A few days ago I came home to a mailbox stuffed with magazines. My spirits soared, as I contemplated the prospect of spending an evening looking at things I cannot afford to buy and ideas I am not able to execute. Nevertheless, I was happy, as the point of shelter magazines is inspirational; they rarely function as real-world workbooks. I get a lot of magazines, and one of the three that showed up that day was Martha Stewart's Living. I have to say, Martha's still full of spit & vinegar, or whatever the appropriate 19th-century expression is. The one thing that disturbs me (no, not her stint in jail) is her increasing obsession with Halloween. Or Hallowe'en, as she likes to put it. (it's Fancier!) The magazine was filled to the brim with ideas for turning cakes into haunted houses, gourds into spiders, cheesecloth into ghosts, and you even had a template for sending out those Hallowe'en party invites that you're scratching your head over how to design. My shop is located near Salem, Massachusetts, also known as Witch City, and I've seen the people who prioritize Halloween. I can safely say that they are generally not 60-ish year-old women who wear Donna Karan and vacation on St. Barts. It seems to me that Martha's affection for the holiday has even clouded her perfect vision when it comes to ruthlessly editing the crafty portion of her magazine. I stared at the picture of gourds with pipe-cleaners jammed in the sides to make legs and thought for a moment that I had accidentally received Better Homes & Gardens or - oh no! - Woman's Day. Not that there is anything wrong with those fine magazines, but you expect more from Martha. Admittedly her gourds are especially cute ones, organic no doubt, and photographed as though they were highly-paid fashion models, but I'm not sure her demographic would know where to purchase pipe cleaners even if they thought the whole idea was charming. Oh, that's right. You can purchase pipe cleaners through Martha's website. I guess if you stay in her universe and never venture out you might think that all this Hallowe'en stuff is attractive just because she has deemed it so. I have great respect for her but I draw the line at buying a jello mold in the shape of a human brain so I can have a Hallowe'en party for people over the age of 25 who don't care and, more importantly, shouldn't care about such a weird holiday that we've elevated to its current status only because we're all so uncomfortable with Christmas now.
Continuing with my magazine rant, I also received Country Home. A nice magazine - it always encourages me to keep on truckin' with my simple homespun decorating. I feel as though my mother has given me a pat on the head after I read it, as though saying, "That's right -continue to put those black & white vintage photos inside old crusty bottles and line your fireplace mantle with them! You're a clever girl!" Country Home had a nice feature on industrial lamps, which affirmed my love affair with vintage lighting and brought fond memories of industrial lights I've sold through the shop, but I was startled to see the prices these lamps are bringing, at least on the pages of C.H. Sorry shoppers, but I guess I'm going to have to jack up my prices just to keep up.
The final magazine I looked through in the pile I received that day is the awesome-est: Domino magazine. It's like that super-cool girl in high school you were too scared to talk to and who strutted the hallways in outfits that you secretly thought were weird but knew couldn't possibly be weird in a bad way or she wouldn't be wearing them. Domino, I'll just say it, is way too cool for me. Annoyingly so. Yet I adore it and read its pages eagerly hoping that, even now, with my youth left in the dust, I'll someday have friends so amazing that I'll be invited to a party where the girls are wearing frocks, the dishware is mid-century, the upholstery is re-issued Josef Frank, and the cheese was smuggled onto the plane from the host's last jaunt to wherever the best cheese comes from (I'm too frightened to guess). It is never too late to hope, my friends. So you can imagine my disappointment when Kelly Wearstler, who, metaphors aside, really was that supercool girl in high school, and whose taste I really, really admire was featured along with her newly re-decorated guesthouse, and that guesthouse turned out to be... Well, I'll just say it. It looked ugly. So ugly that I was actually happy that there is no chance that I will ever be Kelly Wearstler's friend and invited to stay at her guesthouse (which is really saying something). Kelly, it seems, has "moved on", as the magazine put it, from Hollywood Regency into post-70's opulent grotesquerie, which involves lots of puffy upholstery sitting atop rounded chrome, metallics reflecting other metallics, and bleached oak.
Trends are moving way too quickly, and I'm sure KW has a vested interest in staying ahead of the game, and more importantly to her I'm sure, not getting bored, but we all had just adjusted to starburst gold mirrors against brown walls with white trim, and now we're onto the look of a Miami penthouse, circa 1982, and not in an ironic sense. The problem is, this look can't be dumbed down. You have to have money to do it properly (if such a thing can even be done), and if the masses start flocking to buy chromed pieces at Pottery Barn, I think I will be unable to go on. Besides, the whole look seems very incompatible with the zeitgeist. With financial markets failing and celebrities scooting around in hybrids, recycling rainwater and crafting old sweaters into handbags seem more suitable for the prevailing mood. At least I can only hope.
