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The Look of Longue

If you chase long afternoons lolling by the pool, with longer evenings of the same, there is only one piece of furniture on your mind. Ours too.

chaise longue chairs walsh kathleen expert portrait

Americans have long butchered foreign tongues, and no language has gotten it in the neck quite so badly as French. Though our Canadian neighbors parlez-vous from time to time, it hasn’t mattered one whit. Be it the over-Frenchification of certain Yanks who store their mem-whaws in their arm-whaws to the over-Americanizing of that fine school in South Bend, Noter Daym, we chew up and spit out la belle langue like an oversalted plate of freedom frites. And little sounds tinnier to a furniture aficionado than a Midwestern drawl or a clipped New Englander’s patter wrapping itself around the undisputed don of outdoor relaxation: the Chaze Lounge. Long gone is the lingual longue of the French chaise longue (literally “long chair”) in favor of a pronunciation as lazy as the lounger.

In the language dodge this is called an “eggcorn” (after a commonly misheard variant on “acorn”), an incorrect or bowdlerized term of art that sticks around because, well, it kind of makes sense—–after all, what ought one do on a chaise longue but lounge? And, thus, an American seating classic, as well as a fraught debate among hidebound grammarians, clucking Frenchmen, and serious poolside revelers was born. The identity crisis continues, but one thing is clear:

For all the semantic simpering, when the sun is out, there’s no place we’d rather be.
 

  • chaise longue chairs 1966 adjustable chaise lounge richard schultz design

    1966 Adjustable Chaise Lounge

    • Designed by: Richard Schultz
    • Price: $3,275
    Cast aluminum with vinyl coated polyester mesh.
  • chaise longue bouroullec brothers magis copy

    Striped Chaise Longue

    • Made by: Magis
    • Price: $704
    Steel tube frame with polyamide slats.
  • chaise longue chairs veneto stackable chaise longue unopiu dwr

    Veneto Stackable Chaise Longue

    • Designed by: Unopiu
    • Made by: Design Within Reach
    • Price: $1,400
    Teak frame with WaProLace (polyethylene fiber) netting.
  • chaise longue chairs mvs chaise maarten van severen vitra

    MVS Chaise

    • Designed by: Maarten Van Severen
    • Made by: Vitra
    • Price: $2,835-3,135
    Polyuerethane foam in either stainless-steel or chrome base and leather or foam head pillow.
Kathleen Walsh is the founder and head designer of the Los Angeles–based design firm Walteria Living, which was established in 2004. Walsh and her staff of five specialize in usually clever, often ironic, and always L.A.–manufactured objects whose sense of beauty is as tart as their sense of fun is mischievous. Because of her design sense, we sought Walsh’s take on our quintet of outdoor chaises, though it quickly became clear that her opinions were informed by both her career and that uncanny Angeleno sense of precisely what one ought to be lying on next to the pool.

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