New Bedroom Inspiration

I'm taking my bedroom in a new direction—and where my bedroom goes, so goes my whole aesthetic. Throughout three years of blogging and all of the Instagrams of leaves against white walls I've had this binder of tear sheets of interiors and everything is so formal and grand. Who knows, maybe it really helps to start with that really dramatic gesture in mind and then see where you end up—shoot for the moon and you'll land amongst the stars, amiright?

The goal is to meld Ilse Crawford and Albert Hadley. One apartment I really love in this vein comes from an unexpected source—Veranda. Not typically something I turn to, but the above vignette (left) in designer Brian McCarthy's NYC apartment has some very textural/multiculti layers that feel really inspiring right now. Michelle Smith's Sag Harbor guest bedroom is another touchstone for me right now (right); I'm just so sick of...a certain kind of decorating that...as an editor at a shelter mag...I am going to refrain from calling out explicitly, in the heat of the moment, so as not to irk anyone. (That's kind of the dream, though, right? As if I'll pen some diatribe on here and the next day your Twitter feed will blow up like, 'Design Editor Says Your Taste Sucks, Hates You Personally' and I'll have the Huffington Post reaching out for a comment, except I never answer the office phones so...)

Photos © Max Kim-Bee / Veranda; Genevieve Garruppo / Lonny

The same mix of formal and traditional with unexpected and worldly comes through in this bedroom by designer Patrick Mele. Particularly love the way he dressed the beds.

And don't even get me started on decorator Luke Edward Hall. I'm dying to get my hands on a pair of his pillows, but until then, I turn to his Instagram feed for lots of inspiration.

Last but not least in this roundup of rooms (and young gay designers, natch) is Adam Charlap Hyman's Brooklyn apartment. It's so incredible—so much food for thought! I just want pleated table skirts and decorative urns and chinoiserie screens. Bah! While I try to get myself ready for a grand reveal come mid to late October, feast on these snaps of my old apartment and LSD's Pinterest.

Photos © André Hererro / Adam Charlap Hyman

OFFICE ART UPDATE

Just a super brief bedroom situation update—it's all I've got the time for, sorry!
01 New art over the desk! (See the previous set-up here). I first saw this painting in my friend Rod's shop, The Curious Orange, when I was visiting my parents last August. I wanted to buy it, but was overwhelmed by its size and the prospect of bringing it up to NYC with me on the train. Fast forward half a year and I'm standing in the AmTrak lobby holding this massive painting, all taped up in bubble wrap, hoping no one will notice it violates the carry-on size restrictions. (Someone did, but they didn't make a big deal of it. No one else said anything, and I got it up here in one piece!)
02 Along with the new rug that I also bought from Rod, which is a welcome (and slightly more plush) addition to my space. Now the first rug I bought for the room (heretoforth known as "The Other Rug") is on the opposite side of my bed, which means nothing to y'all yet. But mark my words—one day, it will.
03 Also I found my old copy of White Teeth. I remember reading this in college and telling myself I really liked it, maybe just to feel intellectual, but now I can say that I do, indeed, really love this book. Highly recommend! So very! Much buy!

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The Corner Office

After last week's post about my old apartment I realized that I've been putting this off for way too long. Behold: an itty-bitty corner office vignette! I change the look of my room pretty frequently; it's an ever-evolving space, so instead of doing one giant post about the entire thing I'm just going to start sharing "bite-size" parts of it. Sound like a plan? Awesome.

Clockwise, from top left:
01 My desk! From Strawser & Smith; chair and lamp (same style seen here in Jason Yates' house tour on FvF) from the Brooklyn Flea. The art I picked up for $10 at a flea market as well—I don't know who the artist is, but the date on the back of the frame it came in is April 20, 1976.
02 Currently reading the new issue of apartamento, atop one of my favorite fabrics I have, which I'm currently using as a headboard, actually—more on that later!
03 Love this big leaf, atop a stack of Inventory magazines.

Lessons from My Old Apartment

I used to have a studio apartment. Long term readers of the blog will know this. Apparently, as these photos attest, I was pledging Tri Delt while I lived there. I mean, wow, it's pretty and all, but looking back it's just like—where did all these flowers and colors and baubles and shit come from?

I'd say half of it was being surrounded by the stridently preppy trappings of a Southern college town and the other half was operating under the influence of a certain type of lady blog. Honestly, I think the environment you create for yourself is equal parts what you see around you, what you put in front of yourself and what you have access to/the skills to make for yourself—and I don't have the skills to make anything, except paint choices.

The biggest lesson learned has to be about furniture. In my old place it was much harder to source great pieces, so I ended up with a lot of hand-me-downs and stuff I just settled for. I'd then work some D.I.Y. magic to make it all look fancier than it really was. (My green bench [below] was actually a featured before and after on Design*Sponge, not to humblebrag or anything.) My M.O. in the new apartment has been to go for "great bones" pieces—furniture that doesn't need any work or zhushing, maybe just some polishing now and then.

After furniture, my taste in art and home accessories seems to have changed most dramatically. I mean...a disco ball (from Target)? A Keroppi lunchbox? I had a framed portrait of ballerinas on my desk. I can't even explain that one. I had nothing from the seventies, no abstract nudes and not even one succulent. What?! That's crazy talk. A few of my old "decorative accents" are being used in my new room, but I'm bringing them together in very different ways. Another décor carry-over is the chinoiserie/Orientalism thing (see foo dog, cherry blossom print [above]) I feel like I inherited from my dad. And, of course, I still love books and having tons of them just hanging around everywhere.

BEDROOM INSPIRATION

Note: If you're new to this blog, it'll help to read this post to contextualize the following utterly brilliant nonsense. (Above images via Pinterest.)

So in case you were wondering (you weren't), my big bedroom makeover is going to be ready soon! But there are a few crucial things I need before it'll function as a proper Gay Hipster Sex Cave (read: I eat pizza alone in my bed there!) such as a more phallic collection of cacti (sweet jesus, I cannot stop insinuating that everything looks like a penis to me, I'm not even trying, I swear) and some more art. I'm thinking that I'll put up one of those "floating" shelves above my bed (as seen in the top-left hand picture) and keep some framed pieces there; I also really love the way that shelf in the bottom pic looks with the really minimal, staggered frames. I was thinking of having an industrial-looking ladder, on the legs of which I could display 'zines or something, but have yet to find one that's the right mix of industrial chic and rustic bohemian glamour. Damn.

OUT ON LAWN GUYLAND

I've been lucky enough to take not one, but two work trips out to the ends of Long Island within the last month. First I visited Montauk for a photo shoot at the home of Ben Watts (you can read my article in the July/August issue of Lonny.) These are some details from Watts' home that I was really into:

Watts' home was so gorgeous, awash in natural light and full of sophisticated textures and layers—definitely feeding into my rustic-whitewashed-Scandi fetish. I made a return trip to the area to cover the Holiday House Hamptons (read my '12 Inspired Design Moments' here.) It was a very trad space, but there were some details worth relishing:

And I also got to sneak in a brief trip to Sag Harbor's Monc XIII (details in Lonny's June issue.) Created by the former president of Wilhelmina Models, Natasha Esch, the space is crazy beautiful and the perfect antidote if you're suffering Hamptons prep overload. (FYI: the ceramics next to the tree, below, is actually from the Holiday House, but I think it looks best next to that chair!)

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DECORATING WITH PINTEREST

I moved into my new place last week and have since devolved into a complete lunatic. Well, a decorating lunatic. I spent multiple hours searching online for drapery hardware the other day, ordered seven different linen swatches from Restoration Hardware, and I'm pretty sure I broke my rotator cuff painting my room—6 hours to go from 'burnt custard' to 'lustrous white' (but it was worth it!) God bless the discovery of a Home Depot in my backyard.

The building is five blocks down from my last place here in South Slope, Brooklyn. It's not my dream location, but beggars can't be choosers and the price was right, plus my roommates are great and the apartment itself isn't half bad. I can already tell this space will have a much different vibe from my last apartment (seen here and here.) I feel relieved to have only one room to work on and an actual budget. I'm here for a year, so my goal is to get everything pretty much perfect within these first two months and then sit back and relax. Unless I decide to redecorate, but that's neither here nor there.

TINY FURNITURE

photo Mieke Willems

I have this secret houseboat fantasy where I, well, live on a houseboat. There's not like, weird paddle sex involved or anything - because I know that's where your mind went next! My fantasy is about to kinda sorta come true as this week I will be moving into a gorgeous Fort Greene brownstone, and the only reason I can afford it is that my room is so small it may as well be carved out of the hull of a sailboat. But it's also complete with some built-ins and a lofted bed, so it's very futuristic Japanese pod hotel, which makes me basically sort of like a space pirate? IDK either, but there's more where this came from...

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FIFTY SHADES OF GREIGE

The interiors inspiration posts are getting few and far between now that I don't have an interior to be inspired for, sorry :/ Since leaving my job in interior design and hunkering down in Brooklyn, I've been missing the feel of stonewashed linen and dreaming in shades of greige...maybe thinking I'll fly to Paris and study French someday soon...after New York...always dreaming! Regardless of whether or not my head is in the clouds - do we want to continue seeing interiors posts? Should I find a new way to present them? Let me know in the comments!

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