For the Love of eBay

I got a nice little blurb today in The Inside Source, eBay's online magazine. Check out the groovy collage they made of my "What's In" picks:


Related: B&J fabrics just started selling Navajo blanket fabrics by the yard to all the fashion-forward kids at Parsons and FIT. I called this trend months ago and I WON'T LET ANYONE FORGET IT!!! Anyway, thanks to Emily Hsieh for the interview and if I come off a little Fancy with a capital "F" it's because ...


I am. Why fight it?

A Star Is Born

On dreary February days like this when I'm California dreamin' I ask my L.A. Woman, Amy, why I still live in this frigid pisscan of a city. She recently responded with a bit of gentle torture:

"My sister and I are recharging, after morning shopping and tacos, for our 2 mile stroll through the landscaped paradise of shoulder-to-shoulder Spanish colonials, olive trees, succulents, birds of paradise, oh my!"

Right. And then I crack open Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue and fixate on this goofy yet alluring image:


Babses Walters and Streisand circa '76 with the latter's ex-hairdresser, Jon Peters, VF's subject and the driving force behind this head-scratcher of a remake:


A Star Is Born (1976). Did you know they wanted Elvis Presley for Kris Kristofferson's role as the addled, has-been rock star? The King may not have filled out KK's white bellbottoms in just the same way, but DUDE, imagine those two divas on screen together. Regardless the movie makes up for its plot gaps and pipe dreams (Streisand as lead singer in a funk-soul girl group called The Oreos??) with style bigger than both stars' hairdos. And now I not only want to live in California, but in a paneled Gothic revival mansion with graffiti on the walls and a boom boom pillow room to boot:


Persian carpet, '40s rattan chair, plaid throw, crochet doily, potted palm, and amplifiers against a hanging tapestry. YES. Here's where it starts hitting the fan (undying love and affection to anyone who can find a full clip of Kris going bats*** in the manse):


Check out the plaster ceiling before Esther (that's the end of her name on the wall) smashes all the liquor bottles! Chicness. And let us not forget the wardrobe:


Chokers and floppy hats need a comeback -- utter the word "Blossom" and you'll get it worse than John Norman Howard in a red Ferrari.


Mexican blanket ponchos, turbans, meander patterns!!! Ageless and evergreen INDEED.

Style Rehash 2

I'm still in logo purgatory, mainly because I refuse to sit down and draw one myself. So I waste more time fantasizing about other fonts: "Hey, remember the cover for that Marcel Vertes book you saw at the flea market? With the really painterly [and apropos] title It's All Mental?":


Kicking myself for not buying it, but 80 bucks? I probably had to pay Verizon that week. But the V-Man's uneven script is still burned into my psyche, so what about something similarly encephalitic/romantic paired with a classic secondary font à la Harper's Bazaar ?


"Narziss" by Hubert Jocham. Chic, right? Hmm ... wonder how I came up with this brilliant new pairing ... looks sort of familiar ... OH, WAIT:


Fabien Baron's re-design for Interview. Naturally he also dreamed up Linda's iconic Bazaar moment back in the dizzay. Just when you thought all the good ideas were taken, they are! Literally going back to the drawing board ...

Architectural Indigestion

It seems like hating on certain fabrics has become as clichéd as liking them (wouldn't "Chrysler Imperial Trellis" be the best Before and After EVER on Wheel of Fortune?), but if I see any more bad ripoffs of KelKel's or David Hicks' or Alan Campbell's bold patterns I might have to lose a turn.

I know, I know: I just told you to like this one. Because even though it's an old (and probably discontinued) fabric, interlocking rings haven't been beaten as dead-horse dead as, say, interlocking squares. Looks fresher, at least to me. For five more minutes.

Anyway, when everyone's still doing colorful, Sino-groovy-preppy geometry on white backgrounds my inner contrarian asks "why can't kooky novelty toiles and architectural pastiche prints catch on?!?" Here's my best attempt at making them a meme ... pray on it and then tweet about it:


Gaston y Daniela colonial print from Design Diva, currently on sale for $7.50 per yard. Not the prettiest blue in the world but it's so darn cheap, could we see filling in some of those arches with primary yellow or red fabric paint? Could we acrylic-back it to hang on the walls of a powder room? We could.


Palace Walk by Beacon Hill, $28.81/yard from Discount Fabrics USA. Selling point is the giant 37" vertical repeat but its Sleeping Beauty quality is begging for a thorny hedge or two. In the form of splatter paint. Now for the spendy, trade-only options:

Cité Antique by Pierre Frey. Fauvist doodles of Ionic colimns ... possibly my fave.



Palazzo from PF's current collection. Again, how chic would this be on the walls of a small space? Like the butler's pantry of my classic six on 72nd and Neverland Avenue.


If you haven't already noticed, M. Frey (Amanda will vouch for his existence) also wants this look to catch on. Above is his Hong Kong print, available in a couple colors and in a positive/negative with the background. Meanwhile Schumacher ranks a close second in the archi-novelty department (photos via StyleBeat):


The two greatest cities in the world New York, New York (top) and Views of Paris. Sweet and cartoony but I want more color. 'Tis a bit sad because Shumacher acquired the late, great Decorators Walk and seems to have dropped their more eccentric patterns:


Including the discontinued kelly green Colonnades above. This is just a measly corner of the entire design but enough to make me think fabric houses, like record companies and movie studios, aren't taking enough risks these days.

(Impetus for title here!)

R.I.P.

Alexander McQueen, an uncompromisingly brilliant designer with a true understanding of the sublime. This video almost brings me to tears.

Let's Hear It For The Boy

all images via The New York Times

So my friend Zach's teensy Brooklyn studio is featured in the NY Times today, basically redeeming The Grey Lady's recent home offerings (lest we forget this and this). Total chicness! Z's a fierce do-it-yourself-er -- would you ebonize your own floors?? -- and packs more style into 178 square feet than most folks do in a five-bedroom house. Goes for scale and mixes muddy and pure colors with gusto. If Thomas O'Brien and Wes Anderson had a theater major lovechild, he'd live here. Bravo, Zacquisha!

Practically Free

Handwoven wool 'Mexique' Rug by Nate Berkus for HSN, $139.95 for an 8' x 10'. (No wonder it's almost sold out ... can you even get 10 feet of Astroturf for that little moolah?)

Chic Ikea stainless steel tissue box, $11.99.



Duralee "Ring Toss" cotton print fabric from Design Diva, $6.00 per yard. (UPDATE: Shizz, sale's already over. But they run drastic discounts constantly so check back! UPDATE, PART DEUX: Disregard, sale's back on. Thanks to commenter Jenn for the heads up!)


Fish Net Design Rice Bowl from Pearl River, $3.95 each. For my pinky rings.

Rotten Stone, Rotten Photos

There was DIY element here I think. Oh right! Rotten stone. Remember that one of my pretentious-sounding goals for this year was 'refinement'? Goes for all my little crafting hen projects, too. I used to champion the paint-it-high-gloss-white! furniture makeover, which still works for simple chairs and dressers and such, but what of pieces that are a bit more ... refined? The shiny, too-bright white frame on my sofa now bugs the crap out of me, but its carvings aren't all that special. Louis XV by way of Tijuana. My precious little eBay mininature fauteuil is another story:


Rode hard and put away wet, you say? Yes but the bones are there: Narrow fluted legs, finely carved rosettes at the knees and delicate acanthus leaves under the arms. I left her tatty for a year but my place just isn't soigné enough (yet?) to pull off that good kind of tension.

Now for the how-to: First I ripped off the poor old green silk starting with the double welt (pet peeve alert), removing the extra staples with pliers. Also removed the horsehair, cotton batting and nylon webbing from the back panel completely, setting it aside for re-use. Then I cleaned the entire frame with Windex and an old toothbrush to get dust out of the crevices. Started to sand lightly with an extra fine grit paper, mainly to wear down a few freshly chipped bits, but didn't even touch the unscathed carvings. Then I traded in my oil-based high gloss white for flat latex -- chalky is key -- and painted the frame with a smallish artist's brush (latex dries quickly and I avoided doing two full coats that way). I thought about adding a little burnt umber acrylic paint to mitigate said blindingly white look, but figured some of the original brown stain would bleed through and do it for me. It did, but the carvings were now invisible.

So how do folks achieve that perfect, chalky-dirty, antique white finish? The kind that brings to mind Jansen, not Rachel Ashwell? The answer is rotten stone. Really no secret amongst furniture gurus (I think I first heard Mugatu mention it via our decorative painter), it's fine powdered rock usually used for polishing surfaces. But when you mix it with a little mineral oil -- picture me at the drugstore checkout with only that container in hand -- paint it on and wipe off the excess with a paper towel, it fills all the crevices to resemble 200 years of collected dirt. And makes the carvings sing! Bear witness:


The leafy bit right under the arm is pure white while the scrolly armrest has gotten, um, stoned. Subtle but so worth it. (I'm holding the chair out the window for natural light AND so you can't see my apartment! Muahaha!). Another angle:


And the fully finished leg:


I might seal the frame with a paste wax of some sort (to simulate 200 years of hand grease) and distress the legs and arms a little with sandpaper. Don't want to over shabbify my baby. And for upholstery? Craving green glove leather and nailhead trim. Since I performed the above while watching "Too Young To Kill" on E! at 1am, I'm saving that project for either a Manson Family documentary or the "Real Housewives of Orange County" marathon.

Prelude to a Post

I'm gonna wade outside my comfort zone and share a little DIY-decorative painting technique illustrated with photos by yours truly. See, last weekend at the Gift Show Jamie got all up in my craw about sharing more of this (winning, effortlessly sunny) personality with you fine people. "You should take a picture and post about that!" Like the bowl of Grape Nuts I ate this morning? No, just stuff I come across ... stuff I like.

Sounds great, but my big excuse -- aside from sheer laziness -- is photo quality. I drool over blogs like this one where the candids look ripped from a J. Crew catalog while my circa '99 digicam is bigger than Zack Morris's cell phone and yields photos unfit even for Craigslist. Perfectionism isn't strong enough a word for my condition, so I asked (whined) around. Tim came to my rescue: "The Dooce lady, this is what you're looking for, trust me. TRUST ME FOR ONCE."

Thanks, A Canon 5D, awesome. THOSE COST 3500 FRIGGIN' DOLLARS.

It was back to square one until I finally traded in my flip phone (seeing an archaic tech trend here?) for a snazzy, if corporate-feeling, BlackBerry that has a decent camera AND a memory card. Scott Schuman and Bruce Weber, your jobs are safe. Learning to let go.

But in the meantime, if you have any Consumer Reports or recommendations on digital cameras, please give 'em up. (See, Mimi, I asked!) Is there a huge gap between the 300 and 3000 buck range? How does my idol get those warm colors and sharp edges? Enquiring, insanely jealous minds want to know.

Astrological Grammy Analysis: Hot Messes

Through the Fire*: Lady Gaga (b. March 28, 1986) and Elton John (b. March 25, 1947). BOTH ARIES.


Shove Me Into Shallow Water Before I Get Too Deep**: Ke$ha and Justin Bieber (b. March 1, 1987 and 1994, respectively). BOTH PISCES.

* Chaka Khan (née Yvette Stevens), b. March 23, 1953 (Aries)
**Edie Brickell, b. March 10, 1966 (Pisces)