We watched the open shelving arrive. First in AD, then in the homes of friends who'd hired the same four designers everyone was hiring. The cabinets came down. The dishes went on display. Suddenly, every kitchen in our circle looked like a Parisian apartment or a Copenhagen showroom: unlacquered brass, fluted glass, ceramics from that one shop in Marrakech arranged just so.
We didn't do it.
Not because we were certain. Because something felt off, and we'd learned by then that the feeling was worth more than the architect's rendering. We couldn't articulate why we didn't want our glassware visible to guests, why the thought of our housekeeper dusting the shelves every week felt like a problem we were creating for ourselves. We just didn't do it. We kept the Smallbone cabinetry. We let the designer move on to another client.
Three years later, the cabinet doors came back. "Closed storage is having a moment," the same magazines announced, as if the kitchens had been waiting for permission. Friends started mentioning how tired they were of looking at their own dishes. One redid her kitchen entirely, eighteen months after the first renovation. We did not say what we were thinking.
This is what design trends obscure: they ask us to perform a life we may not actually live.
Open shelving is for someone who owns eleven beautiful things and uses them all. It is not for someone with the Astier de Villatte her mother started collecting in the nineties, the Le Creuset in a color they discontinued, the
