Stay Grounded!

Last April, multidisciplinary artist Sean Brown released a range of handmade area rugs replicating CD designs of beloved albums by Jay-Z, Sade, and Coldplay, with remarkable detail. The initial run quickly sold out, and subsequent drops—commemorating Lil Kim’s Hard Core, OutKast’s The Love Below, and The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, among others—have been snatched up with equal fervor. Around the same time, streetwear brand Cactus Plant Flea Market produced a highly-coveted rug featuring their signature smiley motif, followed by yet another over the summer as part of the brand’s collaborative capsule with Marc Jacobs. The success of these designs—and the timing, coinciding with stay-at-home orders in North America and abroad—set the stage for a viral uptick of punchy statement rugs that, as we round the corner into a second year of the pandemic, is still going strong.

A thriving rug marketplace has quickly developed on Instagram, where experienced textile designers and DIY enthusiasts share and sell their custom wares to thousands of followers interested in adding flair to their floors. For these rugs, much like Brown’s, nostalgia is central to the appeal; their efficacy, aesthetically speaking, relies on the ability to reproduce a symbol whose cultural cache is already baked in. Countless rugs pay homage to cartoon characters like Bart Simpson, SpongeBob, The Powerpuff Girls, and a menagerie of Pokémon. Equally prominent are pieces reproducing iconic brand logos like that of Jordan Brand and Baby Phat, or signature artwork by Takashi Murakami and KAWS. It doesn’t matter that these rugs are inherently bootleg, because the graphics themselves are the commodity.

The rug’s ability to supercharge a graphic invites formal comparison to say, a t-shirt, but functionally, they differ. The practical role of a t-shirt is to be worn, which hinges on the consumer choosing each day whether or not to wear it. The practical application of a rug integrates it into the whole of a space; inevitably becoming part of the consumer’s daily life. And unlike a household object that may be decorative but ultimately mechanical, such as a tea kettle or a shower curtain, the rug fulfills its purpose simply by being there.

The same way independent vendors use the rug to immortalize 90s movies and athletes, brands at the forefront of the trend mythologize their own proprietary imagery—a motivation informed by legacies of historic streetwear labels. The cultish intrigue and playful spirit of such rugs is native to skate brands in particular; Stüssy, the pioneer brand in streetwear, saw the viability of branded home goods earlier than most. Their indelible welcome mat and iconic 8-ball logo rug have been recurrent staples for many years. Under Stüssy’s influence, Supreme has set a notorious standard for branded domestic accessories for nearly three decades. In addition to novelty fire extinguishers, bike pumps, pool rafts, and every imaginable tchotchke in between, the brand has produced some of the most recognizable graphic rugs of the last decade, such as the 2011 Robert Indiana parody rug made with Gallery 1950, and the 2018 “Fear of a Black Planet” rug, made in collaboration with Undercover and Public Enemy.

Other modern streetwear brands like Brain Dead and Girls Don’t Cry have also turned out highly popular rugs exalting their signature symbols, which customarily sell out and may fetch hundreds of dollars, if not more, on resell platforms. Virgil Abloh infamously facsimiled an IKEA receipt as part of his 2019 capsule with the furniture retailer. Limited edition releases from Hajime Sorayama and Marc Jacobs have interpreted the trend through a fine art lens, meanwhile, even McDonald’s included multiple rugs in its monstrous array of collaborative merchandise with Travis Scott.

The conceptual function of a rug, as Alessandra Covini writes in a recent issue of design biannual MacGuffin, is that it “turns what it frames into something unique and exclusive, isolating the people and objects that inhabit it, defining a consecrated ground.” Not only does that clarify the rug as an ideal medium to enshrine a charged pop culture symbol like Snoopy, it also helps us understand why we would gravitate to the rug during a time when we’re wanting to make our homes feel more hallowed. A rug is an object that sanctifies space, and as Covini points out, encases routine; whether spiritual (a prayer rug,) domestic (a runner in an entryway,) or in the case of a Nike swoosh or Brain Dead logo rug, an understudy for the aesthetic practice of dressing up.

Investments in luxury apparel are much harder to justify without being able to anticipate occasions to wear them; a comically insignificant quandary, of course, in the face of the financial peril many have experienced due to unemployment, illness, and systemic ineptitude. Engaging with our living spaces more deliberately prompts us to consider how we delineate structure and value within our inner lives. In cultivating our interior environments to counter the inhospitality of the world outside, what subjectivities do we honor in defining what’s essential? The rug adorns our home with a sliver of safety, weaving together the rituals and relics that shape our lives, but grants permission to be unserious gently beneath our feet. As we determine new ways to look forward, the statement rug redirects us to look down, ground ourselves, and find pleasure in stillness.

Ariel LeBeau is a writer, producer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles.