Erin Fetherston

We went shopping at Target this weekend, and I got such a big surprise. There was already part of Erin Fetherston’s GO collection there! Since everything I’ve read and seen has said the collection will be available on November 18, I couldn’t pass up thinking that I was getting something exclusive. I bought the layered purple dress in the top pic because I had looked at her ready-to-wear collections on style.com (some of my favorites are pictured below) so I know that she has a whimsical and romantic style.Erin graduated from UC Berkely and then moved to Paris to attend Parsons School of Design’s Paris-based postgraduate design program. She graduated in 2004 and showed her first couture collection at Paris Haute Couture Spring 2005. What I found so interesting was the following story from Target’s biography of Erin Fetherston:

“Creating ethereal ready-to-wear dresses and separates, the designer is living her very own fashion fairy tale. While on vacation with her fiancé’s family, she unearthed a treasury of antique textiles that her fiancé’s mother, a former chef d’atelier at Guy Laroche and Yves Saint Laurent – and whom Fetherston calls, “her very own fairy godmother,” had stowed away. Fetherston borrows inspiration from these heirlooms and creates flirty, feminine pieces that include details such as hand-knit and hand-painted lace.”

Read Full Post »

Today’s Obsession: Unique Chairs

I have been obsessed with the Louis Ghost chair for awhile and I finally decided it was time to purchase some. However, I was unable to find a store/website that I had found this summer, but after searching Google for a couple of hours, I found it in an article that appeared in the New York Times in 2003!  The store is called Unica Furniture and, even though I have not gone yet, their website promises lots of unique furniture.

While I was searching for the ghost chairs, I came across some unique chairs. At a store called Kinetics Furniture, I saw a barstool that looked like the classic Barcelona chair. And then, on the site Canadian Design Resource, I found the hockey stick chair, which they had found on www.treehugger.com. My boyfriend (like a lot of northerners) loves hockey, so I couldn’t help but think that if we ever have a cabin (in my dreams), some of these would look so chic.

Read Full Post »

Tennessee Williams’s Memoirs

The last few days, I have been reading Tennessee Williams’s autobiography, called Memoirs.  It has been so interesting so far, especially  to me since he was born in Columbus, MS, an adorable southern town close to where I went to college.My favorite quote from the book is “My thing is what it always was:  to express my world and my experience of it whatever form seems suitable to the material.”  Tennessee’s autobiography was published in 1975 and was a very shocking book.  Here is what the back cover says:

“For Tennessee Williams the past is always present.  As he weaves his Memoirs, the playwright continually shifts and intermingles times and places-his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis; his struggle as a “starving artist”; “overnight” success with The Glass Menagerie in 1945; the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962; confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969, and his subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction in the 1970s.  Of course Memoirs  is also filled with amazing friends who Williams often hilariously-sometimes fondly, sometimes not-remembers:  Laurette Taylor, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Carson McCullers, Anna Magnani, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tallulah Bankhead to name just a few.

Much has changed in America since 1975 when Williams’s candor in Memoirs-about being a gay man, his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use-caused a bit of a scandal, but some things have not.  Filmmaker John Waters provides much-needed perspective to this edition of Memoirs with a bold and witty introduction that is characterized by his undiluted admiration and respect for Tennessee Williams as an artist and a man.  In addition, noted Williams scholar Allean Hale has contributed a brief afterword detailing a few of Williams’s more intriguing discrepancies.”

How can you not want to read this book?  You can order any Tennessee Williams’s works from the publishers New Directions at www.ndpublishing.com.  The cover art, which was designed by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance, comes from a photograph from the Billy Rose Theater Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Read Full Post »

Colorful Americans

I have been obsessed with people’s decor, dress, and style ever since I can remember. My boyfriend and I went to see “American Gangster” during our weekly movie day and I managed to check out the decor all through the movie. Imagine my pride when my boyfriend whispered “they went shopping at Design Within Reach” because he recognized a table that we liked!

Anyway, to further my obsession, I found the Apartment Therapy and CB2 “I’ve Got Color” contest. It is full of pictures of people’s homes and their color philosophy. I love browsing through the pictures and getting ideas to use in my own home. Check out the each region’s best here, on Apartment Therapy’s website.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »