When I read Terence Conran’s obituary in the New York Times it struck me how contemporary his curriculum vitae was; in many ways he sounded exactly like what many millennials I know are like: perpetual self-reinvention, a trenchantly entrepreneurial spirit, an obsession with brand-building and self-mythologizing, and an obsession with aesthetics. He designed furniture, created affordable-design empires, opened a chain of stores first in Europe then in the US and Asia, went bankrupt, then recast himself as a restaurateur in the 1990s, and a successful one at that. Oh, and he founded the Design Museum in London, too.
But what fascinates me isn’t the power of what surely must have been a formidable ego. It’s the sense of design as a way of life, for everyone, no matter who they are or how much money they have. I’m not saying his motives for creating affordable, modern, beautiful design were altruistic. But maybe there was something in that relentless spirit that believed in something powerful about how design can shape not only the leg of a chair but also the experience of one’s life. Again, I am not trying to romanticize a business enterprise. But, for capitalistic reasons or altruistic ones, or both, it seems to me that he saw design as an essential sort of thing in peoples’ lives. And I guess ultimately, he succeeded in bringing it to them.
-Eugenie Dalland