ISSUE 08: The Point of Pointless Things

On the exquisite joy of the unnecessary.

There’s a pair of salt and pepper shakers on my table that I use every day. They’re shaped like tiny mushrooms, and they sparkle a little when the light hits just right. They don’t grind. They don’t pour particularly well. They are, objectively, kind of useless. But they delight me.

That’s the thing about beautiful, “pointless” objects—they make absolutely no sense, and yet they are the things I reach for first. They’re often dismissed as frivolous, but I think they’re doing something important. They’re lightening the load. They’re saying: not everything has to be functional to matter.

Somewhere along the way, design and aesthetics started being measured primarily by utility. Clean lines. Neutral palettes. Minimalism masquerading as virtue. We were taught that seriousness was synonymous with taste, and excess was embarrassing. But I don’t think that’s quite right. Or true. Or fun.

Historically, ornament wasn’t something to shy away from. It was a language of power and pleasure. Think of the Mughal Empire’s elaborate pietra dura inlays, or the rococo interiors of 18th century France. Consider the jewels sewn into court garments, or the architectural flourishes of Baroque cathedrals—scrolls, spirals, cherubs upon cherubs. To decorate was to elevate. If you had more than you needed, it meant something: status, taste, desire, abundance. A visual flex, sure—but also a way of celebrating life itself.

And while I’m not lobbying for a return to Versailles-level opulence (although honestly, wouldn’t that be fun?), I do think we’ve overcorrected. Somewhere between modernist purging and IKEA flat-packing, we forgot that beauty is reason enough.

In her book On Longing, cultural critic Susan Stewart writes, “We place value on the miniature, the useless, the precious, because they resist the rational economy.” I keep coming back to that. To the idea that the small, the lovely, the “extra” things—while inefficient—have a kind of emotional potency. They’re inefficient on purpose. And in a culture obsessed with productivity, what could be more radical than choosing joy?

The artist and jeweler Joyce Scott, whose beadwork is as political as it is ornamental, once said: “Adornment has become so shunned in the art world, but I want to show how decoration can carry deep meaning. It’s not just pretty; it’s power.”

I think about that when I see someone in a rhinestone choker at 9am. Or when I visit someone’s apartment and they’ve hung crystals in the windows just to catch the afternoon light. I think about it when I see someone buy an impractical, wonderful chair just because it made them feel, well, wonderful.

It’s no surprise that fashion and design labeled “feminine” are often the ones most derided for being too extra. Too pink, too frilly, too shiny, too much. Historically, that dismissal has always been tied to power: to feminized labor, to domestic space, to the notion that emotional or sensory richness is somehow unserious.

But a silk bow can be a rebellion. A sparkly eye can be strategy. A scented drawer liner can be an act of resistance. The artist Mickalene Thomas, whose work is full of rhinestones and layered visual references to beauty culture, once said: “I’m not trying to create a fantasy world. I’m trying to show a world where beauty is a kind of language.”

We’re trained to think of utility as the ultimate value. But when I think about what’s moved me most—what I’ve kept through apartment moves, what I’ve posted on my walls, what I’ve tucked away into jewelry boxes and keepsake drawers—it’s never the practical stuff. It’s the sparkly pen that barely writes. The embroidered napkin I’ll never use. The perfume bottle that sits there like a sculpture, radiating nothing but memory.

Beauty doesn’t need a reason. The pointless things are often the point.

This week’s goodies: Unserious, tiny rebellions and glittering delights that exist purely to please the senses.

Next week: we make peace with trends and why following the crowd might be less tragic than we’ve been taught.