LIFESTYLE, THEN AND NOW
Yagoda, Ben
I recently learned of the existence of the Lifestyle Market. I had sensed it was there, of course, but not as so formalized an entity. What the Lifestyle Market is, according to "Lifestyle...
...Now stylishly long...
...Measuring out their lives with hanging plants, they have become consumers with a vengeance...
...Some hell of a market, huh...
...What they were caught up in, of course, was their own thing...
...For even when lifestyle didn't appear to have a specific meaning, it was rarely, if ever, used by or about, say, coal miners in Appalachia, welfare mothers in Harlem, or, for that matter, Republicans in Orange County...
...Faded jeans...
...And all the other perquisites of a nonfamilial, consumption-oriented, lifestyle lifestyle...
...Long hair, faded jeans and two for the road on a stripped-down bike...
...To which might have been added: Stereos...
...And American business has, as usual, had the last laugh...
...We were then told what the whole new thing was: Long hair...
...What does lifestyle furniture look like...
...It seems to me that when the term "lifestyle" first entered the lexicon, some nine or ten years ago, it was a noun that needed to be modified...
...One could have a mellow lifestyle, a macrobiotic lifestyle, a bisexual lifestyle, or whatever...
...Sports cars...
...Cross-country ski equipment...
...Now prefaded and with a designer name at $40 a pair...
...Wallace (photographed surrounded by gourmet food and cookware, a glass of wine in his hand and a self-satisfied yet somehow melancholy smile on his face) and his "lifeembracing" generation have, we were informed, "kept the best of the'60s, leavened it with their own maturity and invented a whole new thing for the '70s...
...They didn't get caught up in the headlines of the day, because they didn't read the media of the day...
...What the Lifestyle Market is, according to "Lifestyle Notebook," a supplement to a recent issue of Casual Living: The Magazine of Leisure Products, is people who buy "lifestyle furniture"—a product that is "affordable, mobile, and above all, fashionable...
...Dawson Wallace and his colleagues, in short, "may well be the most vibrant group of prospects American business has been blessed with since the post-World War 11 generation...
...Moving toward short...
...But what is particularly interesting about the campaign is its ad-man's view of the social rumblings of the last decade and a half, and how astute that view is...
...Soft leather boots...
...Yet they might well wonder why...
...Turning to the last page of the New York Times' Living Section (the Times' counterpart, by the way, to supplements called "Lifestyle" by a host of other papers) one Wednesday, for example, we were told: You remember how it was...
...Imported wine...
...Lifestyle Notebook" tells us, "so why should their furniture be...
...We were then presented, in contrast to this bleak landscape, with the good news that "Today's young men are no longer committed to poverty," and the incarnation of this happy truth, one Dawson Wallace...
...The movement from counterculture to lifestyle, it seems clear, involves a retention of form and a discarding of content: Whatever principles underlay the disruptions of the'60s are long gone, but a residue of altered behavior patterns lingers on...
...Since the demise of the'60s, the people who used to talk about lifestyle have had a change of life...
...233 Actually, the semantic transformation has not been all that drastic...
...They not only have softened their perceptions somewhat over the years, but have started to make more money...
...Lifestyle Notebook" helpfully provides sketches of typical examples, complete with captions: "Hanging Plants," "Chrome and Canvas," "Tasteful Dining," "Space Savers," "Super Wall Shelves," "Natural Sofas," "Lovely Palm," "Lots of Surfaces," "Modular Walls," "Pillow Seating...
...The members of the Lifestyle Market are "more mobile and not so totally committed to one home location...
...Now, though, it looks as if lifestyle has become an adjective, referring to the accoutrements of a particular group of people—the grown-up babies of the boom, now straddling 30, affluent, geographically and socially mobile, ready to invest heavily in hanging plants...
...Or two dozen for light housekeeping in a crowded van...
...Lifestyle merchandise can be, says Gerald C. Stephany of Loeb's in Lafayette, Indiana, "a viable separate entity within an entire store...
...In the '60s...
...Their relationships are not necessarily 'forever...
...Playboy's ads introduce us to a series of its readers, and come to the not very surprising conclusion that the men who buy the magazine also buy a lot of other things...
...Leathc: boots...
...That at least some of them have accepted this role with gusto (and that more than simply furniture is involved) is suggested by Playboy magazine's recent promotional campaign...
...Which meant renouncing nearly everything material...
...The furniture industry, meanwhile, in the best American tradition of capitalizing on the changing economic weather, has turned them into the Lifestyle Market...
...Lifestylers wear their designer jeans, listen to rock music (if only the "natural sound"), know how to make a bunch of meatless meals, and occasionally make a trip to the recycling center...
...What gives...
...Yet they are understandably reluctant to relinquish some of the more appealing of their youthful ways—in particular, the casualness and "naturalness" that marked the last decade and appears to be its main legacy...
Vol. 26 • April 1979 • No. 2
