Strange Closets

When it comes to design, distinguishing black from white is child’s play: Stealing is bad, and revolutionary new ideas are good.  Unfortunately, life’s rarely that simple.  Most “new” designs, whether plucked from the collective subconscious or inspired by a New York Times article, are derived from the work of others in one way or another [...]

Language is reality.  Words are created to explain, categorize and contextualize the world around us, but they can also limit us.  Thinking about my desk as a “corner desk” with “suburban style” is what delayed me from making a cheap, simple change that significantly improved my apartment’s feng shui.  Words man.  As much as I [...]

Last month I attended an opening for Lucy Slivinski and Janet Mesic Mackie at interior designer Michael Del Piero’s Bucktown boutique.  Slivinski has outdone herself with her new line of salvaged metal chandeliers, which are strange, spiky beautiful works of art.  And photographer Janet Mesic Mackie’s foray into fine art photography is a success, particularly [...]

For a musical accompaniment, please consider the score  for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Vertigo. Remember those 80′s anti-drug commercials?  “This is drugs” (sizzling skillet).  “This is your brain on drugs” (egg fries in sizzling skillet).  Well the above image is my bedside table drawer on crazy.  And I like it.  When I was ten or [...]

The typed invitation for Dave and Jeremy’s most recent dinner party, which I attended last Saturday evening, advised guests to be punctual and to wear comfortable shoes, and I arrived as instructed to find his spectacular apartment filled with a very attractive, cosmopolitan crowd of people speculating about Dave and Jeremy’s machinations anxiously as they [...]

I enjoy shopping for bedding because unlike the countless interesting things I covet at shops around Chicago, sheets are not an impulse purchase.  I’ve never wanted to buy a comforter when I didn’t already need one, which means I don’t have to do mental gymnastics calculating if there’s space for yet another object in my [...]

I took this photo at Todd Hilt and Alvin de la Cruz’s spectacular West Andersonville brick loft, which I wrote about for the fall 09 CS Interiors.  Please pick up a copy on newsstands now; photographer Tony Soluri did an amazing job capturing the couple’s home, and I think you’ll enjoy seeing the couple’s space [...]