Apologies for my MIA-ness. I recently moved from New York City to Charleston, and adjusting to all of this space and freedom and Southern hospitality has taken longer than I expected. A few weeks before I left, my friend Foster Huntington photographed some of my favorite things for his Burning House project. Yesterday, they were featured, along with many other folks’ most precious possessions, on The Anthropologist. Good, clean, old-fashioned voyeurism at its finest. Check it out.
My very dear friends Callie Jenschke and Nicki Clendening of Scout Designs (recently named to Trad Home’s 20 Designers to Watch list) will be hosting a sure-to-be-chic tastemaker sale over at One Kings Lane tonight. The fun begins at 6pm sharp.
Got the below reminder about tonight’s trunk show from the lovely jewelry designer Jane Pope. Should be a fun event, not to mention an excellent opportunity to start holiday gift shopping (the post-Thanksgiving countdown has officially begun).
Don’t miss out on a great event TONIGHT!! An Evening of Style with The Well Coiffed Closet, Jane Pope and Balboa Jewelry, Milk and Honey Shoes and Lindseybelle Photography.
Come join us for a fun Evening with Bubbly and Yummy Snacks. What a great way to spend a winter evening, do a little Christmas shopping and get some style advice for all of your upcoming holiday parties. AND….The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting will be on, so come join us for the festivities.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30th
5-9PM
48 WEST 68TH STREET, #1E
BTWN CPW AND COLUMBUS
Filed under Design, Events, Shopping, Southern Folk, Style
Yes, all of my friends are model-pretty and, yes, I love them anyway.
The latest Garden & Gun just hit newsstands.
I don’t often get to say, “I know her!” when I see a beautiful and accomplished gal on the cover of a magazine. But that’s happened to me twice this month already, and it’s only the 10th! First, I spied interior designer Rachel Halvorson (below) on the cover of the latest Garden & Gun, which profiled, among other things, her work for Ronnie Dunn, one-half of the duo formerly known as Brooks & Dunn. Then, I got an email this morning alerting me to the latest issue of Lonny, and who should grace that cover but my very dear friend and former colleague, Callie Jenschke (above), one-half of the very much alive Scout Designs (partner Nicki Clendening is a fellow South Carolinian). We’ve featured Callie and Nicki here before, but Rachel is a new friend who I met through another Southern friend and former Metropolitan Home colleague (where Callie and I worked together), Lenora Jane Estes (who’s now at Vanity Fair). (As if that’s not complicated enough, we were all together at a small birthday dinner party barely a month ago–and no one breathed a word of her impending celebrity to me!) Yes, my Southern world is small and shrinking more and more everyday. But back to the point: Congrats, Rachel and Callie! I’m so proud to say I know you both.
Filed under Design, I'm just sayin', Media, Southern Folk, Style
An alphabetical sampling of monogram styles at the Upper Rust in the East Village.
Any girl who’s lived in New York long enough has realized the one essential thing the city that has everything doesn’t have: convenient places to have items monogrammed. Barring a few spots on the Upper East Side, there just aren’t monogram shops. Even tailors and dry cleaners–natural go-to’s for this sort of thing–won’t do it. My guy, Ramon Diaz, literally remade three of my husband’s grandfather’s suits into Thom Browne–caliber getups but looked at me with question marks in his eyes when I asked him to monogram a handkerchief. As a consolation of sorts, however, I recently came across two beautiful antique examples of monogram forms, one at the Upper Rust in the East Village (above) and the other by chance from a book dealer (below). If only I could find someone to replicate these styles, I’d be in business.
Filed under Design, I'm just sayin'
From Domino's December 2009 Issue
I’m a huge fan of Miles Redd‘s cheeky chic aesthetic–think Old Hollywood meets the South, with healthy splashes of color, sparkle and whimsy thrown in–so when my lovely aunt met Miles’s sister by chance on vacation, she kindly offered to introduce me to the designer himself. He couldn’t have been more gracious and charming. Read on for his thoughts on everything from set design to southern hospitality to the City’s best shopping spots.
JM: I’ve read a good bit about you over the years, but one thing I missed is that you came to New York for film school. I had no idea.
MR: Well, like all stories do, that one’s gotten a bit condensed over the years. It’s actually a little longer than that. I started out at Parsons studying fashion. Eventually, I transferred and graduated from NYU with a film degree. I sort of always excelled at set design, so that’s what I ended up pursuing in the beginning. I did a very brief stint with Francine LeFrak, who was a TV/movie producer for networks like Lifetime. She did The Pamela Harriman Story and other similar things. I moved on from there, but I’m very grateful for the time I spent there because it really taught me what I wanted.
JM: Any interest in returning to set design and breaking into movies a lá Tom Ford?
MR: The short answer is yes. That’s definitely a fantasy.
Photos: Miles Redd
Filed under Design, Georgia, Shopping, Southern Folk, Style
Grace Bonney, the mind and typing fingers behind Design*Sponge, has been named one of the judges for Garden & Gun‘s Made In the South Awards. Hopefully this will help increase the awards’–and the magazine’s–profile among New Yorkers (are you listening, ridiculously talented Brooklynites with southern roots?).
Filed under Design, Made in the South
The porch of Billy Reid's house in Florence, Alabama. Photo: Mister Mordechai S. Rubenstein
I’m fresh off of a 6-day beach vacation down on the coast of South Carolina (Litchfield, then Charleston), so I’m feeling pretty relaxed and content with my summer so far. But Billy Reid’s Shindig, held the first weekend in June for a group of friends, family and media folk, looks like the kind of summertime fun I need more of in my life (translation: Can I get an invite next year? Puh-lease?!). Check out the photos on Mister Mort’s blog. And before you even ask, No, I don’t know if that’s Mark Sanchez, but it sure does look like him.
Filed under Alabama, Design, Events, I'm just sayin', Made in the South, Shopping, Southern Folk, Style
From the editors of Garden & Gun:
If you’re a Southern craftsman or entrepreneur making things by hand, making things in small batches, or just making beautiful things period, go to gardenandgun.com/madeinthesouth to learn more about how to enter. And if you know someone who fits this description, spread the word.
Filed under Design, Events, Made in the South, Media
I discovered Spruce Home, a furniture redesign studio in Austin, Texas, while researching a story for Metropolitan Home magazine last year and have been kind of obsessed with their fabrics ever since. Amanda Brown and Lizzie Joyce do the kinds of things I couldn’t even dream about with tired furniture–every time I buy something on craigslist or pick up a piece off the street with visions of the savvy renovation I think I might (but know I never will) work on it floating through my head, I wish they were here in New York to do the hard stuff for me. Luckily, as Ellie over at the Durham, NC-based Mint Design Blog posted, Etsy has decided to include them in its new process video series, beaming a bit of their upholstery wisdom into DIY-challenged homes like mine. Click the link above to get a fascinating glimpse into their world.
Filed under Design, Shopping, Southern Folk
