in mid- to late-nineteenth century European urban centres, such as Berlin and Paris -- the haunts of Baudelaire and company, most notably Comte Robert de Montesquiou.[9] In its most salient sense for us now, however, ‘the aestheticization of everyday life refers to the rapid flow of signs and images which saturates the fabric of everyday life in contemporary society.’ Elaborating further, Featherstone states, in the current conjuncture ‘we find an emphasis upon the effacement of the boundary between art and everyday life, the collapse of the distinction between high art and mass/popular culture, a general stylistic promiscuity and mixing of codes.’[10]

In The Substance of Style, Postrel (2003: 4) argues that ‘Aesthetics has become too important to be left in the hands of the aesthetes.’[11] So much for the dandies of the historical avant-garde and their contemporary counterparts! Rather more critically and perspicaciously, Featherstone points to how this appropriation or new valorization of the aesthetic paved the way for the growth of the so-called culture industries, ‘with painting moving into advertising, architecture into technical engineering, [and] handicrafts and sculpture into the industrial arts, to produce a mass culture.’[12] The so-called democratization of luxury is intimately bound up with the proliferation of mass production and mass consumption. This development was fuelled by the transformation of the nineteenth century regime of industrial capitalism into the consumer capitalism of today.[13] In place of the disciplining (and alienation) of the senses of the worker under the former regime, which attached a premium to discipline, thrift and moderation, in the twentieth century the worker was reborn as a consumer, and the onus shifted from moderation to instant gratification, conspicuous consumption, and the titillation of the senses (in place of having to curb them).

Digging deeper into the genealogy of the new ‘Age of Aesthetics,’ following the lead of sociologist Stuart Ewen in All Consuming Images,[14] we find that in the early decades of the twentieth century (which is somewhat earlier than Featherstone or Postrel would allow) giant industrial corporations, such as AEG, began to develop multi-purpose styling divisions. An industrial aesthetic was born, with a view to bringing coherence to the perceived ‘disorder’ of the marketplace. This development tipped the scales of capitalism, as consumption came to drive production and attractiveness came to override considerations of functionality or efficiency in the manufacture and marketing of products. Advertising companies sprang up and brought a new level of artistry to everyday life. A premium was attached to ‘eye-appeal,’ but the so-called creatives of the day also turned their attention on the ‘lower’ senses, most notably touch, which were seen as having been repressed by civilization, and sought to capitalize on their appeal as well.[15] If ‘art for art’s sake’ was the banner cry of the artists and ‘life for art’s sake’ that of the aesthetes, ‘art for control’s sake’ was the goal of the thoroughly modern designers and advertisers, or consumer engineers.

Alongside AEG, Dupont Chemical emerged as one of the leading drivers of the aestheticization of everyday life in the twentieth century. One of the products it visited upon ‘We, customers’ was shag carpeting. As architectural historian Chad Randl observes in ‘Sensuality and Shag Carpeting,’[16] shag fibre was a product of the ‘synthetic revolution,’ but for all that – unlike plastic, for example – it is markedly sensual. According to Randl, shag fit the postwar cultural preference for casual living, as exemplified by the practice of lounging on the floor watching TV or listening to LPs, instead of sitting upright on chairs or a sofa, and the new atmosphere of sexual permissiveness and experimentation that caught on in the 1960s and ‘70s: shag carpeting, as an ‘extension’ of body hair, with all the same connotations, was especially popular in bachelor pads and honeymoon suites, but also used to line bathrooms. Soft, plush, ‘natural’ (fur-like, grass-like), shag fibres ushered in a new style of human sensuousness. Randl brings out well how this transformation in sensuality was directed by the style divisions of Dupont Chemical and other manufacturers, with their corps of consumer engineers all dedicated to actively (re)fashioning our Umwelts.

[1] V. Postrel, The Substance of Style (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).

[2] Especially for the more impecunious amongst us, HomeSense being a discount store.

[3] To view the cover image of the Pier 1 catalogue see Figure 1 at http://www.percepnet.com/cien01_07_ang.htm 

[4] E. Lupton and A. Lipps, The Senses (New York: Cooper Hewitt, 2018); A. Krishna, Sensory Marketing (New York: Routledge, 2010)

[5] Postrel, Substance, p. 24

[6] Ibid. 5

[7] R. Sheldon and E. Arens, Consumer Engineering (New York: Arno Press, 1932)

[8]  M. Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1991), p. 66

[9] De Montesquiou was the real life figure after whom the character of Des Esseintes was modelled in J.K. Huysmann’s Against the Grain (New York: Dover, 1969). For an account of his sense-life see C Classen, The Color of Angels (London: Routledge, 1998) pp.113-16. See further, regarding the aesthetes who came after, J. Potvin, Deco Dandy (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2021).

[10] Featherstone, Consumer Culture, p. 67, 65

[11] Postrel, Substance, p. 4

[12] Featherstone, Consumer Culture, p. 73

[13] D. Howes, ‘HYPERAESTHESIA’ in D. Howes (ed.) Empire of the Senses (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005)

[14] S. Ewen, All Consuming Images (New York: Basic, 1988)

[15] ‘Make it snuggle in the palm’ – Sheldon and Arens, Consumer Engineering, pp. 101

[16] C. Randl, ‘Sensuality and Shag Carpeting’, The Senses and Society 5(2), 2010