Why the Modern World Looks So Drab

I tend to listen to or watch The Ezra Klein Show when he has either someone I’m already fascinated by or a topic I’m curious about. It took me a bit, but I finished this conversation between Debbie Millman and Ezra Klein about the driving forces behind the trend of pushing design into vulgarity.

President Trump and the modern right have a theory of beauty. You see it in Trump’s gilded Oval Office, his imagined arch and his executive order requiring classical and traditional styles for certain federal buildings.

This isn’t my theory of beauty, but it is a theory. And it’s a response, in part, to something that a lot of people have been feeling, and not just on the right: that the modern world is ugly, or getting uglier.

I’ve seen at least a dozen articles or videos over the last few years asking, “Is the world getting uglier?” They point to the drabness of new apartment blocks, the sameness of new cars and the reign of “greige” in homes and fashion.

Amidst a modern design aesthetic that looks ‘same-same’ and boring, we now get extremes. The Cybertruck, for example, looks ugly just to get attention. I’m positive that’s not a good thing.

One thing it got me thinking about: everything isn’t getting uglier. Affordable things just have to be cheap to produce, and that’s how you end up with cookie-cutter homes and bland cars.

Style costs extra. So does expression. So does taste.