A semi-upmarket chain of lifestyle stores across Europe which cater to the desire of the affluent middle classes to fill their dwellings with elegant-looking, understated furniture, crockery and ornamentation without having to go through the tedious and often disappointing process of actually acquiring taste or artistic sensibility, Habitat is full of curvy wire CD holders, low pine coffee tables, pleasantly earthy coffee mugs. Its inventory is a virtual instruction manual in how to make your home seem inviting when actually it is not.
Habitat borrows a lot of its style from IKEA, without some of that chain's more upsetting qualities, such as self-construction of flat-packed bookshelves, or, even worse, low price. They have an outlet in Ireland located in Dublin's prime shopping district near Stephen's Green, and its most frequent browsers are aggressive, fashionably dressed young women with black-rimmed glasses and blonde highlights, and timid, pleasant men with a slightly hunted expression that says "Thousands of generations of racial memory of hunting, living and dying have failed to prepare me for the decisions that seem to be important to me now."