Welcome.
This essay/list/investigation of both fact and opinion is (will be) about Design Classics. I’m not asking you to agree with my choices, and quite honestly if you don’t agree with them, or should I say – Can’t imagine yourself agreeing with them, then you should stop reading right away. It is after all my opinion, and my beliefs. From this essay, I suppose if you were a psychologist, you could tell quite a lot about me… Hopefully you wont feel the need to psycho analyse my personality during the extent of your read, but just in case I have disguised what is of course and undoubtedly my opinion, very cleverly, with fact. Not just one, but lots.
The first question is of course how on earth does something become a classic? When does it suddenly go from being the handbag you really want, to the handbag you and 5 million other people really really want, and will continue to want for much longer than you will live? And even then, even when an item is in great demand for more than say 5 years, or 50 years, what age must it be to make it a classic? When is it allowed on ‘Classic design’ territory? The questions and answers are inexhaustible and will probably never have a universal response because to be blunt - they are not well-documented questions. They are not a topic where someone can open up a filing cabinet and say, ‘Yes Madam, it says here that the scarf you would like to purchase is in fact a design classic. Would you like it gift wrapped?’ This just won’t happen. Ever. Never will everyone agree and the problems are simply endless.
The only thing I can think of that could really compare to working out whether something is a design classic or not, is to knowing when you are in love. So often do people ask the question, ‘How do I know I’m in love?’. If you don’t believe me then all you have to do is google it and you can see that the “help me” pages have got this question on them written yesterday, and on them written 7 years ago. It’s always a question you wont know the answer to until you think you’re actually in love, and even then maybe you still wont know. This essay isn’t of course about love and I’m going a little off course, but the comparison lies with the inability to answer the question. For me I thought I knew I was in love, when I knew I couldn’t possibly fall out of love. So if you use mathematics and physics and English and science and put it all together.…You can create an equation that answers the question ‘Is ..…(insert)….. a design classic?’. It might look like this:
Popularity x time sold x price ÷ redesign - number sold BLA BLA BLA
unchanged
I think that’s a bit too complicated and quite frankly boring. So I will just go for the simple love comparison and pose some questions one could ask - Can you imagine life without it? Do other people agree with your crucial need for it? Has it been loved so much that it has been re-mastered by the manufacturer to please the consumer? Does it have a trophy? The questions are once more, endless.
So now I have made it seem like it is impossible to define a classic design, I’m going to talk about ten items that I reckon are classics, and I can assure you from where I’m standing they definitely, definitely are.
i made these little pix
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