You're playing fast and loose with a lot of concepts here, and I think what you've written does not do justice to the actual complexity of the history. For ins

You're playing fast and loose with a lot of concepts here, and I think what you've written does not do justice to the actual complexity of the history. For instance, in your paragraph starting "Establishments want...", you're conflating the flair in the article (buttons on suspenders, walls decked with antique signs and implements) with rococo design elements like intricate patterns, gold foil, and ornate columns. This is not at all where the "flair" is coming from. The "flair" is about cozy, old, familiar things. Not rococo. And there are a lot of kinds of "mid-century modern, minimalist design" -- some of it was intended to be affordable (e.g., Eames designs like the bent plywood furniture), as you say. But affordability in itself is not a defining characteristic of modernism -- consider Mies and much of Corbu's work, e.g. the Farnsworth house. Or Wright's houses, some of which were affordable (the Usonians), but most not (e.g., the ones with bespoke furniture). Modernism responded to different imperatives -- e.g., form follows function, and stripping extraneous decoration in the name of pure design.