I haven’t owned a real trash can for the last five years. My love affair with a chic, stainless steel number found while browsing the aisles at The Container Store ended badly (as any relationship based on lust inevitably does). The accompanying literature touted the young architects who created this trash-can-as-art, and it had even won a design award.
Inside, there were these clever little plastic clips designed to attach a plastic liner. Such ingenuity! The $75 price tag was outrageous for something meant to hold garbage, but I was smitten. Once home however, the can took on a complete personality change. When the bag was full and I tried to remove it, the clips shredded the plastic and the bag’s contents fell all over the kitchen floor. I tried not filling the can so much the next time, but it was impossible to remove the bag without tearing big holes in the sides. So, if every time I took out the trash it ended up on my floor, you’d think I’d get rid of it? No way. Instead, I learned to compensate by carefully pushing the bag’s bulging edges around the clips. Taking the trash out became a 30-minute ordeal, but its dashing good looks made up for repeated bad behavior. After two years, its stainless luster became spotted, and I finally kicked it to the curb where it belonged.
Author Donald A. Norman explores such irrational attachment to badly designed objects in his book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Essentially, it all comes down to looks, he says. We are seduced by attractive things, whether they work well or not, and we will put up with the inconvenience of a badly designed product longer than we should simply because it’s beautiful. Norman cites his own struggles, including the purchase of a gold-plated, limited edition juicer designed by Philippe Starck for Alessi, the Juicy Salif, which arrived with a disclaimer that it should not be used to squeeze anything acidic, including lemons and oranges, because the finish would be ruined. The idea that anyone would create such an impractical product seems absurd, and yet there are plenty of people who have paid good money to buy one. The reason is obvious to anyone who’s seen its sleek, leggy design. The Juicy Salif is plain sexy.
My everyday flatware, which I stumbled on while cruising Overstock.com, happens to be designed by the great stylist Vicente Wolf. Fashioned to resemble silver-plated twigs, they look smashing on the table. (This was before the whole twigs-as-eating-utensils phenomenon burst onto the Pottery Barn scene.) The small spoons are my favorite because they look vaguely decadent, like something that Marie Antoinette might have commissioned. But there is a price to pay for such indulgence, as their curved handles cause them to fly off the plate unexpectedly—while people are eating. My friends think it’s their own clumsiness, but I know it’s the silverware.
I asked a few local designers if they had personal experience with badly designed, beautiful objects. “Everything I own,” declared Eric Prokesh, who says the delicate, silk-upholstered, period French chairs in his dining room are the worst offenders because they are not really made to sit on, but to admire. Think about this next time Eric invites you to dinner. Sherry Hayslip has an intricately carved Tramp Art mirror in the bathroom that collects so much dust that it’s become bizarrely fuzzy, like a family pet. Although she wouldn’t think of installing such a mirror in a client’s house, she declines to get rid of it. Another designer brought home an expensive set of crystal Steuben goblets she found at an antique market, only to find out during a dinner party that their fluted mouths splash people in the face when they drink. This doesn’t stop her from using them, nor should it, because according to Donald Norman, who also happens to be a cognitive scientist, most of us won’t even notice. Research on emotion and cognition has shown that attractive things really do work better, he writes. This means that even when they don’t work, we think they do simply because they are beautiful. Or we at least put up with wet faces and uncomfortable seats because we like how the offending objects look. As William Morris, the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, once said: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Morris would understand, then, why I am content to use a paper bag from Whole Foods as a trash container all these years. It’s sturdy, it has handles, and I can carry it easily to the dumpster. Somebody should win a design award for that.
