There was shouting. An actual having-to-take-a-breath-before-speaking argument about tassels in the office once. Someone had brought in a mustard velvet cushion the size of a spare tyre, tassels the length of a forearm hanging off each corner, and proclaimed it was “the one.” Half the office went silent in that way you only do when someone’s about to lose an argument they don’t yet realise they’re losing. The other half promptly started testing it against the sofa like they were measuring a suit for a job interview. Suffice to say, it divided people. Someone said it looked like a Victorian curtain that had decided to give up on life.
Someone else said that was the point entirely.
As it happens, the cushion won; for the record.
It currently resides on our good armchair two winters on, with slightly matted tassels from the cat using it as a chew toy while maintaining delusions of grandeur.
Nobody talks about the argument anymore, which is either because it’s been forgotten or because one side is quietly sulking and we’ve all just pretended not to notice.
Here’s what no one tells you about buying a tassel cushion: they’re high maintenance. Utterly, worryingly high maintenance for something that is essentially a fluffy pillow. You cannot casually throw one on a sofa and leave it, they need to be fluffed up and arranged and sometimes rescued from where the dog has dragged them, laying innocently defeated in the hallway. Someone cares enough about ours to do this daily. Someone actually takes pride in getting the tassels to sit flat and symmetrical. The rest of us just want to sit down without getting poked in the ear by one of the corners.
They shed. Not fibers, caricatures. Lose a tassel and it’ll end up somewhere ridiculous; found nestled inside a shoe, or in the fruit bowl. Somebody has to tack it back on with the level of precision and specific patience you’d only otherwise see on a Sunday evening when you’re painting a wall you’ll only have to repaint next year.
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But…but! They’re still our guilty pleasure. We’ll buy them again. Recommend them to friends.
Leave them on the good chair rather than the ugly sofa everyone avoids like an energy thief.
Because look at a room full of boring, perfectly plain cushions: it’s begging you to not decorate with personality.
Slap a tassel cushion on that_instragramable_settee and suddenly someone in this house has taste, even if “having bought something ludicrous for no reason” is the nearest descriptor we can find.
The only consensus we ever came to, and trust me this took some group discussions, is one. One tassel cushion. Two and you’re trying too hard. Three and you’re nesting like an Interior Housewife. One cushion makes one small claim to having a life. One argument that you can survive. One corner of the room that just won’t behave.
Trust me, that’s why we keep buying them. Also, we’re not sure the mustard velvet shade was “the one.” We just haven’t been brave enough to take it off the sofa and find out.
