AFAIK nearly all upholstry for the furniture most people buy is either fake leather of one sort or another, or some kind of boring synthetic fabric. Kinda like how all wall-to-wall carpet most people buy is synthetic fiber and not very interesting, until you get into stuff outside most people's price range, when things like wool and all kinds of weaves and styling and textures enter the picture. Below that it's like: How thick pile? Feel good on feet (if you're not used to better) because only cheap, or feel bad on feet because very cheap? With maybe some patterning considerations for very low-pile carpet. (to be clear, that's the price range I'm usually operating in when looking at that kind of thing, too—there's not much to get excited about)

I'd expect all the interesting choices with names that carry over into other parts of fashion not to enter the picture, with furniture, until you start to head into "designer" territory. The big overstuffed things out on the floor with price tags attached and big "SALE!" signs and such, seem rather same-y.

Sure, but again, think of the relationship with furniture and fashion like the typical male relationship with cars. Magazines, movies, celebrities, blogs, shopping way outside your price range without any intent to buy when you have nothing to do... I imagine all these things apply. Most guys I know learned about cars from hours of Top Gear, and drive used Honda Accords. I'll bet there's an equivalent for learning and caring about fabrics, furniture, and clothing.

Of course enthusiasts exist, I'm just skeptical that women knowing the names of fabric on their furniture is at all common under a certain SES level, at least. I've seen women care about and know the names of fabric in curtains, use those kinds of words to describe them, and shop using those words, in multiple cases. I've never seen it with furniture, but I also don't know anyone who can/would spend money on interior designers, go to the scary rich-people (for very small values of "rich") section of Nebraska Furniture Mart except out of curiousity, order custom or trendy vintage furniture et c. The most sylish and best-looking (but not most expensive) furniture I see in my regular life is from Ikea.

I can't even say for sure I've ever sat on a chair that wasn't just some undoubtedly-very-cheap weave of polyester or something else along those lines, but that's because my friends and family range (in background and attitudes, if not in income) from the Fussellian low-prole through his Middle. I'm assuming there are interesting fabric choices in the stores (or parts of stores) that no-one I know shops in, but there don't seem to be out in the po' folks' sections, where the majority of people shop. Doubling (or more) the price of a couch to get a kind of fabric worth remembering isn't on the table for most people—except, yes, maybe enthusiasts or people rich enough that that's the only kind of furniture they buy.

Have you ever touched a katana, travelled a parsec, had trouble with the yakuza or seen a howitzer fire in person? No probably not, and even if you did others haven't, all of those things people know since you are interested in and consume action/adventure media.

Consider a person who don't care at all about action/adventure stuff. They just care about making the nicest home possible. They read books about it, watch TV shows about it, watch movies about it, and remembers those details and forgets about all the actiony nonsense. Why wouldn't they know words of things they will likely never posses themselves? It is the same concept.

Again, I am sure enthusiasts exist. The original statement was:

> Do you not have curtains or a couch?

And what I'm skeptical of, specifically, is that the average woman has any idea what kind of cloth is on their couch, or shopped by that when they bought it, because it's probably not anything notable. I don't think "having a couch" means someone has the first clue what kind of cloth is on it, including most women. They might know the kind of cloth the hand-made pillows are, or a throw blanket, but not the upholstry, in most cases.

I think knowing what kind of cloth your couch is upholstered with, and shopping based on that, is probably more a rich-people thing than a women thing. Again, with exceptions for people who are just really into upholstry.

Curtains, sure. The idea of connecting cloth knowledge with upholstered furniture ownership just struck me as odd, because, again, I'm quite sure that most people, including women, don't get into that in detail, because it's not that important or interesting in the lowest 3 or 4 price tiers for furniture.

I definitely understand being surprised that men don't shop for curtains by cloth type (and so wondering how one could own curtains without knowing cloth-related terms), but not that we don't shop for furniture that way, because that's just normal for anyone outside, at least, the top 20% of income.

I'm less into that stuff than the average woman. I mean, I write software for a living, I read speculative fiction, I wear hoodies to work with no makeup. But when my husband and I finally had money for our first real post-futon couch, the one we ended up with happened to be upholstered in chenille, and I knew that, in the same way I knew it was a dark red color. We weren't shopping _based on_ that. We were shopping based on what was affordable. But I still knew the name of the fabric, and if I hadn't, I would have been curious what this unusual fabric was that I didn't recognize.