The fading of a gay icon

What hope is there for the world when even the Ikea catalogue is boring? Every year I await its August appearance and every year I always find at least one thing that I've just got to have. But not this year. Not, in fact, for a couple of years.

Once the low-rent arbiter of high-end design, Ikea is now – well, sometimes I feel as if I'm wandering through the Chesterfield Shop.

I say this more in sorrow than in anger. Were Ikea a country, my loyalty would go unquestioned. I draw the line at Ikea "art" and I've never yet bought the frozen meatballs, but I have more than my fair share of Samla, Tertial, Kvart and of course, Ivar, the solid pine shelving that can be expanded, well, basically, forever. (Anyone for some used pine shelves?)

My knowledge of Allen keys is pretty much unparalleled and I can spot an Ikea design at 50 paces. Years ago, a prominent decor magazine identified a metal-frame couch as "vintage." I stared at the picture and laughed. I owned the same model and it was Ikea.

Indeed there's nothing I enjoy more than walking into a supposedly hip space and spotting the Ikea shortcuts – those spots where savvy designers have cut costs (but not style) by using a bit of Ikea – the Lack shelves in the trendy gay bar, the PS cabinet in the local beauty emporium. It's a cheap bit of one-upmanship on my part, this niggling brand spotting, but it makes me feel hip. Or rather it used to.

Because lately Ikea has been failing me and I don't think I'm the only one who's bummed out. You used to see oodles of gay couples at Ikea (almost as many as at the Yonge St. Canadian Tire), but not any more. Now, it's young straight couples at the North York outlet and large extended families at Etobicoke.

Ikea used to be a gay icon. Like Target in the United States, Ikea sold high style to people with small pocketbooks. Its sleek minimalist stylings fit the hip urban lifestyle perfectly.

Downtowners even joked that Ikea was Swedish for homosexual and for awhile it looked as though the company believed it.

The North York store used to feature a wall-sized photo of two guys preparing dinner together and it was so obviously an appeal to the gay market that a friend and I thought of them as pals and called them Ted and Steve. Unfortunately, Ted and Steve have left the building.   More of  The fading of a gay icon
Toronto Star,  Canada