Michael Graves wants to get into your bathroom, but he'd settle for your kitchen.

Noted architect, product designer and icon of style, Graves has teamed up with Delta Faucet to tap into a segment of the growing luxury products market that brought you premium vodka from Minnesota, global positioning in cell phones and a German car with a name you can't pronounce.

But this time, it's a form of luxury in bathroom and kitchen fixtures -- the "Michael Graves Collection" of kitchen, bar prep, lavatory, tub and shower faucets, as well as coordinated accessories and lighting.

The products will be available through remodeling and new construction channels, but also through "big box" do-it-yourself home improvement centers -- perhaps the likes of Lowes and Home Depot.

Graves and Delta are mum about the exact design and style (he's already created some for Target and others), but say the products will be "affordable," a word that's become as meaningful as "gourmet," given the penchant for affluent consumers to seek discounted luxury, according to Unity Marketing's "Discount Luxury Shopping: It's Not About The Money; It's The Feeling."

"We tried to make something where the various parts of this puzzle are easy to understand," Graves said. "Everything is pretty obvious. It's done in a way that fits your hand."

And what better way to get your hands on the feel of luxury at an affordable price than from a designer famous, in part, for a tea kettle?

Graves, the recipient of the 2001 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the 1999 National Medal of Arts, has plied his trade on multi-use urban developments, corporate headquarters, hotels, libraries, theaters, museums, academic buildings, healthcare facilities, sports and recreational facilities, housing, and private residences.

Emphasizing continuity among architecture, interiors, and artifacts, he's also created more than a thousand household products including wall clocks and chess sets for Target, countertop appliances for Black and Decker, and picture frames and that tea kettle for Alessi.

The Delta Faucet design line is also tapping into the record $125.2 billion-a-year remodeling market, up 6.6 percent in the last four quarters, according to Harvard University's Joint Center For Housing.

"Notwithstanding uneven consumer confidence, homeowners continue to reinvest in their homes," says Nicolas P. Retsinas, center director.

Bathroom additions and improvements return to the home's value, on the average nationwide, from 89 percent to about 95 percent of the cost of the project. Kitchen work returns from 75 percent to more than 79 percent, according to the latest "2003 Cost vs. Value" report from Remodeling Online.

The actual fixtures will be unveiled in January at the International Builders' Show in Las Vegas, but Delta is offering a sneak peak by e-mail for those who enter to win one of the five planned kitchen and bath faucets.

Now that's luxury on the cheap.

Published: November 21, 2003

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.