Three little words with a huge meaning. Words you might long to yell from the rooftops when you feel them, but which you might not dare speak straight away. Not until you’re sure the other person will respond with an affirmative ‘I love you, too’.
Bonus material
Anyone looking to boost their message of love adds a signal. A little heart at the end of an e-mail, a personal playlist (ideally on cassette), an affectionate emoji or a bunch of red roses on Valentine’s Day. Some tokens of love arose over the course of history, while others were a commercial invention.
Valentine’s Day
Contrary to what many people think, Valentine’s Day was not invented by Hallmark or some other bright spark in the greeting card industry. It was Pope Gelasius who placed the commemoration of St Valentine on the Catholic calendar in 496. There have been several theories since then about the connection between St Valentine, Valentine’s Day and love. The most plausible derives from medieval courtly love poetry. In the poem Parliament of Fowls, written around 1380 by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, St Valentine’s Day is when the birds choose their mates.
Romance sells
The British were celebrating Valentine’s Day by the mid-17th century. Prosperous men drew lots with women’s names on them. They then presented the lady in question with a homemade gift: a card with a handwritten verse or a drawing, say. The love token was folded and sealed with wax, and left on the woman’s doorstep. Homemade and painted versions disappeared after the industrial revolution and the appearance of companies like Hallmark in 1910. Valentine’s Day cards became a mass product, accessible to anybody wishing to declare their love to someone.
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Passion – Love play
The appearance of sex toys tells us a lot about how people felt about lust and gratification at a particular time. About the taboos that might still attach to them. And about the future of sex and the ideals of designers.
Passion – The kiss
Your first kiss. You never forget it. No matter how sweet, sloppy or bad it was. After that, there’s no stopping you: on average you’ll spend 20,000 minutes of your life kissing.
Passion – Perfectible body
Not happy with your body? Then do something about it. That seems to be the credo of our age, with its obsession with perfect bodies. But is the body really so perfectible?
Passion – The body
The contents of Bouquet romantic novels might still leave something to the imagination, but not so their covers: this is the image of the ‘ideal man’. What does it say about our perceptions?
Passion – Romantic fiction
Seven Nights with the Sheikh, A Kiss in the Moonlight, An Heir for the King: the titles of romantic fiction in the world-famous Bouquet series have always appealed to the imagination. Guilty pleasures full of desire, temptation and happy endings are still extremely popular.
Falling in Love – Making it happen
Butterflies in your stomach, unable to eat a thing, constantly daydreaming and checking your phone every five minutes to see if you’ve received a new message: falling in love is magical.
Bonding – Parenthood
For centuries being a mum or dad was not a choice at all, simply how things were ‘supposed to be’. The way parenthood itself is viewed has also changed over the years.
Bonding – Marriage
Only three things are truly important in a marriage: you, your beloved and your love for each other. All the same, there are a lot more factors at play in the background.
Bonding – Family of choice
In addition to their biological family, many people have one they’ve chosen for themselves: people you’re not related to, people who understand, help and love you.
Bonding – The Couple Look
See them whizzing across the city on their fast bikes: his a men’s model, hers a woman’s. Both wrapped in a puffer jacket and with matching trainers. The dreary ‘ANWB couple’ in trendy jackets.
Love, designed
We’ve all grown up with stories and clichés that have unconsciously influenced our image of love. Love, designed explores these stereotypes and shows how design guides the way we both seek and ‘consume’ love.
