Originally published at: Website finds cheap knockoffs of pricey designer furniture - Boing Boing
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Interesting. Using their search engine, I must admit I am both intrigued and highly suspicious of a Herman Miller Aeron chair for $38…
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I don’t know about furniture but in Houston there is a street called Harwin that was raided more than once for selling knock off fashion and stuff.
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I hear there is this place where you can steal content from other creators. Would you support that? How is that different from stealing furniture designs?
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Not so sure I’d be promoting knock-off products here on BoingBoing. Seems kinda lowbrow to me. Sure, these designer pieces are expensive, but often they are expensive for a reason. Usually it has to do with the original manufacturer actually making this shit in the USA, paying licensing fees, having actual quality. The eames lounger has always had varying quality knock-offs. But promoting them here just serves to cheapen the overall site…
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The whole point of branding is to build trust (which admittedly they can then mark up on).
If you choose to buy a knock-off product, you are explicitly opting out of that trust, and are on your own. Maybe the knock-off is 95% as good, maybe it’s 5%.
I’ve generally found knock-offs of expensive brands to be not worth it. They’re entirely preying on a particular kind of customer, the kind who thinks they can scam the system by getting a cheaper knock-off. Pro-tip: that’s how scammers get you, by making you believe you’re scamming them.
Just go for a different, cheaper brand, one that’s building their own value, not riding on the coattails of others.
There are exceptions, but they are few, and again: the knock-off brands are counting on you trying them out hoping you’ll hit the jack-pot. What’s the worse that can happen to them, you try and get a refund?? 
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Am I the only one who thinks Le Corbusier is the ugliest, most uncomfortable furniture they’ve ever seen? I just do not get it and it inspired a still-persistent aesthetic of black leather and chrome that almost always looks like a 25 year old bachelor’s idea of success.
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See any Jaques Tati (M. Hulot) film for a contemporaneous piss take in inimitable Gallic style.
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Tati was a Genius.
I’d long laughed at ridiculous modren furniture that looked ridiculously uncomfortable. Now my BF and I do so together.
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You’re definitely not alone. Many, many people absolutely hate his architecture, furniture, paintings, writings, thoughts, and frankly, him. It would probably be hard to find another architect from the 20th century more often attacked and blamed for everything that’s bad in the world.
I’m not personally among them, for what it’s worth. There’s plenty of his work which I do find objectionable, but there’s also plenty of his work which I have found to be among the most transcendantly beautiful and uplifting spaces I’ve ever experienced. It’s not easily done, but I heartily recommend spending an afternoon hanging around in the Mill Owner’s Association Building in Ahmedabad. Or, if I’m honest, any of his buildings. I’ve not visited them all, but I’ve yet to visit one I didn’t love once I was actually in it.
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Although some of Tati’s critiques seem a bit misplaced in retrospect. Consider this scene from 1967’s Playtime. He’s supposed to be criticizing how awful modern office life was, but look at those cubicles! They’re larger than any office I’ve had!
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Yeah the furniture I actually paid money for ($2k+) is still around, comfortable, and hasn’t broken. Anything under that went in the trash a while ago
Cublicles! We dream of working in cubicles! There’s a hundred and fifty of us hotdesking fifty desks in a open plan office. And we have to pre-book our desks for permission to come to work.
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I blame the, stupid and arrogant, From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe to a large extent.
He wears a very little learning, very, very heavily, and as is his wont he replicates the glossary he consulted in the text to make him seem more learned than he was. His simplistic and frankly wrong thesis - that European modernism is to blame for all the ills of 20th century design that he doesn’t like - happily ignores capitalism and the car which are actually the two most decisive design drivers, in favour of an elitist anti-elitism argument which we are very familiar with from contemporary politics.
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Dupe-stuff of iconic designs, which are “iconic” for numerous reasons, is so icky. It also seems 180-degrees contrary to the ethos of this site. Horrifically poorly executed ones I think could get an exception, for the larfs.
And that particular item, the chair, is still made in Zeeland/Holland MI. Expensive, yes - and worth it. Hella robust, our nook of the big infamous bomb lab/movie set had five early-1980s editions of them around our coffee/complain/brainstorm table. They got flopped down into dozens of times a day. Excepting a few trivial replacements of some rubber bits, I expect them to still be in use for many more decades.
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