Before & After Tag Sale

So I recently staged a small studio in a slick new building. It started out like this:


And after three days looked like this:


Yes, ladies and gentleman, I painted an accent wall. Call me a hypocrite but I think it works in that wonky corner?? Speaking of wonk-wonk those swing arm lamps never did quite stay upright, but I digress: the place has found a tenant (mission accomplished!) who apparently prefers, uh, neutrals. All the stuff's gotta be out by September 1st! So this Wednesday, 8/31, I'm having a little tag sale in the unit, 100 Eleventh Avenue (at 19th Street) #3A, from 1-5pm. Selling most of what you see here plus a few more pieces from my style hoardin' inventory, including the old "cupcake chair":


Cash and carry, no reasonable offers refused -- come see me y'all and snap up a faux Motherwell dirt cheap!!

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

To yesterday's sofa:

Melanie Acevedo for Domino

But last Friday I did. I ditched the sofa (settee? canape??) I bought when I was 14 for 40 bucks. Pa Olsen drove it back from the thrift store that day and repaired one broken leg before I went to town with a staple gun and duct tape for its first transformation, a Donna-Karan-in-the-Hamptons moment in white cotton duck. Eight years later it was all about teal velvet before I moved back to New York at the end of my last real summer vacation. I did all the tufting myself! Dad left our Pensacola homestead with no electrical power and four fallen oak trees (post-Hurricane Ivan) and delivered this sofa and a vanload of flea market treasures to my fourth floor walkup studio on lower Fifth Avenue, located in a former gentleman's quarters. Special thanks also goes to Amy, my absentee apartment co-hunter, for a complete act of grace:

Me: "Well, not exactly a two-bedroom, but it's fabulous and I think we can make it work."
Amy: "If you love it, I'll love it."

She lasted a year. I miss her and our gigunda green marble bathroom, but not that zebra print cowhide. Fast forward again to 2010 and I'm feeling glazed chintz slipcovers, but without Lonny co-founder Michelle Williams asking to shoot my "new" place, this baby never would've been born:

Patrick Cline for Lonny

Same frame sofa under that cuckoo print and bulbous arm pads.

Decorators have to be sort of ruthless and unsentimental, because how much stuff do we see or buy in a week's time? Too much. If I held on to the first version of everything I ever liked and bought, I'd need a storage unit the size of Staten Island. My tastes have evolved (thank God!) but I still love the story factor, that a forty dollar thrift store sofa ended up on the cover of a national (and my favorite) magazine. Did Anthro rip it off? If so, consider me sincerely flattered:


And until last Friday, extremely uncomfortable. Honestly, I've sat on stadium bleachers with better ergonomics than this baby. The new arms limit seating space and my sloping tenement floor sort of makes you slide toward the teevee. I've been in the market for a replacement but never got That Old Feeling until I met silver-gray salvation at Doyle:

I'm putting the single arm piece in a corner, so now I'll have an armless banquette, four feet on one side and almost seven on the other, with loose, DOWN-FILLED seat and back cushions with buttoned Turkish corners. And silk bullion fringe! I'll clean the linen velvet but overall it's in great condition, and in month or so I might have an itch to redecorate this entire place in blue-grays and lavenders. Will I miss Ol' Chintzy? Probably not. As I tell my clients when they bust out some relic of a former life: "You bought it, you loved it, now time to kiss it and say goodbye."

And Now For Something Completely Different

Check out another gentleman's quarters, this one belonging to financier and Chinese Porcelain Company founder/proprietor Pierre Durand, as featured recently-ish in the New York Social Diary:

Photos by Jeffrey Hirsch for New York Social Diary

His is neither a period apartment nor a highly decorated one ... okay, a fully upholstered bedroom with both the Brunschwig leopard AND tiger velvets is a bold statement, but have you ever seen a more compelling living room with wall-to-wall sisal, off-white walls, and buff-colored curtains?? The backgrounds are no competition for Durand's many treasures, and the only pattern is an Aubusson-upholstered chair or two. Dude doesn't even need a contrast throw pillow on those beige damask sofas -- not when you've mastered Scale, Furniture Arrangement and Qu-qu-QUALITY. Honorable mention to pleated silk coolie lamp shades with cut fringe, palomino glove leather and Tina Fey's book at the bedside. No pretense here!

And while we're on the topic, how much do we love Sian Ballen's interviews? I'm biased because every time I see her she pinches my cheeks and tells me I should be on TV, but who else asks the burning questions:

"What does money mean to you?"

"Are you alone now?"

Fearless fierceness abounds!