Can This New Design Company Take the Stigma Out of Aging?
In a world where youth is put on a pedestal and the phrase “products for the aging population” is usually a euphemism for “sterile and cheap,” Remsen is a new design company that’s subverting the status quo in real time. Its mission is quite simple, really: to show that getting older should be met with celebration, not shame, and to create goods that this clientele will not just need but truly want.
Remsen’s first batch of products has just hit the scene, powered by the mindful and highly creative collaboration between Brooklyn-based architects Spencer Fried and Sam Zeif—who met at Yale and put in time at firms like Herzog & de Meuron, Post Company, and Tankhouse.
The brand’s central ethos—redefining aging through the design of timeless everyday goods—has been more than four years in the making. In 2020, Fried and Zeif both spent a lot of time in their respective multigenerational households, getting firsthand experiences of older loved ones’ daily routines and just how consistently certain products failed them.
“[My wife’s grandmother] had a plastic shower chair...that she was ashamed to leave out. Her pill container would be stashed in her walker. And she loved going to the grocery store because she could use the grocery cart instead of her walker, more like everyone else,” Zeif tells ELLE DECOR. “There was something profoundly missing not in how these products function but in the way that their appearance and their beauty—or lack of beauty—made users feel. It was just completely devoid of joy.”
Fried, too, shares that during the COVID-19 pandemic, his mother and grandmother had hip and knee surgeries—which created the sudden predicament of needing to retrofit the home with mobility-enhancing, accessibility-forward elements but having few stylish options.
“These are two people [who] in their own homes...curated everything. Their fixtures, their furniture, their accessories, their art, and then they weren’t even given the opportunity to curate for this moment in their life,” Fried says. “They had to default to what has been out there, which is really the lowest common denominator.”
The company has launched with two products—a grab bar and the pill container. “The grab bar is such a strong design because it draws less attention to itself than what people are used to,” Zeif tell us. “It’s usually something plastic, or maybe it’s hollow metal, or it’s plastic that’s meant to look like metal and it has a giant escutcheon plate on the wall.” Remsen’s updated take on this object has a fluted profile to assist dexterity and tactility, as well as a streamlined, elegant, and minimalist kind of feel.
Both of the products currently available on Remsen’s site bear a common thread of “affecting as many people as [they] possibly can,” according to Fried. “A lot of these products are actually age agnostic. Aging well is a lifetime project,” he adds. “Our target audience is somebody who’s thoughtful about who they want to become in the future.”
Even more Remsen product releases are on deck, including a shower chair, a key turn made for arthritic hands, and playing cards that prioritize legibility. Ultimately, it all boils down to feeling like yourself as you get older and not sacrificing an ounce of pride or personal aesthetics in the process.
Says Fried: “What a blessing to be able to get older and to create the life that you want for yourself and gain more agency throughout [it]. Everything around you should reflect that.”
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