Alexia Rossetti wrote a post recently about a fabulous bench she found. It was love at first sight—except for that little thing called the pricetag—so now she’s on the hunt for a similar beauty but one that will allow her to still pay the rent and therefore still have the hallway that needs the bench so she doesn’t go the way of an O Henry story.

I’m sure she knows how to find great decor at lower prices, but if anyone has a suggestion on this particular bench, well, let us know. And I do mean “us” because I want one, too!

Since Wedding Belle, wedding advisor to the whacky, asked for exteme wedding ideas in her post a couple of days ago, I figured I’d chime in here with two words sure to strike fear in the hearts of wedding guests everywhere: Renaissance Wedding.

It was my cousin who did it. Some people, including the bride, her mother, and a few guests with too much time and money on their hands, actually rented costumes. The rest of us just cobbled together what we could out of velvet skirts and brocade jackets, throwing in a quick trip to the crafts shop for braided trim and veils.

I was not looking forward to this.

And yet. And yet, it worked. It was really fun, everyone was quite spirited (well, the mulled wine didn’t hurt), and it was one of the most festive, fun weddings I’ve ever been to.

I mention it here because it has a lot to do with design, and how we think of design. The wedding was outdoors, so there wasn’t a lot of decor to consider, but all the flowers were loose, casual bouquets, and the other decorations, like table cloths, were simple white. So the design, as it were, just served as a blank slate on which the color and creativity of the wedding party and the guests could splash.

So you don’t need, for example, a castle in order to have a Renaissance-themed event.

And nor do you have to be up on your history—most people, with a little research, will be able to dress for the occasion, without being able to tell you which famous painter died in 1564.

While you’re thinking of whether you’ve been to an extreme wedding, have you ever had a themd party or event? Have they succeeded?

It’s easy to find great design—I mean, all you have to do is flip through a copy of Architectural Digest at the dentist’s office. Or go to a really fancy benefit party in someone’s fancy home. Or, one way that is cheaper than the dentist or the benefit, and that doesn’t require knowing anyone with scads of disposable income, is to hop around to some open houses.

Open houses are a great source for design inspiration, or can be if you hit them right.

But finding bad design is a bit more of a challenge, especially when you’re asked to post a description and a photo to a blog. For example, to this blog in particular.
That’s just what I’m doing. I want to hear your stories of bad design. If you can include a photo, all the better. It could even be your own bad design (God knows I’ve admitted some of my own mistakes right here)—and maybe someone will write in with a solution for you. We have at our fingertips a fleet of designers, specializing in residential design, feng shui, and design for weddings.

(Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a fleet, but it’s a small boatload.)

Okay, it’s several brilliant minds.

So, let’s have at it. Bad color choices, poor lighting arrangements, terrible sofas only a sofa’s mother could love. We’ll try to figure out together where the designer (or, more likely, the hapless home owner) went wrong—which is, after all, a great way of figuring out how to do it right.

Just click on “comments” at the end of the post, and then leave a reply.

Whenever I visit one of these home design shows, I’m always on the lookout for the unusual, for the bold design, and for something functional also. After all, when you live in a space-challenged city apartment, you want furniture pieces to multi-task too! I wandered around the recent Architectural Digest Home Design Show with a skeptical mindset. I saw beautiful furniture everywhere but they really belonged to a mansion in Beverly Hills or at a penthouse suite.

I was looking for something to perk up my humdrum hallway when you enter my home – you know the type: a hallway too small to put anything really functional like a desk or a bookcase in it yet big enough that you can’t ignore it. There’s always mirrors and artwork but it’s not very original. Most people entering the hallway barely give it a look.

Then I came across the Perczek exhibit. Furniture designer, Jaime Perczek, has designed Art Deco style pieces, some large-scaled, some a more cozy size but all very striking. I saw their black and white bench. Now this can stop traffic. Bold graphics, sophisticated shape and colors give it an Art Deco feel yet its legs have a tribal, earthy look – unusual, striking combination. It shouts I may be beautiful but I work hard too! Yes, a very good place to sit while I put my dancing shoes on…

At Last, Color Me Happy 

Here it is. Okay, these photos maybe don’t show the color as accurately as they could. It is a biscuity brown, soft, like a pale coffee ice cream. The detail at the back of the bookshelves was inspired! And was the brainchild of my painter, Paul Flessa. It’s a deep raiseny plum, almost like a rum raisin, so the whole living room is a little like a big bowl of ice cream, and what’s wrong with that? 

You’ll see, too, that I had the window leading painted black, which involved a great deal of sanding, priming, and other activities I don’t want to know about. All I know is the painter was here a lot. And now, it looks great and my bank account is further depleted.  

Next up: the hallway, the windows in the other rooms. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

But let’s not linger there; instead, let’s talk more about green giving, as the holiday season is now just about to swallow us whole. 

You can buy recycled holiday cards, and that doesn’t mean hoarding the ones you got last year and then scratching out the name of the person who sent them and writing in your own. That is known as recycling, but it’s also known as extremely tacky. Instead, check out the cards made from recycled materials at Holiday Classics.  

For a mind-boggling list of websites that sell eco-friendly gifts, go to Ecomall. 

And don’t forget that often a home-made gift is the best one to give, or to receive. If you’re artistically inclined, now’s the time to get to work on making a present, but remember too that you don’t have to be an artist to make a gift. A CD with favorite songs, a photo album with photos of the family, a box of cookies will all make the recipient happier, probably, than another plastic Santa Claus singing “Rock Around The Christmas Tree.”  All you have to do to step away from that Santa is think of a landfill towering with the things. 

And then for the person who has everything, there’s the gift of green. Yes, that green, as in greenbacks.  

Often people who don’t need any more stuff are thrilled to receive a donation to a worthy cause made in their name. Just make sure you match the cause to the person, so that you’re not giving Uncle Dave the Dog-hater a donation.

Have you ever wondered about Thanksgiving décor? I am wondering about it right now myself. Not because I have any, thank god, but because my neighbors’ apartment door now has a bunch of corn, what we used to call “Indian Corn” tied in a little bouquet and somehow (duct tape? Crazy Glue?) attached to it, just below the peephole.  

There’s something about this that really bothers me. Maybe in the country, where there are real farms growing real corn (Indian or otherwise), this tradition makes sense, but in the heart of New York City it seems out of place. Likewise with pilgrim hats or turkey feathers.  

Most of us wouldn’t recognize a feathered turkey if we ate one.  

Okay, that’s it for my holiday spirit. Sorry if I’m a spoil sport, but the turkeys I like best are the chocolate ones.

This is about the weirdest thing. 

No, that’s a tremendous exaggeration. There are many other weirder things. But really, going into a bed store in mid-town Manhattan, mid-day, and taking a nap in nearly-silent, windowless room, is right up there. 

Apparently not so weird, however, for the clerks at the Dux store. There, the clerk happily remembered my appointment and escorted me into the room, showing me the hook for my clothing, assuring me I wouldn’t be disturbed. 

The only thing I was disturbed by was the utter weirdness of the experience. But my napping ability won out, and I got into the bed, and actually managed to doze off for a few minutes, lulled by the distant hum of bed-buyers in the show room. There was something both thrilling and very creepy about taking a nap there, with all these customers walking around just on the other side of the door, having no idea there was someone napping mere feet away.  

That said, I bet what you really want to know is whether the bed was comfortable.  

Well, it was. I thought I could, indeed, feel that it was kind of absorbing my weight in a way that my own bed doesn’t. I could feel that I could sink into the bed more, and it felt just delicious. 

But maybe it feels delicious to lie down anywhere in the middle of the afternoon. 

In the end, I left the showroom not entirely convinced, and decided to follow up with a trip to ABC Carpet and Home, the great palace of design here in Manhattan. I’ll tell you about it next time.

So, Sam began bed shopping. 

One drawback to having a fully and happily employed boyfriend (okay, maybe the only drawback) is that he is busy a lot, and so Sam asked me, Stylehound that I am, to accompany her on her preliminary search for a new bed. The Bachelor would be brought in as necessary at the end of the search. 

The first place we went was Macy’s. I should have known when the elevator got stuck on the way up to the top floor that this would not go well, and it didn’t. 

While we waited for the elevator to start moving again, we decided we would turn down any salesman’s attempts to talk to us before we got a chance to just look everything over.  

As soon as we walked into the bed department, a salesman came over to us. I told myself that the fact that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Richard Nixon did not necessarily mean the beds here would be untrustworthy, and I boldly said, “We just want to look first,” and he muttered, “Sure, sure, of course,” and crept away.  

“That was easy,” Sam said. 

“See? Stick with the Stylehound. I know how to handle these guys.” 

We lay on one bed, a Sealy.  

 $1600. It was really quite comfortable, but it’s a little hard to tell, you know, when you’re lying there in your jacket and boots. Still, it felt great, but maybe that’s just because it always feels great to lie down, especially after lunch.  

As we were whispering about the quality of the mattress, Nixon appeared.   

“I just want to tell you that these beds are all on sale, about twenty percent off.”  

“Okay,” we said, and struggled to our feet.  

“What kind of mattress are you looking for?” he asked. He seemed to be wringing his hands a little bit, but maybe that was my imagination.  

“Medium,” Sam said, and then we were in it, Nixon leading us from bed to bed. We duly threw ourselves onto each one, lying there as he stood over us, telling us about the springs and coils and foam until I had no idea anymore which bed was which. 

We staggered out of there and back to the elevator, and then Sam turned to me. “Listen,” she said, “we’d better take the escalator.” 

On our way down, she ran down the mattresses, their prices and quality.  

“But you know,” she said when we reached the first floor, “there wasn’t any one of them that I Rathed.” 

“Rathing” is a term coined by Sam’s mother, one of those expert shoppers. It stands for “Really Have to Have.” Sam’s mother always said that you shouldn’t buy anything—whether it’s a sofa, or a t-shirt, or a pair of socks—unless you feel passionately about it, unless you love it so much you want to wear it out of the store, unless you Really Have to Have it. 

“Well, there are other kinds of mattresses to look at,” I said, realizing even as I was speaking the words that I was getting myself into an extended job here.  

We went through the revolving door, which spit us neatly back onto 34^th Street. 

“Plus, there was something about that salesman that just seemed a little like a crook,” Sam said. 

Okay, does anyone mind reading about romance in order to get to the current decorating saga in my life? 

Unfortunately, this is not my story of romance. As you know, my life is consumed with contractors, electricians, and testing out terrible wall colors.  

This is the story of my friend, Samantha. Samantha is one of those chronically single women, even though everyone who meets her and then learns she is single has the same response: how on earth is it that no one has snapped you up yet?  

Sam is, in short, great—loads of personality, clever, witty, generous. And I don’t mean by that that she isn’t good-looking (you know, when someone is setting you up on a blind date and they say “he’s terrific, has a great job, he’s really funny ….” and they don’t mention looks, it means looks are not going to be exactly his selling point.) But Sam is also gorgeous, with a wild mop of naturally blonde hair, great athletic figure. You know, she’s that woman in yoga class you look at enviously even as the yoga instructor is saying “we are not here to compare….” 

Okay. So Sam somehow has made it into her 40s without ever getting married. Not that she hasn’t wanted to—she has very much wanted a husband, but has never quite hit it right. So she’s got a terrific apartment in a great neighborhood, which is larger than most New York City apartments because she’s been living there forever and moved in back when a normal person could actually afford an apartment in New York City, a real apartment, with a separate bedroom and a kitchen that actually fits comfortably a dining table.  

Sam is also one of New York’s star editors, with a high-powered job at a big publishing house. She makes a good salary, and she’s been able to furnish her place very nicely, so it’s pretty much perfect. 

And her life is great—going out to expense-account lunches with agents and editors, getting invited to fancy publishing parties, the works. Sometimes she invites me along to those parties, and let me just say that they are the parities you want to be at, even though no matter what you do you feel dreadfully underdressed. 

So, her perfect life had this one blemish: she really wanted to find a man to love and share it all with, but kept striking out. They all seemed great at first, but then turned out to be married, gay, or incapable of intimacy. Or, in one rather stunning case, all three. 

Until now. Along came the Bachelor of West 86^th Street.  A lovely guy, still never married at fifty. All Sam’s friends pointed out to her that this was a red flag, probably indicated that he would most likely never, ever, want to even go near the topic of marriage or commitment. 

But she kept seeing him, and he was delightful. We all fell in love with him. He took her out dancing. He spoke French. He took her to charming restaurants. And then he asked her to marry him, and we all just about fell off our chairs.  

Once they started talking marriage, they started talking about beds and bedding. And not in the way you’re thinking. The thing is, he had a tiny apartment with a double bed in the tiny bedroom. She had a much bigger apartment with — you guessed it — a double bed in the big bedroom. The Feng Shui experts reading this will probably come in to say what I myself told Sam long ago, which is that if you don’t want to be single anymore, start by getting a bed that’s big enough for two.  

The Bachelor of West 86^th Street was, like Sam, quite athletic, but this meant he was muscular, and he was tall to boot. So sharing a double bed soon seemed like torture to both of them, and quickly they launched into a search for a nice, comfortable, and most of all larger, bed. 

Check in next week to see what happens next. 

So, great. I now have a plan for the electrical problem, and just have to wait for the guy to send me the estimate.  

Meanwhile, my friend Seddy came by for lunch and mentioned, more than once, that her sister is starting an interior design business. I mean, she mentioned it enough that I realized it was like when someone offers you a breath mint—you should always accept, even if you don’t want a breath mint right then, because the person may be trying to tell you something.  

So I took down her number and called Seddy’s sister. She is a woman of action; before I knew it, we had an appointment and then she was at my door, having lugged up a couple of beautiful cloth-covered file boxes, each one, it turned out, filled with wallpaper samples, and decorating magazines, and paint chips. 

She was here for like three hours, taking photos, as I, shame-faced, showed her around my apartment. Now I am thinking maybe I could just go back to California where I went camping with my brother last year and set up a tent permanently in Point Reyes and forget all about wall color and fabric. I mean, look at the view from a campsite: 

Not that she didn’t have good ideas—the problem is that she had great ideas, great, expensive, time-consuming, utterly overwhelming ideas.  

The thing is, some people are just born with an eye for making a place look pulled together. And then there are the rest of us shmegegies.  

But I’m already in, having ponied up the initial fee—and I have to say, she must have been giving me a break on the fee, because it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. So now I have to see what ideas she comes up with. I mean, she says she’s going to look up everything for me, from new ceiling fans to a proper light for the front hall.  

And that way, I won’t have to listen to my brother sing his camping song every morning. (Around the family, we call him “Songhound.”)