Just wow to these Y2K Pottery Barn plates

"Smoke Free"/"Hip Hop"/"Surf the Net"

Apr 20, 2023

The time: It's the dawn of a new century. People are partying like it's 1999. Robbie Williams is still a thing. At midnight, all the computers might stop working. At the same time, the future is upon us, and the Sony Aibo is threatening to replace all actual real dogs. It is COMPLETE CHAOS.

Except, of course, for Pottery Barn. Its store is a vanilla-scented refuge of furniture modeled after Geppetto's workshop. And in this bridge to the year 2000, Pottery Barn has taken a more lighthearted approach to welcome the millennium with a dish set, each plate illustrating a different decade of the 20th century, ending with a cryptic vision of "The Future."

So, what were PB's most pressing thoughts of the year 2000?

Here’s what the 2000 plate gives us:

Living Large
Grrl
Hip Hop (confirmation that these plates were designed by white people)
Wired
Underwired
"E-Mail Me"
Y2K
Smoke Free

And “The Nineties”:

Daddy Track (??????)
Hard Body
Lounge
Cell Phone
Casual Friday
Martinis (this and the previous two clearly catering to yuppies)
Career Woman (sad that this was novel)
Slacker (nod to the Gen Xers who became yuppies)
"Cool" (BAHAHAHA)
Surf the Net
Tattoos

The long and short is that these plates are emblematic of a certain breed of Cringey White People. The question is whether the audience for these products was Gen X “slackers” in need of ironic accessories to continue their liberal-arts-era rage against THE YUPPIES…or just yuppies. In pleated khakis.