A majority of American TikTok users are below the age of 29, a group that includes young millennials (only 37 percent of whom will own a home by age 34), Gen Z (age 24 at most) and others too young to even think about building a windbreak.
On Shelter Tok, such control is a thing of the past. It is hard to pull off monastic minimalism when you have a popcorn ceiling. Shelter meant approaching the structural aspects of the home as something the occupant had control over: the sources of light, the interior climate, the ceiling height, the landscaping. They even had competing model-home programs. He could do this because, along with photographs, the leading shelter magazines - House Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens, House & Garden - came with floor plans and building instructions. One woman wrote that “Not since the doctor said: ‘It’s a BOY!’ have I been so excited” her husband was so taken that he built a terrace and windbreak inspired by the designs in the magazine. When I visited Gordon’s archives at the Smithsonian in 2017, I found them filled with letters of praise for the Japanese design issues.
MY DISNEY KITCHEN VIDEO GAME SERIES
In 1960, Gordon’s two-issue series on the Japanese concept of shibui was so popular that the set resold for as much as $12 - the equivalent of more than $110 today. It was during this period that tastemakers like Elizabeth Gordon, who edited House Beautiful for 23 years, made the shelter category a blueprint for living. Brookman had been named advertising manager of Your Own Home, a “shelter magazine devoted to low-cost housing.” Brookman was a World War II veteran, and his return home coincided with a housing boom, as 2.4 million other veterans received government-backed loans to put toward their (often suburban) American dreams. The first known use of the term “shelter magazine” appeared in The New York Times in 1946, when the paper reported that Jerome J. “This is my style exactly!” says one commenter on that first video, perhaps happy to find a new way of identifying herself. They want to know where the couch is from, the rug, the bookshelf. They will pause in each room to note details that can be collected on their Pinterest boards, if not in their own homes. There are people who will study these TikToks carefully, as I have. We’re back to the hand on the dial the video loops. A projection screen that rolls up to reveal a mirror above a white brick fireplace. Nearby is an emerald rug with an orange border and a stylized image of a cheetah at its center. The camera spins away to the floor, where we see that the headboard isn’t for a bed it supports a row of orange cushions.
From there we cut to the ceiling, where a wooden pendant light hangs from white molding amid undulating zebra stripes. In another video, we watch a tattooed hand turn a gold lighting dial before panning across an upholstered headboard. On TikTok, everything flashes by why should homes be any different? Mainstays of the genre include zoomed-in footage of carefully placed objects and a lack of interest in negative space. On Shelter Tok, you don’t move through a space so much as lurch through it, gravitating from item to item. This is a typical post on what I’ve come to think of as Shelter TikTok, a 2021 spin on the design and architecture magazines of the 20th century. It all goes by before we can absorb it, but we aren’t meant to absorb it - only to have impressions. Then come the bedroom, the bar cart, the white Smeg toaster. Among these curated images is a shelf of curated objects, centered on a Polaroid camera.
MY DISNEY KITCHEN VIDEO GAME TV
We see a pet dog on bedspread, a side table, a TV stand, the couch again, a dining area with Thonet-style chairs. Later come quick cuts: to a standing bookshelf (white spines only), to the throw pillows again, to a transparent coffee table (an opportunity, really, to show off the checked rug beneath). We see a white couch with throw pillows: white squares, pink square, ocher orb, black square. The apartment appears in flashes as a song by Frank Ocean plays.