Why do people buy this?  

So this is the way I look at ...
So this is the way I look at it- I see it as an almost WTF design. I feel the designer was trying to evoke the same feeling as Marcel Duchamp did with the Fountain. Sort of a big FU to the design world. But than again, maybe I'm over thinking it. Perhaps this designer just like curvy purple things.

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Its probably (hopefully) just the one off work of an enthusiastic young person who hasn't learnt restraint yet and a very irritated upholsterer. Its easy to fall in love with attractive lines on the page of a sketchbook but it rarely manifests well until the person responsible has lived a bit or at least sat in and measured at least a few good chairs.
Case in point, this thing which I foolishly picked up in a charity shop, seriously wondering if the designers have ever washed dishes.

In the UK
they let people build whole skyscrapers in 'Novelty Modern'

yeah, hard to defend that purple THING
Made me laugh at first. At least there is that.
Perhaps one could appreciate it for its ATTEMPT at purely formal abstract shape relationships and angles.... (that is, if those relationships were actually well considered.) But in the end, it is still trying to be a chair, and seems to have failed miserably.
I appreciate your restraint! Sometimes it is very difficult not to bash.

Has kind of a sci-fi gossip...
Has kind of a sci-fi gossip bench thing going on.

I honestly couldn't venture a guess.
But there's something about it that makes me want to stop and offer it a ride to the nearest bus station.

No discussion of
the functionality of this seating piece ? Is design only about appearance ? I'd want to try the (apparently multiple) options of posture and possible comfort before condemning this or any chair . . .
That said, I see a witty reference to whiz-bang wingding modernistic objects like those found in, say, the Jetsons. If something makes you want to laugh -- maybe that was the intended result ?

Well you wouldn't have to sit in it for too long, considering how quickly you'd slide onto the floor.

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Also looks as though it was designed for south paws.
The armrest is on the left...that is an armrest right? Or is that to stick your leg into?

i am wondering...
i cannot understand the whole procees. first there is a rough sketch of a chair or anything else. something is in my mind and has to go on a paper.
than, the second step is to think and talk about it and maybe to revise. a few steps later you are going with the final sketch to your production Manager or something like that.....you discus it again and think about it. talk about the cost and the Appeal outhere in the world.
after those steps, maybe you will introduce the Project to your chief,master or someone who has the final jugdment.
and now my question, one man could be wrong, completely wrong, but how could it be that a whole bunch of People could be wrong? someone has drawn this chair and someone has decide to spend Money and produced it.
i know, there are a lot of wrong decisons out there, every day about 3 billions or even more:-)

Maybe people don't buy it.
Has anyone ever seen another one?

hjw, that purple chair...
hjw, that purple chair looks strange, but it also looks like it would hold up much better than the Eames 670 Lounge ($5000) which starts to fall apart if you accidentally sit in it.

Grind that axxxe!
Never let go!

Let's free associate:
I se...
Let's free associate:
I see a slide in a water park.