What’s Behind Melbourne’s Love Affair With the Milk Crate?

If sitting down on milk crates after ordering a $4 filter coffee from the latest shit-hot roaster seems ironic—it's because it is. You know the look as soon as you walk in: Unpolished timber, peeling paint, some Edison lightbulbs, and a slew of plastic crates picked up for nothing from an alley somewhere.

You can't help but feel this rough and ready aesthetic is a bit of a juxtaposition. Australia has had 23 years of uninterrupted growth and our average wage beats both the UK and US; why are we so preoccupied with dressing things down?

RMIT University's Nancy Lin has done a bit of research into this phenomenon. She looked at milk crates in the context of gentrification in the lead up to her honours thesis. She argues that this trend indicates a tendency to gravitate towards working class aesthetics.

"The trouble," Nancy says, "comes when a desire for simplicity turns into a romanticisation of the working class and poor without living through these experiences." She explained that her parents were very poor when they first came to Australia. Squatting in public housing with two other families, her family furnished their flat with whatever they could find in hard rubbish. Milk crates were used as tables, chairs and even a bed-base, while pillows were editions of Yellow Pages wrapped in cloth.

"It always felt a bit misguided when stories of my childhood were met with, 'wow that's so cool!' type reactions. 'Downgrading' gives off a grungy, hardcore vibe, but we lived a certain way because we didn't have a choice. We didn't have the privilege of considering aesthetics or finding it cool—that's the difference," she said.

If you contrast Lin's experience with where you'd be finding milk crates now, it's the complete opposite. People just seem to love them, which is why they've become standard seating options for trendy cafes across Melbourne, shelving for students, and the playthings of budding decorators wanting to ditch IKEA and get creative.

But not everyone thinks our love of crates stems from their working-class connotations.

James Legge and Mark Healy are the co-directors of revered Melbourne architecture firm, Six Degrees. Known for their use of low-cost and found materials, they're better placed than most to comment.

"I think it's difficult to simplify this taste down to the one thing. I don't really think that it's this search for working class roots," says James.

Mark puts our uptake of the milk crate down to our "craving for authenticity"—like seeing exposed distressed brickwork. So by using the milk crate, or a rustic piece of furniture, that'll give a venue the ability to differentiate itself in Melbourne's already crowded hospitality landscape.

"In 1994 we built Meyers Place Bar. We used found objects and materials that gave other people faith you could set up a bar that wasn't sprayed with high-end materials," James said.

This sense of curated authenticity has become one of Melbourne's calling cards, and even the city's tourism board has taken note. Recent ad campaigns invite us to discover the "land of inbetween", a world where each of our laneways will cater to individual tastes. In a city that's defined itself against the chintzy glamour of Sydney, it's no surprise that we see value in reusing found objects to tell us who we are.

So while Nancy and the Six Degrees guys differ on where our love of milk crates comes from, they do agree it's a form of reappropriation. The question is: who are we reappropriating from? Nobody's under any illusion that the milk crate belongs to one group of people (well, aside from the dairy companies), and adopting them therefore isn't the same as Coachella bros sporting Native American dress. But the fact remains: Australia isn't a classless society, and our socio-economic disparities might be invisible to people with benign intentions.

"Compartmentalising all the trendy aspects of being working-class and poor without actually having to live it is incredibly dehumanising," Nancy says.

On the other hand, the appeal of the object is undeniable. "They're free building objects, like grown up lego" say Mark and James, and that in the end is part of the reason why people will continue to use them.

Follow Alan on Twitter

Like this article? Like VICE on Facebook for more cultural content