Retail Market So Dire I Made My Own Couch
Nothing movies, centering forces
It was a day like any other, looking for what finds me, gravel rhythmically grinding beneath my Merrells. I wandered into yet another tent littered with severed ceramic baby heads, primitive wood boxes, and dusty hand-knotted rug fragments. There she was, in the back of the tent, a soft lightning rod glowing with potential: a five-foot-tall bolt of tiger print fabric, the diameter of a tight hug.
Our Brimfield haul thus far was standard fare: a threadbare t-shirt, a smattering of “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” mechanic’s chests and copper boxes, and trinkets covered in clever copy. I called my friends asking for help carrying my mystery GOLDEN GOOSE to the car. I stood in frame, proudly, arms spread wide, as my friends approached the tent: three minimalists and me.
I’ve always loved Schumacher and Dedar Milano, but I knew this wasn’t the iconic Scalamandre Tigre, as the orange on my bolt was less saturated, and there was texture the Tigre lacked.
With the help of my dear friend and textile expert Alexander, we identified it as the Brunschwig & Fils Le Tigre velvet, which retails for about $900/yd. I’d paid $160 cash for the bolt. Even cosmically spookier is the fact that the Scalamandre Tigre is only graded for light use, while the B&F Le Tigre velvet is upholstery grade.
I found a comfortable $200 sofa on Facebook Marketplace and texted my interior design friends for a recommendation for an upholsterer. I want to say I wish the process story were more exciting, but I find myself in so many winding side quests that the straightforwardness of this project was refreshing.
I paid a Lugg about $150 to move the used couch and fabric to Bettertex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They said the couch would be ready in about 16 days, but called me only 5 days later to coordinate delivery. The couch arrived with the seams perfectly matched and patterns mirrored on both cushions.
They did forget to deliver the extra fabric back with the couch, but I didn’t mind, as that meant I had an excuse to “get lost” snooping around the warehouse where the upholstery magic happens. I saw several Dedar-covered projects in progress… I’ll be back… anyway… my crown jewel!! The big reveal!!
Even though the fabric was a miracle find, I still can’t believe all-in this couch project, at $2200, was the same price as any run-of-the-mill sofa from CB2 or West Elm. I also treasure the ways in which the annoyances of a project can be socially and civically enriching.
My last couch: Moved in without couch. Banged head against the wall, stalking Facebook for weeks after moving. Got tired of sitting on the floor. Caved Ordered on Pottery Barn. Waited 4-6 weeks. It came. A perfectly lovely couch! We really did like it.
Tiger couch: Fun trip to Brimfield with friends. Got to understand each other better, witnessing exploration of taste and decision-making in real time. Make fun, ridiculous purchase. Group chats buzzing, half in favor of potential, half expressing (reasonable) doubt of execution, considering Heather’s graveyard of past unfinished projects.
Find a base couch—find it funny that the seller’s name is Hope. Text your witchiest friend about whether or not they believe in signs and how much. Find an upholsterer, which means having lovely coffee with a person I wanted to get to know better anyway. Get photos of finished couch!!
Argue with my aunt’s apartment about a COI and custom storing of the couch while I sell my current couch. List current couch on Facebook. 3 incredibly kind, incredibly unserious men from New Jersey come to move out my current couch for friend No.1’s wife. They spend an hour trying to move the couch out in their Aimee Leon Dore, Cartier Santos watches, and Birkenstocks. We discover the physics of my apartment are such that couches can easily come in, but cannot get out.
There are now two couches in my apartment. This amuses the Lugg movers for the tiger couch. (Lugg is awesome, btw. Code HJ2ZN3LQ for $10 off.) A man named “The Couch Doctor” comes in and debates if it’s better to saw the original couch in half, or risk taking off my 100-year-old front door. He takes the door off. We say goodbye to couch No.1. Commenters on TikTok raise questions about the practicality of this couch long-term. I want to respond that practicality is for glamour-allergic losers, but instead write a diary entry about how the material obsession with “timelessness” is just mortality anxiety, disguised.
I get the best small talk break of my life at every gathering the last two months, diving into introductions amended with “do they know about the tiger couch?”. Characters who routinely find me unkempt and probably too talkative are asking whether there’s leftover fabric and whether they can buy it. Anyone who comes over says “THE COUCH!” and runs to it, sitting immediately, with Pig joining in quick succession, mesmerizingly running their hands over the raised dots.
All of this brought to mind shelved memories of my childhood furniture: the thick blue-and-white-striped couch of my infancy, later replaced by an Ethan Allen tufted green-and-red plaid loveseat in my youth. The Roche-Bobois Missoni sofas, this stray screenshot of a cloud couch in a London hotel…the couch paired with just our brown rug felt a little “welcome to the jungle”, so I had lots of fun layering pattern on pattern with some Facebook and auction finds.
MATERIAL NODES
Dog Bag
I’ve been lusting over the Etro dog bag, and even ordered it when I saw it pop up on TRR just to *try* (better for my wallet that it was too small for Pig).
Custom Holiday Games
Kindred Black X Don’t Let Disco just collaborated on a downright DECADENT mancala board, comprised of a hand-blown glass base filled with a bespoke mix of citrines, pearls, sterling silver shells, moonstone cabochons, and more. Players can also create their own rules using the sterling silver Pig token.
I’m not holding my breath for that particular set to make it under my tree this season, so I started to look on eBay for a vintage mancala board I could perhaps learn to carve flowers, a name, or other precious symbols into. I don’t have a (human) baby, but I do have a list of heirlooms I’d craft for one, and a hand-carved mancala board is top 5.
Being Wrong
I bought a dress by Mes Demoiselles on TRR, and felt it was a little bleh. I tried it on backwards and realized I loved how it looked having the wrap hide underneath the back of the dress, so the front is tight, and the back drapes low. Just need to hop over to a friend’s place with a sewing machine to execute.
MEDIA NODES
Even my therapist is connected to the couch. She calls it “my island”. I’m glad I waited to tell the story because it’s become so much bigger than itself…an anchoring force, a buoy, a representation of aligned wanting, proof of execution. There’s probably a larger metaphor about how, although Lee Radziwill had her dreams come true at De Angeles in the 60s for thousands of dollars, and mine came true at the corner of Dusty MA tent and a Sunset Park warehouse, we both ended up in the same place. Something I want to finish this winter during my routine Existential Crisis Tummy Time is a visual reflection of the contents of my life, inspired by this Life In Weeks post.
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Watching - Reading
Chantal Ackerman’s meditative, static 1976 documentary, News From Home. Kelsey Lim and I made a steak dinner, then settled into a dark living room lit by a single candle and entered a trance state, petting Pig as long scenes of New York in 1976 passed by, narrated by letters from Ackerman’s mother. It made me want to take a long walk alone in the cold and look up at the tops of buildings. I love a movie where nothing happens, because most of life is nothing happening, and this made me question why I only think other people’s nothings are interesting. Lucky LA ducks can catch a screening at the Egyptian Dec 2.
There are other movies I rewatch in the fall, seemingly apropos of nothing: Burlesque, Harold and Maude, A Woman Is a Woman, Grey Gardens, and Zodiac.
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Review of Psychotherapy and Materialism, Part 1 on e-flux
Everything on Louise Bourgeois. She’s been an inspiration to me since I was young, and until this past week, I hadn’t seen her work since 2015 at the Glenstone. Hauser and Wirth is currently showing some of her never-before-seen work in the exhibit ‘Gathering Wool’. Bourgeois spent much of her life preoccupied with fears of abandonment and questions of the mother-child relationship. I find all of her art comfortably unsettling, and love cuddling up on my soft tiger pad to read about it.
“Helplessness may be a charm”.
Eating
My default fall breakfast: Siggi’s lemon yogurt with pears browned in butter, raspberries, walnuts, peanut butter, pomegranate seeds, and a dusting of cinnamon. My roommate had brought chocolate-covered sunflower seeds from upstate, so I threw those on, too.
XO TIL NEXT TIME
“I want to respond that practicality is for glamour-allergic losers”. Perfect. 🤌
incredible. I (a rando interior designer) had responded to your story after seeing that bolt saying that it was $$$$ and i'm so glad this turned out so well for someone who truly appreciates that fabric. had my own sofa made semi-recently ish and now yours is inspiring me to get pillow covers made to soften up its tufted back! also, "practicality is for glamour-allergic losers" is going on my List of Truths.