I Am the 2002 IKEA Catalog

While you were busy playing The Sims, I was selling trend-proof furniture.

I am the 2002 IKEA catalog. I was born into an era of political doom (AXIS OF EVIL), senseless fashion (Von Dutch trucker hats), and chaotic pop culture (The Osbournes was the highest art of our time). And yet, through all of this, I created furniture and decor that captured the sleek, optimistic futurism of the new millennium — while quietly ensuring my legacy would outlast it all.

Let’s take a look…

All of you millennials inheriting your parents’ money may be looking to deck your walls with the precision and exclusivity of a Vitsoe shelving system. Yet I did it better with a little thing you may have heard of: wood. You may also notice how worldly and well-adjusted our children are; playing in the shadow of our earth, these tots contemplate our place in the cosmos.

Naturally, these days, all of you late 30s/early 40s people can’t shut up about the pinnacle of home design: The dELiA*s catalog. But we were doing “adult dELiA*s” design — disco mirrors, lavender sheets — before you even realized it. And that stem of cilantro in water? That’s a metaphor you’re incapable of understanding.

Take a look at the rattan lounger below. If you had purchased it in 2002, you could sell it now on Chairish for like $1,200 and pay for half a month of preschool.

We Swedes are innovators. We have given the world innumerable gifts: zippers, oat milk, hygge, Volvo. In 2002, we also created a clothing storage system that could double as a kitchen pantry for struggling Gen X graphic designers.

I, the 2002 IKEA catalog, shall admit that I lived through an era when white girl dreadlocks were regrettably acceptable. Still, I attempted to foster community and discourse with storage bins that could double as refreshment receptacles for gatherings wherein youths would discuss globalization, geopolitical conflict, and Moby’s new album.

Before there was Barbiecore, I gave you maxi-magenta, a hue and aesthetic so daring, it made studio apartments come with a label warning against retinal damage.

I provided the dream office for your 2002 dot-com start-up. Look at those shelves below. I believe you people now call them “Insta-worthy”? Back then, they were the backbone of the workspace.

Allow me to direct your eyes to the lower left corner of the image below…what you see there is a METAL kitchen. Take that, AD.

Please quiet down so we can properly pay respect to an IKEA icon: The PS Cabinet (upper left), which brought schoolroom aesthetics into the Y2K era. Perfect for stashing important documents, outdated Nokia accessories, and VHS recordings of The Wire.

My 2002 collection of coffee tables offered a sea of veneered birch: the wood of liberals. Yet I still offered maple and walnut: the woods of yuppies.

23 years later, you’re still wondering why you’re not using these plywood organizers.

Remember that blue desk lamp that saw you through high school and college? It’s now “vintage” IKEA on Etsy.

You look at this now and think, “I’ve finally found the ironic piece my home is missing: a bright pink, space age-adjacent clock circa 2002.”

Finally, it is a known fact that the best lighting must be inspired by a “futuristic” 2000s hip hop video that looks as though it was filmed inside a cheese grater.

Thus concludes my life story. I hope that you have learned something valuable, most notably that birch veneer unified the world, that frosted glass was the epitome of modernity, and that Scandi-chic is in fact neon in sentiment.

Yours,

The 2002 IKEA catalog

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