{"id":6275,"date":"2021-03-29T16:27:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T15:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.equippd.uk\/journal\/living-in-a-material-world-how-the-cold-stuff-came-to-warm-our-hearts\/"},"modified":"2021-09-21T10:16:16","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T09:16:16","slug":"homeware-is-booming-but-is-it-just-a-lockdown-bubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equippd.uk\/journal\/homeware-is-booming-but-is-it-just-a-lockdown-bubble\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeware is booming, but is it just a lockdown bubble?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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If you spend any time on social media \u2014 and let\u2019s face it, we all do \u2014 you\u2019ve probably noticed an uptick in the number of posts featuring chairs, rugs, ceramics, prints, and the whole rest of the homeware gamut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s an easy two-fold explanation: first of all, no one has been anywhere for the better part of a year \u2014 the usual hot dog legs, airplane wings, and aesthetically pleasing restaurant food have, necessarily, all-but disappeared.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly, specifically because <\/i>no one has been anywhere, people have been doing everything they can to make the places they\u2019ve been stuck just that little bit more bearable. The same four walls don\u2019t have to look like the same four walls, after all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\r\n

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\r\n \r\n We\u2019ve been reintroduced to our homes as places that we don\u2019t just sleep but actually spend any meaningful time. <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\r\n
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But it\u2019s not just an Instagram phenomen: there\u2019s real-word implications too \u2014 a measurable increase in sales of homeware, which have seen even just the scented candle market explode by 536%. Yes. dissonance between \u201creal-life\u201d and social media is a genuine problem, but sometimes \u2014 every once in a blue moon \u2014 the two align, and Instagram really is a reflection of the real world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, then, as Coronavirus restrictions \u2014 hopefully, at least \u2014 begin to ease, does that mean those sales will drop and those images will begin to disappear from our feeds?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\r\n

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The short answer, honestly, is no one really knows \u2014 just like no one really knows anything right now, with rules and regulations changing from one moment to the next. But, of course, we can still make predictions. Because we all need something to look forward to, don\u2019t we?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, with that in mind, and the caveat that this may well age badly, let me go out on a limb and say that, actually, this is just the beginning. That Coronavirus has been more of a catalyst than the root cause \u2014 a further nudge in a direction we were already taking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What this means, in real terms, is that Covid-related stay at home orders have reacquainted us \u2014 perhaps even more than we\u2019d like \u2014 with an environment we were previously kept from by long-forgotten activities like commuting or holidays. Or just going to the shops.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been reintroduced to our homes as places that we don\u2019t just sleep but actually spend any meaningful time \u2014 somewhere that we actually live. And with those changes in circumstances comes a change in desire: when what we\u2019re getting from our homes changes then so, inevitably, does what we want<\/i> from them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\r\n

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Without an imperative to get up and get out as quickly as possible each and every day, we have more time to look around \u2014 to think about how our times reflect us, as people, and, in turn, how the way we\u2019ve chosen to decorate affects our own moods by osmosis. How one reflects the other and, again, reflects the other back. It\u2019s an infinite system of aesthetic and emotional mirrors \u2014 and we\u2019ve been given the chance to decide what they show us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More than this though, there are other tangible factors at play: bricks, mortar, and the ways in which a whole generation have had access to owning them denied. That is to say, Millennials just don\u2019t own houses the way that previous generations did \u2014 or, not to be too morbid, at least not yet, anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\r\n

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Millions of renters, forbidden from things as seemingly innocuous as painting or putting up shelves, have to work with what they\u2019ve got \u2014 or, more accurately, unable to work with what they\u2019ve got, all they can do is embellish and accessorise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For these people, lockdown has been both a cruel reminder of the tenuous limits of their home environment and a change to see just how far those limits can be pushed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reason to assume that, just because lockdown is coming to an end, these other factors will change. We\u2019ve seen too much \u2014 given too much of our time and our effort to redressing the balance somehow and it\u2019s not going to even out of its accord any time soon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In short: There\u2019s a lot more shelfies where these came from.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awill our love affair with interiors be a lasting one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n- Equippd<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.equippd.uk\/journal\/homeware-is-booming-but-is-it-just-a-lockdown-bubble\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"- Equippd\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Awill our love affair with interiors be a lasting one?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.equippd.uk\/journal\/homeware-is-booming-but-is-it-just-a-lockdown-bubble\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Equippd\" \/>\n<meta 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