Kate & Andy Spade / Todd Selby / Stefan Ruiz / The Blue Remembered Hills

▶ HOW TO DRESS WELL: THESE VISIONS

▶ PRODIGY [MOBB DEEP]: WHAT U REP

"For a while now it has been obvious that shelter magazine editors and by extension we the readers are not satisfied with a mere portrayal of rooms - there must be a story. Whether a story of celebrity, notoriety even, or just plain old-fashioned worship, a story there shall be. The plot, or subterfuge, if you will, is frequently the same - someone just walked out of a room that is littered with aesthetic and cultural detritus emblematic of riches and free time. An alliance between theatre and fiction, no less, the scripted yet supposedly extempore situation is the decorating world's equivalent of reality television.

I wonder if this making of backgrounds, stage sets really, for the mini-dramas of the rich and notorious is compensation for the neutralizing - one might say the dumbing down - of interiors that has happened over the last two decades? Interest must come from somewhere, after all, and the more complex the storyline, the more layers are applied to the room; thus the greater the opportunity for product placement - not in itself a bad thing, I'm sure you would agree."

"I wonder also where stylists go from here. To those modern sanctuaries, so-called retreats from the stresses of modern life - the bedroom and the bathroom, perhaps? In the cause of creating camera vérité, could a disheveled bathroom with its toothpaste bespattered mirror, a toilet seat not returned to a genteel horizontality, and a pair of his and his robes, room fragrance by... not be emblematic of a life well-lived? Or the bedroom, perhaps, with a trail of discarded clothing leading to a bed déshabillé - while we're there, why not three trails and a set of handcuffs on the bedposts? Now there's a story!"

"It appears to me that in our little outpost of the blogosphere there's a tendency to write adoringly about previous generations of aristocracy and royalty, be it actual or plutocratic, without overt cognizance of history, character, or politics. They are presented simply as style icons, their often deplorable behaviour and affiliations being totally disregarded. They are, merely by virtue of being old, rich and (mostly) dead, fabulous. In such a way is history rewritten, for in my opinion, there cannot but be a dimension beyond the superficial and the iconic.

I don't want to appear overly serious about what I see as the fictionalization of interiors, but I wonder what happened to require such a change. A change perhaps that came hand-in-hand with an apparently ravenous purience about the lives of people who are highly unlikely ever to be our intimates. Perhaps an appetite so strong it needs to be fed, however blurred the lines between reality and fable."

PHOTOGRAPHS OF KATE AND ANDY SPADE'S APARTMENT BY TODD SELBY, VIA THE SELBY; PHOTOGRAPHS OF MEXICO'S TELEVISA STUDIOS BY STEFAN RUIZ, FROM THE "FACTORY OF DREAMS" SERIES, VIA THE ARTIST'S WEBSITE [IMPETUS VIA RHIZOME.ORG]; TEXT TAKEN FROM "FAKIN' IT", AS WRITTEN FOR THE BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS

Comments

[Jamie Herzlinger]

I have thought similar thoughts for many years now. And being on my end of the business one wonders this a lot lately.
Just found your blog and shall follow it!
Thanks for your eyes on the design world!
Jamie Herzlinger