“It’s like camouflage.” That’s how one design gallerist, Patrick Parrish, explained the enduring popularity of midcentury modern design to the New York Times this week, in a piece entitled “Why Won’t Midcentury Design Die?”

It’s a question critics have been asking, in various ways, for decades. It helps that midcentury design encompasses a remarkably wide and ill-defined period, encompassing many decades and many distinct schools and movements. Meanwhile, midcentury design also plays into our collective fixation on tidy, clean spaces. A lot of it was designed to be mass-produced–and indeed, plenty of knock-offs have sprung up online. It is humane and inclusive, an inoffensive design camouflage that can easily be picked up online or in countless chain stores around the country. It’s reigned in pop culture, from Mad Men to Keeping Up with the Kardashians. “I’m reading a book about Le Courvoisier, which is an architect,” Kris Jenner recently said in one clip. “It’s so weird and boring, but I’m obsessed.” [ read more ]