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A headline in the New York Times is:
"The Designer Birdhouses of Brooklyn"
What is a "designer birdhouse"? Is it a birdhouse made by a designer?
I've never come across a phrase like that. I would have said "a stylefull birdhouse", because "designer" is a noun.
The adjective designer is meant as an analogy to "fashion designer", like Marc Jacobs or Cristóbal Balenciaga.
A "designer" product is a fashionable, stylish, and usually expensive luxury product. So a "designer birdhouse" is a fashionable, luxurious, and probably expensive birdhouse.
Sometimes it's used in a mildly pejorative sense, implying that the buyer of a "designer" product is vain, materialistic, and/or financially irresponsible.
I think that using "stylish" as a synonym might work in general, but misses some of the connotation.
A quick search shows that one of the meanings of the word "designer" is as an adjective or, more accurately, an attributive noun (see @Mary-Lou A's comment below, and this article) and is something like this:
To have been made by, or to have the expensive sophistication of, a famous and prestigious designer.
But there is a variation on that precise meaning which might apply in this context. It is something like this:
Appearing to have been made by, or to have the expensive sophistication of, a famous and prestigious fashion designer.
In other words, it might not be unreasonable, in this context, to interpret "designer" as a form of marketing BS; what the Wikipedia Manual of Style might call puffery or a "peacock term".
Note that I say only that it might be marketing BS. For all I know, the birdhouses in question were designed by Michael Kors, influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, and have four floors, twelve bedrooms, pool, servants quarters, and grand entrance hall complete with gold-trimmed furniture and a swing.
A designer birdhouse is either one made by a fashionable or famous birdhouse designer, or a fashionable looking birdhouse.
The article (by Winnie Hu, New York Times 9 June 2022) says:
During lockdown, birdsong replaced traffic noise. Those who miss it can visit Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which just installed 33 new designer birdhouses.
I stopped by for a first look
The article discusses birdhouses ('bird houses' in British English, I should think) designed by various artists for a Brooklyn, New York City public garden.
designer
adjective [ before noun ] MARKETING, PRODUCTION
made by a famous or fashionable designer: designer jeans/sunglasses
made to interest or attract people by being new and fashionable:
Designer (adjective) Cambridge Dictionary
We sometimes transform nouns into adjectives in English and use them to describe other nouns. Often this is done playfully, as in these common examples: work wife (someone you are not married to but spend a lot of time with at work.) man hands (This was made famous on the old television show Seinfeld where it described the large man-like hands of a woman.) television show -- a show on television.
A designer is a person who designs something: "Thelma is a designer. She designs living spaces."
Using "designer" as an adjective in front of another noun, means that noun was designed by someone. It often denotes that object as special, artistic, fashionable, unique, etc. Examples: Gloria Vanderbilt was a pioneer of designer jeans. The condo includes a designer kitchen with upscale appliances. The dress she wore to the ceremony was a designer original.
"designer" in "designer birdhouses" is not a noun, but an adjective, as @MichaelHarvey mentioned. You could call it a "stylish/fashionable/elegant birdhouse" instead, there is no such word called "stylefull". These birdhouses are probably made by a professional or a famous birdhouse designer.
Lexico gives this definition of "designer":
- Made or designed by a famous and prestigious fashion designer.
- ‘designer clothes’
- Upscale and fashionable.
- ‘designer food’
'Designer' as a prefix suggests that the product benefits from professional design, and usually sets it apart from cheaper, mass-produced equivalents. For example, a 'designer handbag' would be one from a known luxury fashion house, as opposed to an unbranded, or 'off-brand' product.
However, it is also common to use the word more glibly, such as for products where there are no well-known designers but when the product appears to be more expensive than comparable ones, or there is an attempt to make it more elaborate so as to appeal to a different market. It can even be used to show disdain for overly-expensive products and 'showy' people that may buy them simply because they appear expensive. Your quotation may be an example of this, as birdhouses are not something known to be a 'designer' product. In fact, the majority of birdhouses tend to follow a 'classic' design and are made from simple timber products. The article seems sincere, though, so in this case, I would read 'designer' to mean they are high-quality artisanal products.
L, not two. When you use-fulas a suffix, it's one-L-of-a-suffix