What is the legacy of the architectural and design movement of the mid-twentieth century? Did it deliver its promised vision of an egalitarian, democratic society supported by aesthetically simple, mass-produced goods whose forms fulfilled their utilitarian functions? In this provocative book, first published in 1995 to critical acclaim, design historian Penny Sparke embraces the awkward question of gender and aesthetic preference. Sparke argues that, through its emphasis on masculine rather than feminine culture-on, that is, production rather consumption, style rather than taste, and the public sphere rather than the private sphere-modernist design was a highly gendered and intrinsically flawed project destined to prove inadequate in the pluralistic, multicultural, postmodern world that we inhabit today. Ranging across histories of domesticity and consumerism, as well as modern design and cultural theories, Penny Sparke offers a new take on the history of modern material culture.