Rolodex

Museum - 2 (I Have Patrick)

Happy Sunday. Welcome back to The Museum. Today on display is my mother’s Rolodex. You’re not going to want to miss this. Let’s dive right in.

My Mother’s Rolodex, 1986

Object: My Mother’s 1986 Rolodex

Provenance: My Mother

Year: 1986

Acquisition Detail: Borrowed from my Mother January 2025

Let’s look:

Did Demarchelier Confirm?

Museum Description: Invented 1956, this Rolodex (1986) remains in the permanent collection. Flanked by rotating handles the Rolodex stores paper typed contacts in Alphabetical order, seen on blue translucent tabs.

Legacy Appeal: Before the days of smartphones, email contacts and Google calendar the world of keeping contacts revolutionized in the Rolodex. Compact, interactive and intuitive this design item graced the desks of a working world we’d be foolish to forget.

Allegra’s take: Beautiful. If the Rolodex could only speak. My Mother’s Rolodex, 1986 will remain in my personal collection forever (or as long as she lets me hold onto it). Tubular haptic-pleasing design aside, this relic of the distant past reminds me of an editorial world that I yearn for. The analog type, the scrawled pen, this is the shit I dream about. How magic to parse through an object with such rich stories. I can close my eyes and pretend to be my mother, her curly hair past her chin, paging through for the right card. Demarchelier, Newtown, GQ, and her. My mother and her elegant script. Notes. Evidence of work. An object that is an artifact for her dreams. I will preserve it forever. I have to.