Unsung icons: Walk-in wardrobe The rise of the giant closet

COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE

To understand Australia’s relationship with what have essentially become small rooms in our homes, you have to understand our relationship with what goes into these spaces. Namely, clothes. As much as the Asos/Net-A-Porter generation believes its the first to harness global fashion, all that has really changed are price, income, ordering mechanisms and delivery mechanisms. OK, everything.

Well within living memory, you would pore over a catalogue written and printed in Savile Row, carefully take your own measurements, then send away – oldie speak for ‘add to basket’ – for a garment that would arrive in roughly half a year’s time. And barring fluctuations in body size, clothes were meant to last, to be mended and eventually passed down to siblings or children – thus saving cash on the way. Children had two sets of gear – school and play. Grown-ups, too – except theirs were work and leisure, with maybe a suit or frock for weddings/funerals/court.

As mass production out of developing nations gained momentum in the 1980s and beyond, regular folk could afford the same multiples the toffs splashed out on, although with an unspoken diminishment in quality. This was a massive shift in the consumer mindset. Type the words ‘How many shoes did…’ into Google and it will still complete the sentence by adding ‘Imelda Marcos have’. The answer is 1060, if you’re playing at home, but the point is that the ex-Philippines First Lady was reviled for such decadence. Now that stat is #lifegoals.

It was inevitable that our wardrobes would expand to match our growing obsession with fashion and its luminaries. Opening a cupboard to an ever-expanding catalogue made it difficult to find what you were looking for – with the squished shelves and all – so a design modification was required. We couldn’t go up without adding a storey, nor could we go wider without it feeling like you were at the drycleaners. Depth was the answer, and so began the era of the walk-in wardrobe (WIW).

Lest you think we are anti the WIW, it should be pointed out that they were, are and will continue to be masterfully designed blends of hanging and shelf space. Often created out of timber in lacquered shades of honey, they are an ode to the art of the joiner.

The WIW’s rampant growth was further boosted by a slew of reality TV shows giving us plebs a glimpse into the lifestyles of rich and famous people whose family’s claim to fame was naming children with the same initial letter. Even if the words Kryptonite, Kaleidoscope or Kindergarten didn’t appear on our driver’s licences, we wanted not only their wardrobe items but the shrines in which they were hung.

Walk-ins became the millennial version of the backyard spa. They were and are a sign that you’re doing better than OK. Display became as crucial as design, as the couture you’d dropped your hard-earned dividends on could be arrayed in Vuittoned ranks. If you were really minted and lived in a humid climate like Singapore or Darwin, you could also have the whole room climate-controlled so that your leatherware remained pristine. This actually happened.

The first generation of WIWs were designed to be shared by two inhabitants of a home – most commonly in the His-side-and-Her-side configuration, like the sinks in the bathroom. If the square metreage allowed, there might even be space for a couch on which to sit while you popped your shoes on – or, better still, an island cabinet that provided the perfect surface for some light folding on laundry day.

WIWs are no longer the domain of the rich and famous. They have entered the mainstream, satisfying the primary criteria of solid design – they make life easier. And the adding of one to a home is practically guaranteed to deliver a return on investment come eventual sale time.

Perhaps the last word should be left to the Patron Saint of Dressing Rooms, her holiness Carrie Bradshaw from Sex And The City, who noted: “I like my money where I can see it. Hanging in my closet.”

“WALK-INS BECAME THE millennial VERSION OF THE BACKYARD SPA. THEY WERE AND ARE A SIGN THAT YOU’RE DOING better THAN OK”