Schmatta Asks: What Is Your GOAT Couch?
Best couch picks from very cool design people.
Out of all the pieces of furniture required to outfit a home, the couch is a purchase rife with domestic fraught. It is THE piece to define a space. After all, the sofa is public; it is the framework for your best first impression and a primary spot for socializing. Also, sofas are expensive. When I was in my early twenties and living in a windowless room in Williamsburg, BK, I met a man who told me he had just bought a new couch. From this, I inferred a very important thing: this was a man who lived alone, without roommates, hence: marriage material. (Didn’t last, whatever.)
A couch, when properly selected, is BUE (Big Upholstered Energy). For many of us, we purchase couches that are…fine. Couches that cost more than a month’s rent or mortgage, but are perfectly….okay. On the other side of the coin is the dream: the couch for when you win the lottery, the divan of one’s dreams.
And so, I’ve asked some “cool design people”: What is your GOAT couch? (GOAT standing for Greatest of All Time, which I didn’t fully understand the meaning of until maybe a year ago. I always though it was like a goat, as in an animal, and goats are cool?)
Jill Singer, co-founder, Sight Unseen
“This is a subject that endlessly delights me, and to be honest, my idea of a perfect sofa tends to change every time I find a new one to love. In the past year alone, I’ve been obsessed with an SCP one with asymmetrical skirting, the super deep Josef Frank–covered one at the Toteme store in Soho, and a Mario Bellini Duc sofa reupholstered in green and white striping by the Chicago vintage dealer Dial M for Modern. I prefer traditionally structured sofas over curved ones, and I’m into visible framing, like on the Kiki sofa for Artek or the Gianfranco Frattini Sesann sofa for Tacchini. But I still want my couch to be super plush and comfortable. One of the only ones to tick all of my boxes is this custom version of the Mooner sofa by David Thulstrup for Common Seating, which Thulstrup designed for his own Copenhagen apartment. To be honest, the commercially available version of this sofa doesn’t even do it for me, but the custom version — with its teddy-bear sheepskin upholstery, tomato-red framing, and juicy thick arm cushions — is unbelievably good.”
Frances Merrill, Reath
“There was a vintage floral Bambole from a few years ago that is ‘the one that got away.’
Or the vintage floral Togo that we did get to buy (photo below). The combo of an old fashioned traditional feeling floral with a classic modern playful shape makes me feel like I don’t have to choose a lane and can have all the things I like in one piece!”
