Welcome to The Anthropologie Effect, my capstone project for the UM Minor in Writing. This site hosts my investigations on the craft-inflected gentrification of design, or “Anthropologie effect.” Specifically, the Anthropologie effect is unmistakable in the realm of lifestyle design, or how individuals shape their lifestyle experiences through goal-driven choices. The inherent factor of economy within lifestyle design necessitates that these choices be made in either a physical or digital retail space. In other words, daily life (especially the consciously-designed kind) requires purchases, and these purchases are made in-person or online.
In order to explore this phenomenon, I take a closer look at two companies, Anthropologie and Etsy, and examine how each participates in the gentrification of design in either a physical or digital space. However, the Anthropologie effect isn’t limited just to these two corporate structures. As you move across this site, I’d like to invite you to consider your lifestyle design, and the trends in which you participate. Below, you'll find a more detailed explanation of the Anthroplogie effect phenomenon; in PHYSICAL, a deeper exploration of Anthropologie itself; in DIGITAL, a look at Etsy as it fills a gentrified e-commerce niche; and in PERSONAL, my take on the phenomenon. Additionally, please use the APPENDIX as a resource for more explicit definitions of some of the terms key to gentrification, corporate strategy, and lifestyle design.
THE GENTRIFICATION OF DESIGN
THE Anthropologie-affected
We can all distinguish and identify the trends of decades past—but what about the overarching themes of our current era? How easily can you put a finger on the styles and trends that make 2016 characteristically and uniquely 2016? Without hindsight, this kind of analysis becomes rather difficult, because you’re in the thick of it.
What are the influences that affect how you design your lifestyle? None of us can make a style decision without incorporating exterior influences, just ask Andy Sachs, or watch the clip below. Consider your closet, or your Instagram feed. What influences your purchasing decisions? When was the last time you were out to eat and made your decision based on what you wanted to eat, but also on what you wanted to take a picture of?
When you decorate your apartment, or pin an idea on Pinterest, or choose which coffee shop to spend the afternoon in, are you making those choices to distinguish yourself as an individual or as a member of a collective whole? When you make each of these choices, how much do you consider the expanded influences on your decision-making process or the extended implications of your purchase?
The Anthropologie Effect attempts to unpack these questions
for the cultivated generation, or, as I like to call us,
the “anthropologie-affected.”
The study of anthropology asks, “What forces have shaped human psychology and social life?” The gentrification of design, or “Anthropologie effect,” is one of these forces, and encompasses physical, digital, and civic design.
The Anthropologie effect is a process whereby each consumer follows an individualized process to reach a systematic result, and visibly reflects in modern lifestyle models. The most prevalent trend on the block is a lifestyle-designing trend that combines delicate, quirky, or classic elements with a claim to individuality and a hefty price tag. The catch is that this claim to individuality is uniform across the board, nullifying any original individuality that existed in the first place.
Although this modern lifestyle is marketed as individual, it is incredibly uniform across the “Anthropologie crowd.” Step into the cultivated apartment of any typical twenty- or thirty-something, and you’re likely to find a fairly similar assortment of “personalized” décor—quotes on the walls in modern calligraphic type, dried flowers hanging from the wall (or fresh peonies on the wooden kitchen table), and decorative, classic, and sometimes-quirky throw pillows dotted across the furniture, with Spotify’s latest “cool” music playlist softly playing in the background. Upon venturing into each living space, its inhabitants will insist on the individual uniqueness of their decorations—which become a cultivated physical representation of their personalities.
Essentially, we (I am wholeheartedly including myself in this subset of the population) are marketed a dreamy, lovely individuality, which is actually enacted in uniformity. This phenomenon is both explicitly and implicitly enacted in the marketplace and social sphere; the two inextricably relate and interact. There is an irony to the Anthropologie effect, in which attempts by consumers to regress from a perceived “commercialization of society,” results in these consumers supporting corporate businesses, who are simply marketing a redesign of this original commercialization. It almost seems to be a social contract, or organized implicit agreement of an unstated Newspeak, between companies and consumers to pursue this phenomenon. And yet, there exists this personalized connection between each product and each customer. Read on to explore why...