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Loewy used to say that the most beautiful curve was a rising sales graph, and that notion has driven design since he was in shorts. Good design married commerce during the Great Depression, and Loewy's career took off then because he made products irresistible at a time when nobody really wanted to pay for anything. In the '50s, Charles and Ray Eames led a cohort of Californians who used postwar manufacturing capacity to create sleek, efficient domestic environs. In the '60s, however, industrial design seemed to lose its way and end up in the mire of an American consumer sensibility that simply wanted more products for less money, from which it began to emerge only in the '90s.
Now, instead of one Raymond Loewy, the design world is humming with an eclectic mix of impresarios and entrepreneurs intent on earning a living from making the beautiful things in your life. There are big corporate players, like Sony and Ford and Philips, the European electronics consortium. There are architects and designers--iconoclasts like Philippe Starck and young upstarts like Jasper Morrison or Marc Newson. Or businessmen like David Neeleman, whose no-frills but chic airline, JetBlue, began flying last month. And of course there's Martha Stewart, who has parlayed her sense of style into a multidimensional billion-dollar role as America's spokesperson for taste. Martha's line of home furnishings helped wipe the red ink off the bottom line of the discount department chain K Mart.
If anyone believes in America's new appetite for design it is Terence Conran, Britain's style impresario. Twenty years ago, Conran launched a Stateside chain of catchy furniture stores in his name, but he jumped ship early in the '90s. Now he's back, determined to catch the new wave. In December he opened a 22,500-sq.-ft. store in Manhattan. Like its counterparts in London, Paris and Tokyo, the Terence Conran Shop is a design bazaar, with everything from $17 digital watches to $3,550 violet-colored lounges. "I never quite understood why design didn't take off in America before," says Conran, who is cautiously optimistic this time around. "There really is a wind of change here now. America is about technology, being proud of achieving so much and confident about having a culture that reflects that."
Americans' appetite for design is flourishing at least partly because America is. The housing-construction boom has reached historic proportions, and people need to fill those new homes with stuff that defines who they are. It used to confer status to have an expensive designer couch; now it's important to have something that's personal, whether it's from the flea market or B&B Italia. Like the Mosquito Table, which looks like an aircraft wing. Or the Conrad (not Conran) chair, made from something called Bora Bora bark. "In this boom economy, people have a craving to express their individuality," says Bill Faust, executive v.p. at Fitch, a design consultancy based in Columbus, Ohio.