Subject: Scandinavia
To: REDACTED
From: REDACTED
Date: REDACTED


Hate is a strong word. Personally, I find Scandinavian minimalism to be... Tragically uninspired. It’s the aesthetic equivalent of drinking lukewarm chamomile tea while staring at a white wall and pretending it’s art. Everything is blonde wood, neutered color palettes, and functional design. How quaint.

No drama. No decadence. No sex appeal. It’s like living inside a Muji store after a lobotomy. Give me lacquered black mahogany, smoked glass, Italian marble, a Fendi Casa leather sofa in oxblood—not a wobbly IKEA side table named Flürg, or whatever the hell it’s called.

Design should seduce you. Minimalism—Scandinavian or otherwise—feels like it’s trying to apologize for existing.

So yes, I agree. Vehemently.

Survival doesn’t breed beauty—it breeds utility, austerity, restraint. It strips life down to necessity, which is admirable in theory, but absolutely suffocating in practice.

The cold makes people think beauty is something to be earned through suffering, rather than something you inhabit naturally—like a silk robe from Tom Ford or the interior of a Bentley Flying Spur.

The absence of excess fosters a culture obsessed with practicality—not aesthetics.

You ever notice how Scandinavian interiors always have that same sterile plant? That little fig thing in the corner, pretending to be alive? It’s not nature. It’s a gesture toward life. Sad.

Give me an overgrown orchid arrangement from L’Olivier Floral Atelier in a smoked crystal vase. That’s how you do decadence. That’s how you tell the room: I’m alive, and I’m better than you.

Have you ever walked into one of those so-called New Nordic restaurants—they're always named something aggressively simple like Salt or Nord—and you’re greeted with a stone plate holding what appears to be a single, anemic radish, lightly dusted with foraged moss and regret? The entire place smells like damp bark and pickled arrogance.

Fermented herring? Birch sap? Reindeer tartare served on a slab of volcanic rock? It’s not cuisine—it’s a dare. A survival mechanism thinly disguised as innovation. They’ll charge you $300 for a tasting menu that looks like a forest floor after a light rain, and everyone claps like they just witnessed a miracle.

There’s nothing sensual about it. Nothing decadent. No rich foie gras. No truffle risotto. No seared Wagyu glazed in cognac reduction. Just fish that smells like an old boat, and things they pulled out of the earth and forgot to cook.

I had dinner once at a place in Copenhagen. Candlelight flickering on raw wood, the air thick with wet lichen and self-congratulation. The chef came out—wore a beanie indoors, of course—and said the dish represented the melancholy of winter. I nearly laughed. I was expecting a meal, not a depressive episode.

It’s performative humility, which is worse than overt arrogance because it pretends to be virtuous while radiating contempt for anything remotely indulgent or expressive. It’s the aesthetic equivalent of a smirk hidden behind a linen curtain.

These people don’t dislike opulence—they resent it. And they resent it because they envy it. Deeply. But rather than admit that, they wrap their envy in wool throws and call it intentional living. They weaponize restraint. It’s this quiet, simmering aggression, dressed in neutral tones and passive-aggressive smiles. It’s not modesty. It’s narcissism masquerading as self-denial.

It’s very similar to modern fashion. Oversized, ripped clothing is cool. Why? Because everyone is so broke and miserable they have to justify it.

The worship of “effortless” is a lie told by people desperate for control but too afraid to admit it. They’re all playing dress-up in generational trauma—oversized, ragged clothes that look like they were pulled from a donation bin behind a psychiatric hospital—and somehow that’s now on the runway in Paris. It’s chic to be broken. It’s fashionable to suffer. Meanwhile, I’m in custom Brioni and crocodile loafers, sipping something older than their grandmother, wondering when people started mistaking poverty for profundity.

They act like the lack of ornamentation is a sign of spiritual evolution. Like we’re all supposed to apologize for liking silk, steel, glass, gloss—red wine so dense it stains your soul. They sit in rooms that look like psychiatric waiting areas and judge anyone who wants a chandelier or color. As if aesthetics are a moral failure.

Look, I'm not the reason you work half your life for the government and spend the other half heating your hut in the winter.

We are not the same.

Happiest countries in the world?

Please.

Happiest because no one’s around to disagree. Everyone is either dead or in the process of turning into one.

Smiling through the antidepressants. Neutrality as a way of life. No color. No conflict. No difference. It’s not happiness—it’s compliance. It’s aesthetic communism, marketed to the upper-middle class.

And the worst part? They pretend it’s effortless. That whole “we just threw this together” lie. No, you didn’t. You spent six weeks choosing that beige vase that looks like a dehydrated organ. You read twelve think pieces on wabi-sabi and how the Japanese do it better.

The real tragedy? They want to be erased. Because individuality is dangerous in those cultures. So they celebrate the bland. They fetishize the average. And call it balance.

It’s exhausting. It’s not a style. It’s a personality disorder in flax.

What’s truly beautiful doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t beg to be noticed—it demands it. Like chrome on a vintage Jag. Or a woman in Kirzia pumps walking into a room that suddenly forgets everyone else existed.

Let them hide in their snowbound sanctuaries. The rest of us have taste.

So no, I don’t eat Scandinavian.

And God, don’t even get me started on their design and architecture.

The sheer audacity of it. They’ll take a piece of driftwood, sand it once, slap the word “heirloom” on the tag, and charge you $3,800 for it. And the worst part? Plebs pay it. With enthusiasm. With tears in their eyes and a tote bag full of shame.

A lamp. Just a lamp. Nothing more than a bent piece of brushed aluminum and a bulb the size of a thumb. They call it “a dialogue between material and emptiness” and suddenly it’s $1,200. You could buy two nights at The Peninsula—corner suite, with a bottle of Dom chilling in a glass bucket by the window. But no—you get light. Weak, apologetic light.

And those chairs. Don’t get me started on the chairs. Every time I see a $7,000 chair made of bent plywood and flax rope, I want to scream. It looks like something pulled out of a monk’s cell during a raid. It’s not furniture—it’s punishment. They call it “restraint.” I call it orthopedic suffering dressed up as virtue.

Minimalism shouldn’t cost more than decadence. But in this twisted little snow-corner of the world, it does. Because they’re not selling comfort, or beauty, or functionality—they’re selling morality. The idea that by owning this empty, lifeless space, you’re a better person. Wiser. Gentler. Spiritually evolved. And that costs extra.

It’s the greatest scam of the century. Austerity at luxury prices.

You have to remember: when the world is falling apart, they’ll always sell austerity as virtue. It’s not. It’s how rulers shift blame to peasants. Peasants who apologize for their own oppression.

A disease is exactly what it is—contagious, persistent, and masquerading as a cure.

Scandi design treats emotion like clutter. It bleaches personality. It erases desire. It’s design for people who want to look interesting without being anything. A curated nothingness. An aesthetic of absence.

Me? I want my money visible. In weight. In gloss. In detail. In the way Italian leather creaks when you sit down. In the scent of real wood polish. In the cold, unforgiving surface of polished black marble.

This whole Scandinavian aesthetic—it’s the final stage of state capitalism dressed as free market post-modern enlightenment. It’s self-loathing with a skincare routine.