STATUS :you are your furniture  

If I understand the question...
If I understand the question, YOU are the real you. You may employ the chair/car/clothes in attempts to communicate something (true or otherwise) about yourself, or you may just use or appreciate them without another agenda. But you are who you are. Remember, as somebody said recently in another thread, Modern refers to nothing but itself.

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I think no agenda is impossible for humans."Modern" furniture is of vast concern for many on this site...Modern must have references,connotations...

Great question.
It seems clear that things MEAN something to us. . .
Any comfortable chair would do -- but we have to have a chair that LOOKS like something we like.
I think our objects communicate first to us, then perhaps to others. . . They reinforce our sense of who we are -- as extensions of our ego, perhaps ?

Because I like it
I own modern furniture because I like the ideas and philosophies behind the creation, and because it is comfortable and pleasing to look at. Most of my friends are not modernists, and so social acceptance doesnt seem like a plausible explanation. Also - the artwork that I have on my walls is a combination of traditional landscape & figurative painting, contemporary abstract pieces, and mixed media sculpture. I assume that status would dictate only certain pieces, by recognized artists, in a certain period. But I chose each peice for the same reason I chose each piece of furniture: because I like it.

A person has many facets...
and these facets have preferences. Some facets and preferences may go to the core of a person and have long duration. Other facets and preferences are superficial and ephemeral. Many more facets and preferences would fall between these extremes.
Preferences are acted upon when need arises to a threshold of urgency and opportunity permits.
Opportunity involves both: a) recognition of an artifact that would satisfy that urgent need; and b) the means to acquire it.
The things you have are feasibility fit between your cascade of facets/preferences/needs and the artifacts available to choose, as constrained by your means to pay for them.
What you have does not indicate the real you any more than it reflects the fantasy you, or some in between you.
What you have reflects ALL of you given your facet/preference/need cascade, your opportunity set of choices and your means of acquisition.
Advertising and propaganda try to channel us into certain realms of our facet/preference/need cascade so that we will buy what producers can make profitably.
Designers try to create artifacts that fit certain paths of our facet/preference/need cascade.
Great designers often find startlingly different fits to familiar cascades and occassionally find startlingly new paths to cascades we never knew we had.
And it does not matter whether a designer is conscious of any of this or not.
It simply is, more or less, what is happening...IMHO. 🙂