Handicapping the ’90s

Assessing the financial value of design styles used to take a few centuries; today it takes just a few decades. In the last 15 years alone, we’ve seen the recycling of 1950s, ’60s and ’70s design. With each revival have come escalating prices for prized iconic pieces. If you were to pick the ’90s winners now, your heirlooms could pay for your sixth grader’s college education.

Mego's in a Museum

The future market will be shaped most notably by the history and documentation found in today’s magazines, museum catalogs, style books, films and TV programs. We’ve polled those people who will be the arbiters — curators, auction-house specialists, gallery owners and design cognoscenti.

The experts say the direction of 1990s design runs along three often converging lines: the introduction of playfulness to humble objects; the marriage of new materials to ergonomically engineered products and lastly, the use of high-tech materials in low-tech craft production, giving designers freedom from the constraints of mass production (these will be the rarest and most expensive).

CHAIRMANSHIP

Furniture and furnishings notable for their innovative use of materials and unusual forms are always desirable. Chairs rank especially high. Frank Gehry’s Hat Trick chair is a hot choice. The ’90s also saw Marcel Wander’s knotted macramй and William Stumpf and Don Chadwick’s Aeron, both of which retailer Murray Moss rates highly.

PERFORMANCE PLASTIC

Until the ’90s, the word “plastic” meant cheap and shoddy. But with the development of sophisticated new materials and manufacturing techniques, it’s now glamorous. According to design consultant Jeffrey Osborne, the output of companies that manufacture inexpensive housewares will be covetable.

GOOD SPORTS

This was the decade that saw high-performance sporting gear become high fashion — as sought after and frequently as expensive as the latest bags by Gucci. Experts selected Nike’s magnetic sunglasses as well as the company’s Triax Watch: “It’s one of the few to rethink the relationship between the watch and the body and to consider the way the anatomy really works,” says Aaron Betsky...