Mid Century Modern Furniture
I don’t want to begrudge anyone of the pleasure they get from Mid Century Modern furniture and decor. Certainly, there are many die-hard Mid Century Modern furniture fans out there. (If you are one, please consider reading my husbands take on MCM Furniture.) But many people walking into our furniture store over the years have asked, do you ever get any MCM furniture?
The answer is yes and no.
Over the years, we have sold a handful of Mid-Century Modern pieces. Honestly, these retro furniture pieces were kind of pretty in a weird way. (What can I say, we have great taste here at Bohemian’s.) 🙂
Overwhelmingly, though, I hate Mid Century Modern furniture. Here are my Top Nine Reasons why.
What is Midcentury Modern furniture?
Simply put, Mid Century Modern furniture is furniture produced roughly in the years from 1940’s until the 1960’s. Design wise, however, Mid Century furniture typically has simple lines and very little ornamentation. Typically, because it has no fuss, it is regarded as very functional furniture. New materials like plastic, resin and plywood found their way into Mid Century style furniture.
Now for the Reasons why I dislike it…
- It’s Pretentious.
- It’s Mass Produced.
- It’s Overdone.
- It’s not as comfortable as they say.
- The materials used are cheap!
- It’s Group Think on every Level.
- The Design Versatility is Questionable.
- It encourages minimalism.
- It reminds me that Millenials have no money, can’t think on their own and have to live in apartments to survive.
Mid Century Modern ironically started in the 1950’s and 1960’s with the idea of “bringing design to the masses.” Many of the original proponents of this modern design trend like Bauhaus and Le Corbusier (how pretentious are these names?) actually designed simpler furniture so that it could be accessible.
However, Mid Century furniture today is anything but accessible.
Instead, it seems MCM furniture name-dropping helps the upper crust feel self-important and stylish. They brag about their Miller chairs and Eames pieces as if God gave them a special place in Heaven for spending way too much money on ugly furniture.
Likewise, there is such snobbery that surrounds “original” pieces by famous Danish designers. To me, they look like simple prototypes for bad motel furniture. It’s as if Motel 6 decided to save money this year by making these plywood chairs for their lobby.
I love furniture. And I love factory produced furniture by Vintage makers. But Good Lord, high end factory pieces often take hours of workmanship to produce. A single Kittinger Clawfoot leg, for instance, can take several days for a craftsman to carve.
However, most MCM and MCM knock-offs are made by machine, and quickly. Indeed, the look of MCM furniture often echos this “machine aesthetic.” Stark, inorganic and cold, these mass produced pieces lack the handwork of other vintage furniture styles.
Mid Century Furniture styles have been reinvented in a thousands of different ways by high and low companies. Let me tell you, there just doesn’t seem to be enough diversity to keep reliving it! How many low back square sofas with stick legs can we tolerate?
As Michael Boodro (former Editor in chief of Elle Decor, of all places) says in this article from the New York Times, “Your eye does get bored. Twenty years ago, when midcentury was first being discovered, you could do a straight interior, and that was exciting. People want to go beyond the expected.”
Twenty years, people. There are really only a few things with that much staying power. Maybe Michael Jackson. And reggae. But it’s time for this overdone style statement to be over! RIP Mid Century Modern.
I don’t know about you, but the comfort level of MCM seems to be greatly over exaggerated. I see these little square dining chairs or low seated living room furniture with 1.5 inches of foam and I fail to feel the urge to snuggle up and watch a movie.
Give me a dated 1980’s rolled arm sofa over a 1960’s Danish nightmare any day!
Likewise, I feel the itchy mohair of many Mid Century Sofas to be less than ideal, which brings me to my next point…
Plywood, plastic, mohair, vinyl, fake wood! Tell me again why I should buy this thing for well over $1000? I guess the one thing that makes MCM attractive is that is generally not as heavy as fine furniture…?
I just don’t like conformity that much. The ubiquitousness and popularity of MCM just makes me uncomfortable.
I hear people say it all the time. “It’s just so versatile. You can put it anywhere and with everything.” This makes me say, “What the…?”
I get that some people find it “surprising” and “fresh” to “juxtapose” their Victorian house with “Mid Century Pieces” (sorry, that was a lot of air quotes!) but I frankly fail to see the design versatility. To me, a piece of Mid Century Modern sticks out like a sore thumb in nearly every setting.
Minimalism requires way too much purging and editing for me. I like to put all my pretty things around so that I feel life has a reason for living and that reason isn’t some sort of cruel joke. Sorry, minimalists. I don’t get it.
After all, this isn’t Moscow (yet), and I want some variety of color, rich patterns and glamorous accessories! (The layered Traditional look calls to me in a much deeper way.)
Sorry snowflakes (aka Millenials)! This one is a tough one. I feel that our generation could be the most susceptible to marketing schemes. And to me, Mid Century Modern Furniture is like the Emperor’s New Clothes. In many ways, furniture stores and online conglomerates (Wayfair, West Elm, etc) found a gullible market in order to further their agenda of selling cheap low-quality furniture for high prices.
Plus, they figure, we can screw a peg leg into a piece of sawdust (as long as it’s pre-drilled) after all those years of our pricey educations.
Furthermore, since we have no money or job prospects, living four to an apartment until our late 30’s seems like a great time to introduce this lightweight and small apartment-sized furniture to the masses. Dare I say, Ikea?
So that’s my little rant about Mid Century Modern Furniture!
What are your thoughts on this design trend? I would love to know whether you agree that it’s time for MCM to die or whether this truly is a classic here to stay!
Thanks for reading!
Rachel LaBoheme
Head Creative Director of Bohemian’s
As a professional designer with a B.F.A. degree in Interior Architecture and 25 years of experience, I want to thank you for writing this article. It is strange how in the past 10 years or so, tolerance of diverse tastes has seemed to disappear. I’ll never forget a commercial that was running about 5 years ago for Clive Daniel in which they absolutely shamed anyone in Florida who furnished their home with anything approaching classical Mediterranean style. According to them, you simply had to strip your home of any such decor and immediately replace it with “modern” furnishings or face the shame of the design world! Now don’t get me wrong. I too hate the mass produced, overly ornate and carved, all dark, heavy wood everywhere look. I do not; however, believe that every simple scrolled iron table made by artisans in Mexico or Spain should be tossed to the curb and all gorgeous natural travertine flooring should be ripped out and replaced with fake wood, laminate or vinyl or that arches are bad and straight lines are good, lol. Some things are just classics and should be appreciated for their beauty and workmanship. MDF may be heavier than wood; however, it is also considerably weaker and less durable. Color is another subject of “trends”. You should use whatever colors make you happy (just keep in mind some basics regarding the mood you wish to create in each room – I won’t digress, as this is quite a complex subject). One of my favorite quotes was from Alexandra Stoddard in her book “The Decoration of Houses” in which she discusses the forcing of neutrals like taupe on the public. She stated that the word “taupe” is from ancient Greek and translates to “mole”. She then asks: why would anyone want to live with the color of a grey-brown rodent that burrows underground? The same could be said of the “all gray” and “all beige” all the time trend. I have never been a fan of Bauhaus and Corbusier either. Personally, I find a Gothic cathedral much more beautiful and enduring than a glass box and I prefer heels instead of combat boots with dresses, lol. International style is for those multi-national corporations who want everyone to conform to living at a lower standard and change out all of their cheap, disposable furnishings every few years to increase their profits, f.y.i. Don’t be a conformist. Learn to be true to yourself and ignore the “trends”.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Mark My Words.
I’m totally with you. I’m so sick and tired of showing someone a piece I own let’s say from the aesthetic movement which is very complex in design and it’s always followed by, “I love mid Century modern, I like to clean straight lines. “. What a surprise, you like clean straight lines like everyone else. And your boring interiors. It’s like you can’t like any other thing other than “clean straight lines” because it’s cool and that makes you a modernist and a free thinker if you’d like “clean straight lines”. And somehow because I like complex interiors and complex designs that makes me some kind of freak. Well then so be it I’m a freak. I think most people don’t know what they like and they’re just regurgitating what they hear from everyone else.
Happy New Year and Thank You!
Lol! I actually typed in “I hate mid-century modern furniture” just to see if anyone felt the same. This rant may be your opinion but to me it is factual, hilarious, and markedly on point. If I never saw another sofa with a one-foot back, covered in cheap vinyl or some other crappy material with peg legs, it would not be soon enough for me. To me, it is boring, uncreative, and plum ugly. I’ll take its opposite of overly ornate, maximalist styling made with solid wood any day. I LOVE this article! Thank you!
Thank you for your input Heather, loved reading your comments a out mid century modern furniture.
I’m a millennial and I fully agree with you!! To me, any time I’ve thought about MCM my mind goes to cheap apartment IKEA furniture or my grandmas furniture which is real antique MCM worth a fortune…but I’ve always found it so ugly!! I’m fortunate and own a house and have been filling it with French antiques and traditional American antiques that are more chunky. My house is more rustic and my furniture choices go with it. The only MCM I’ve ever seen that I loved was the mid century home they did on Home to Win. Aaaand that was all of the top designers in Canada working on a MCM home. To me that’s appropriate…if you have a MCM home, you can do it up really well with unique finds of MCM furniture in there whereas my house would look weird with MCM furniture. I do agree it’s overdone, it’s tired anymore. Most ppl don’t style it right or they’re just being basic copy cats. Your post was great and don’t worry about the haters on here…a lot of ppl are offended by everything anymore and every chance they get to be a Karen…they take it. Keep this post up bc I found it by googling “does anyone else think MCM is ugly?” Lol. Just so the others of us with taste can find it.
Appreciate your response, Jared. As you can see by the comments on this article, your opinion is shared by many! We do not write off any opinions or constructive criticism. Thanks for reading and your input.
I’m all for a good opinion piece with well-reasoned takes, but damn, this had some weird s*** in it. Political dog whistles (“snowflakes”, “we don’t live in Moscow yet”) and generational insults (millennials are stupid and poor) in an article about furniture design. Odd choices. Also, as a designer I’m not a huge fan of Le Corbusier, but calling foreign names pretentious screams of American exceptionalism to me.
To the points that had some validity, I still take some issue. I don’t think you can fairly accuse MCM of being cheap and mass-produced when, well before the revival of MCM, boho went (and is still going) through EXACTLY the same highly trendy, cheaply reproduced phase (Urban Outfitters? Madewell? anyone?) Looking through marketplace in my area, right now as I write this, boho and mcm are easily 90% of all furniture items for sale. I guess there are two schools of groupthink happening here? (TBH this use, and by default yours, isn’t the correct use of groupthink. It’s collective behavior.)
Another point, cheap materials do not necessarily mean a cheap product. I have an incredibly sturdy credenza from a local company in town that’s made out of recycled MDF with real wood veneers. It’s heavier than any solid wood pieces I have in the house and I can’t see this thing ever falling apart.
Anyways, I know this is an opinion piece and it seems likely you’ll just write this off, but before you do, remember that constructive criticism is still valid and opinions aren’t free of error. Peace.