Are furniture fakes fair game in hard times?
Good furniture is never cheap, especially if you want a well-designed, well-built piece that will last a lifetime. And while high-end retailers like Design Within Reach are slashing prices to stoke sales, $1,000 still feels steep, even for the coolest dining table ever.
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Good furniture is never cheap, especially if you want a well-designed, well-built piece that will last a lifetime. And while high-end retailers like Design Within Reach are slashing prices to stoke sales, $1,000 still feels steep, even for the coolest dining table ever.So my eyebrows rose with interest when an advertisement for discount designer furniture landed in my inbox. I clicked on the link and was taken to the website of a San Diego-based outfit called Regency Shop, where I was stunned to see Barcelona chairs, Le Corbusier sofas and Eames chairs, all at wildly low prices.I sobered up quickly. It only took a moment for me to realize that Regency Shop was yet another depot for imitations and knockoffs. Unauthorized replicas have become a serious problem for boutique retailers like DWR, who do good business selling original, authorized versions of modern classics. Still, can a consumer be faulted for considering a nearly identical knockoff when it costs half, or even a fifth the price of an original?For example, a new original Eames lounge and ottoman from DWR costs between $3,600 and $4,500. That's not cheap, but you're buying a piece of history.But a few clicks away, at Regency, the ''EZ Lounge Chair,'' an Eames lounge and ottoman look-alike, is just $895. That's still not cheap, but for a chair that looks nearly identical to the original, it seems like a steal.Or take an original Barcelona chair, the iconic lounger designed by Mies van der Rohe. An original from DWR costs $4,100 to $5,000. Over at Regency, the ''Ibiza'' chair is a paltry $345.At such low prices, replica furniture might seem like the only sensible option, especially in light of these penny-pinching times. But while the knockoffs may look like originals, they do not share the same DNA. And that, according to Eames Demetrios, the current director of the Eames Office, is a fundamental -- and tangible -- distinction.Responding to an article in The New Zealand Herald about a local store selling replicas, Demetrios wrote: ``It is relatively easy to make a chair that LOOKS like an Eames chair from across the room and to take advantage of the goodwill that comes from 50-plus years of comfort. But the design of the chair is much deeper than that image from a distance. Chair designers don't design silhouettes; they design multisensory experiences.''It's true. I've been lucky enough to spend time in my father's original Eames lounge and ottoman, and the soft leather and molded plywood conform to the body with sublime ease. My dad purchased it back around 1971, when he knew a worker at the Eames Office who got him the chair at a discounted price. It's been in his study or my living room ever since, and together we've spent thousands of hours in that chair, reading, listening to music or just lounging.Not long ago, I remember passing a knockoff furniture store in suburban Washington, D.C., and having the same reaction I did when I saw the Regency website. Through the store window, I saw a replica Eames lounge and ottoman, and went in, sat down and put my feet up.The organic curves of the back and arms were there. The tufted black leather was there. But the fake felt stiff -- not just because the cheap leather hadn't been broken in. The swivel action wasn't smooth, and the wood lacked that luxurious sheen. Even at a steep discount, a knockoff Eames chair didn't seem like a good buy.This is an excerpt from the No-Spend Zone blog, wherein six under-thirty writers blog about how millennials relate to money. To see more posts, go to miamiherald.typepad.com/no_spend_zone/ recommend email print share document.domain="miamiherald.com"; var serverUrl = "