BigShinyThing

A few years back, I visited family and friends in Tasmania, which is — full disclosure — the land of my birth. An island of rugged beauty, exceptional beaches, and primaeval rainforest, much of Tasmania drifts in a strange cultural haze of 1940s home counties tranquility: sleepy little towns where the social hub is the RSL lawn bowls or cricket club. The capital city, Hobart, has more cosmopolitan aspirations. Built overlooking a lovely harbour, nestled in the shadow of a looming mountain, it’s quite a bit Cornwall, and just a little bit Seattle. There is very fine eating and drinking to be done in Hobart. You should visit.

So, with gourmet thoughts in mind, it was exciting to go shopping with friends to a farmers’ market just out of town. Local food, grown in the cleanest air on the planet, in the finest soil in the Southern Hemisphere. What delights, what rich variety would we find? We entered the vast shed, and started to explore.

I headed for the greens. There were two kinds of lettuce on show: crisp, clean Iceburg, and a Cos of some kind. The Iceburg was labelled, in shaky block capitals: LETTUCE. The Cos: FANCY LETTUCE: Tasmanians don’t waste words. We bought some Fancy Lettuce and headed over to the bakery. There we found some nice white loaves: BREAD. And some baguettes. Labelled, oh yes!, yes indeed: FANCY BREAD.

Anyway.

Earlier this week, we members of the BigShinyThing team were — full disclosure — invited guests (FANCY! FANCY!) at Ikea’s London launch of its ‘upmarket’ STOCKHOLM range.

This sign, spotted at the launch, sums up the ethos of the new range: it cleanly positions a newly design-conscious but still-affordable asthetic within the Ikea brand. “Watch out Habitat“, this sign says to us, “you with your airs and graces“. Nice move, neatly executed. “FANCY quality” indeed. Who needs it! Not the Tasmanians, not Ikea, and not you!

Last year it was things POSH getting an ironic drubbing from the advertising world. This year, all that which is FANCY seems fair game: pretension is obviously so out with brands at the moment. And it seems like just yesterday that FUNKY and COOL were actually being sold as aspirational! How 1990s! Just fancy!

Ryan Frank flogs ‘repurposed’ graffiti as yuppie furniture. The blurb reads:

Now this is an innovative little idea. Ryan Frank’s distinctly urban shelving systems are constructed from white-painted boards that he leaves around graffiti hot spots in east London for a few weeks to ‘mature’ (ie get sprayed, tagged and doodled on). The designer then retrieves them and turns them into mobile shelving.

We especially like the ’street’ styling in this Sunday Times spread. What we find particularly dubious about this is that the ‘Hackney Shelf’ (shown) is yours for a mere £1,480… if you recognise one of the stencils on it maybe you should get in touch with Mr Frank.

Maybe they should have called their marketing department instead of the lawyers: ‘Look! Someone loved FedEx so much they made all their furniture out of it/our packaging is strong enough to make tables out of’ … and so on.

Wired has the full story. The website which sparked the litigation is still viewable at www.fedexfurniture.com.

Or maybe it is some clever marketing ploy … it’s getting increasingly hard to tell.