Mettre le couvert

In French, “mettre la table” means “to set the table”.

It’s a good expression to know, because the French spend significant time on meals.

When a table is set, the English place some cutlery. What do Americans call cutlery? Silverware. Even if not made from silver. No one in America thinks it odd to talk about “plastic silverware”.

Plastic silverware (or plastic cutlery) risks spending a protracted afterlife as landfill, but it does have some benefits: lightweight, easy to transport, sanitary if wrapped.

I was taken aback to find plastic cutlery in France with a brand on it. And what a brand: Philippe Starck’s eponymous Starck Studio. Apparently, the plastic cutlery collection is a serious endeavor, with an extensive range.

Do we need designer plastic cutlery? Just what does a brand or signature add?

For the end user, arguably nothing. A consumer has to look, very closely, at the underside of the plastic cutlery to discern the Starck Studio provenance. (In my photo, I’ve circled the brand in red.)

The brand signifies that some design know-how has been invested in the product. But the fork looks like a fork, and the knife looks like a knife. The design is not novel to the point where a consumer could pick out this particular design from a representative panel of plastic cutlery. An end user probably will not remember anything special about this line of plastic cutlery.

For the buyer,  perhaps the brand is meant to signal quality production, the idea being that Starck Studio would associate itself only with quality manufacturers. For buyers –at least or European buyers– the Starck Studio brand is likely to be more recognizeable than a manufacturer brand, maybe even more than a distributor brand. The point of the Starck Studio brand would thus be a kind of bonding: a designer standing in as a proxy for a quality manufacturer.