Curtains Up for the One Percent

While many Americans were stockpiling toilet paper and Clorox, the rich bought houses, sparking a gold rush in the decorating trades.

Rob Satran thinks of it as the Hoshizaki syndrome. Beginning last March, when the world went into lockdown and it became clear that, as Mr. Satran said, “people were not going to be spending their disposable income on normal things,” the trade in high-end appliances abruptly took off. Mr. Satran is a part owner of Royal Green Appliances, a boutique dealership in New York that may be to refrigerators what a Rolls-Royce showroom is to automobiles. “Covid instantly domesticated people,” he said. “They were looking around and thinking about where to invest in their homes.”