⛓️🕯️In Memoriam of Pier 1 🕯️⛓️
‘In Memoriam’ is a new column by Very Famous that eulogizes retail stores that have fallen to bankruptcy or shuttered completely. In addition to a brief obituary, we will also publish memories of the disappeared stores from members of our community. To contribute your own Pier 1 memory, email kelsey@veryfamousmagazine.com
I only have the fuzziest memory of visiting a Pier 1 with my mom. I don’t think we were even shopping for something specific; we’d just stopped in because, like a lot of Pier 1s, this one was part of a strip mall system, designed for shoppers to retail hop.
What I do remember are the warm tones of the store, the bright colors, the impossibly adult aspiration of having lamps and lampshades that matched sophisticated rugs and functionless throw pillows. What it felt like, being immersed in a perfectly coordinated environment, was what scrolling through an Instagram feed would feel like years later.
Born in 1962, Pier 1 would not ascend to the throne of prolific strip mall-dom until the 1990s when its recognizable, eclectic aesthetic became the interior design look of an era. Perhaps single-handedly responsible for the rise of the papasan chair, Pier 1 also sold pillows, lamps, chairs, blankets, and more, and though its look is now impossible to parse from every other furniture retailer out there, the store used to be in a lane of its own.
From The New York Times’ “obit”:
“Twenty years ago, you could look at a product and you would really know that it came from Pier 1,” said Hart Posen, a professor of management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business who studies corporate decision-making during technological change. “They were really the only big national firm with that kind of unique identity.”
Because Pier 1 stores looked and felt like the inside of an early-aughts catalog, it makes sense that the move to a more digital world would be — as it has been for so many of their retail comrades — partially lethal. Following a bankruptcy filing in February, the suburban fixture will close 450, or nearly half, of its 936 locations. Unfortunately for Canada, Pier 1 will exit the country completely.
Now, as we mourn the loss of the leading purveyor of 1990s interior design, just one question remains: where will we all go to casually hang out with our moms?
Rest in a Papasan, Pier 1.
🕯️Collective Memories🕯️
“I had just returned home to suburban Minnesota after a year abroad, right after high school. I was so anxious for so many reasons (returning from a year away from home, not knowing where I was going to college and, most of all, the fact that I was super closeted, super, super gay). On the way home from the airport, despite being excessively —and loudly — sleep deprived, my mom stopped at Pier 1 to get a new lamp for her nightstand. We spent about an hour looking at dumb-ass bamboo lamps and it was awful, but in that time, in which she so clearly valued my interior design opinion, I was like ‘Hmm… maybe it’ll be totally fine if I tell her I’m gay.’ And it was. THANK YOU PIER 1.” – Gattlin Miller
“I think it’s hard to understand for people who grew up in bigger cities, but there are chains that could truly be an escape and an education outside small-town suburbia. For me, Pier 1 and its accompanying candles, various shades of woods, “Dinner With Friends” CD mixes, and rustic lanterns on coffee tables showed me a sort of ~cool~ hardwood-floor life I wanted to live. Even though I’ve gone the other way now taste-wise, I deeply appreciate that oversized button-up, New Age chill. My mom had pieces from Pier 1’s one-time clothing line Passports! I think some sort of linen dress and maybe a vest? Hot Texas Sunday afternoons, shopping with mom, sun through the store windows.” — Kelsey Lawrence
April 10, 2020
In "Features"
