I started digging into the fall runway shows that took place earlier this year to get some fashion inspiration. What I found was that the looks I love fashion-wise, inspire me from an INTERIOR design perspective too. Take a look!

PICK NO. 1: MARC JACOBS: OVERALL MOOD

This season Marc Jacobs most closely resonated with me in terms of overall point of view. Classic shapes, a loose sense of history, slightly “off” in feeling, updating the styles of the past.

I love the juxtaposition of leather, fur, and black cotton eyelet! I am also loving the shoes with the “bobby socks.” Please don’t laugh if you see me wearing my socks and shoes like this in the fall. I really love it! It is sweet, but devil-may-care in attitude.

This dress for me really takes the cake. I want it. It feels tailored, but fluid, with excellent styling and details. You can feel the quality in the fabric just by looking at it.

PICK No. 2: BURBERRY PRORSUM: TEXTURE & COLOR

Every fall Burberry Prorsum blows me away. They take classic looks and make them so hip and edgy! They are masters at combining textures and the shades of color they use are so…right.

I love the black and navy combo in this Burberry look and the way the various materials are working off of one another. The lines of the whole ensemble are so chic too.

The touch of bright yellow is so the thing right now in interior design as well. The looks of Burberry are citified and more modern than the interior design work I generally get to do, but if you are in the mood for classic leaning modern I’d love to indulge!

PICK No. 3: RICHARD CHAI: DRESSED DOWN/DRESSED UP

This season the looks of Richard Chai, with his sequins for day, really struck a chord for me. The look is bohemian, but polished, like the interior designs I love.

I so love this outfit. Each element is a great basic piece, but the whole thing comes together in a modern, unexpected way.

One of my favorite looks from the runway, this outfit incorporates gauzy, embellished, polished, wooly textures in a way that is low-key, but luxury.

Academics tend to be understated style-wise, which is not to say that style did not matter. It did quite a bit. Being smartly dressed and owning homes that showed culture and learning were definitely part of the lifestyle practices of many circles of professors. Works of art, objects from travel, artifacts with a sense of history, and of course, endless cases of books define the homes of academics. If you have been reading my newsletters for a while now, you will know these are elements I continue to love in an interior.

One of the fields I studied in graduate school was semiotics, or the study of signs and symbols and systems of signs. Written language is a system of signs where letters combine to symbolize actual things. For example, the letters B-O-O-K signify bound pages with a title and printed content on a specific subject, an actual book. Semiotics is used to study more complex systems of signs such as cultural meanings. For example, what does an actual book signify to us when we see it. Depending on the type of book it can signify many things, but generally most would agree that books signify knowledge, learning, literacy, culture, education, and other related things.

When I design a space, I consider each element I add not only from a technical perspective (Is this piece functional? Is it the right scale? Does it fulfill the use requirements?), and purely aesthetic perspective (as in “will this look good?”), but also while asking the questions: Is this piece making the right statement? What does it communicate? Is it saying the right thing? Does it tie in with the overall feeling we are aiming to create? This can actually be surprisingly challenging. Just like in semiotics, where each sign exists in relation to other signs, each element in a room has a relationship to the other elements. If you take some of the elements out, it can be hard to redesign the room with what is left because each element only made sense as a design choice in relationship to the other choices already made in the project.

Picking up on visual and verbal cues can also be central to how I settle on a design direction for a specific project. For example, in trying to understand a client’s style I will pay a lot of attention to what they have in their home, what pieces they love, where they tell me they love to travel or eat, or how they spend their spare time. I ask them to give me images that inspire them and then I look for the common threads. What are the elements that keep reappearing? What visual cues keep popping up in their inspiration photos? What overall flavor and feeling are they after?

Most people very intuitively pick up on a fairly large range of design cues. It is not a fully conscious process for them. It does help, though, if you can be more aware of what design cues you gravitate towards, because it can steer you away from buying decisions that are more impulsive or based purely on functional need as opposed to choices that fulfill both a functional and a design need within an interior. Here are some thoughts on creating a room with attention to its symbolic aspects:

1. Do some investigating: What is the look you are after? Get clues from places you love to visit, be it a restaurant or vacation spot, or a home away from home. Also try to see themes in furniture styles you tend to gravitate towards or magazine pictures you have been collecting.

2. Define a fairly coherent design direction: I usually have a set of words I use as reference points for each project. Here are some examples of “word schemes” I’ve used: “rustic, European, and elegant.” “Classic, refined, geometric.” “Modern, geometric, graphic.” “Natural, luxurious, contrast.”

3. Assess each piece you are considering for your interior against the word scheme. Does it fit? If it truly does not fit, skip it. I do like surprise and interesting juxtapositions in design, but it is important that there is something tying the varied elements together at a very basic level. The juxtapositions can be contained with the overall design direction, like the contrast of “natural” and “luxurious” elements being part of the same room.

Talk of modern and traditional is outmoded. We are well into an era that transcends easy dichotomies, pure distinctions, and that is what makes this such an interesting time to live and, well, decorate.

It is clear that we are all exposed to myriad influences every day. Our worlds are not tightly anchored to location. We live in virtual spaces of imagination, as well as real connection and possibility. Travel with our fingertips on keyboards, and physically, is just who we are. Connections with people from all over the world is our wonderful reality. And preservation of elements of the past is what grounds us now.

Doing residences in this environment is so fascinating. Each family brings their own preferences, history, and experiences into the picture. Each engages with the world in entirely unique ways, and they all want their homes to express all of the very varied facets of who they are. It is important to be worldly and have that worldliness reflected in how we live.

Here in lies the challenge. We want it all. We want grandeur AND simplicity, furniture from France AND India, traditional crafts AND photography, a flea market find AND the latest item from our favorite line. Without some thought and restraint the whole thing can turn into a hodge podge. I believe this movement towards the fundamentally eclectic or mixed is the source of several other MAJOR trends in interiors today, which makes the whole mixed up thing work beautifully. Do try these tips at home.

White or near white walls. Flip through any shelter magazine and you will mostly see page after page of white or pale color on walls. The understatement of the background color more easily allows the overstatement of all the other elements. Light walls bring peace, transcendence, a feeling of expansion which allows all the competing influences to get along so nicely.

Simpler fabrics. Prints often seem like too much in rooms where there are many diverse elements. Thus we often see pattern restricted to small areas, or even absent or replaced with texture.  Iif on larger areas, the patterns will be more muted, involve fewer colors, or be more geometric rather than free-form.

Reining in color. Taupe and grey are colors today! In the past they might not have been thought of as colors at all.  Wood finishes have also lost ruddy red or yellow undertones to accommodate the more muted feeling (an entire issue of House Beautiful was recently dedicated to the NEW color of wood!). Overall color schemes for rooms have a more subdued slightly monochromatic feel. These palettes are most conducive to showcasing bright abstract paintings or intricate pieces from Asia, and all other such expressions of cultured living.

One recent Friday night, after a crazy, raucous dinner with three kids under the age of four, two sets of parents broke new ground.

We put the kids to sleep all together, enlisted a trusted babysitter, and took a completely spontaneous drive into Manhattan to get dessert and drinks. Our wound-up toddlers didn’t fall asleep until well after 9 PM. By the time the two mommies in question dusted the fingerprints off our jeans and slipped on some heels and lipstick, and the papas in question decided whose car to take, which way to go, and where to park, it was 10:15 PM.

The lovely, friendly, and casual atmosphere of Ayza Wine Bar got the bleary out of our eyes real quick. Forget the fact that we had already eaten dinner. The food looked good. We ordered rounds of appetizers, drank really good Lambrusco and Malbec, and shared plates of dessert. We talked about business and life, and the fact that the last time we’d all been in the city together without the kids, the eldest of the 3 toddlers was still in her mama’s belly!

By 12:30 AM someone noticed the time, and we all knew we were doomed the next morning. Surely the kids would wake up somewhere around 6 am and show no mercy. Ah the woes! We rushed back across the Hudson river. At least there was no traffic at this hour.

At 1 AM I was carrying my sweet, sleepy little son from the car to our house. He was awake and I was questioning the sanity of our little excursion. Just then he said, “Look Mama, the moon!” There it was. I walked into the middle of the street and together we stared up at the sky. I showed him the planet Mars, glowing low to the west, the trees rustled in the breeze, and my heart was beyond happy. This, I suddenly thought, is it! This is the life I live to build a stage for.

What does a room that captures all the needs and wants and aspirations of a life like this look like? Can an interior capture happiness, optimism, comfort, energy, and all the little bits of the practical and the impractical in our lives?

The way we live today is basic, but not. The style we want is dressed up, but not. Our lives are full of demands and pleasures, and interests that we squeeze out precious time to pursue. Ultimately, our spaces need to pull off the same balancing act that we do, reflecting all the realities and hopefulness of living a very full life very, very well.

1. Go for a mix of styles: Contemporary interiors are fundamentally eclectic. The key is to avoid having your space resemble a Hilton hotel room, where everything matches and there is no variation in furnishing styles or wood finishes. This can be one of the hardest things to pull off well, but it is SO important. I will be talking a LOT more about this in weeks to come.

2. Accomplish an overall feeling of light and air in a space: I have an absolute preference for paler, lighter colors for walls, especially white. I love the feeling of light and air sweeping into a space, overtaking it, and becoming a central component of the design. That being said, if you are doing a house full of light and airy rooms, it is cool to have a space that is in a bit of contrast. My favorite way to do this is by adding deep earthy color on textured grasscloth wallpaper in one central room in the home.

3. Make it feel unique: There are many sources today for accessible mass market furnishings that are style-conscious. We should embrace these, but beware of creating spaces that feel generic. Some of your furnishings and most of your accessories should come from small boutiques like Furbish, flea market and antique sources, and things found on travels. Buy things because you like them and have a clear idea of how you will use them in your space. Don’t worry too much about doing the “right” thing. The only thing that matters is that the items you add reflect your aesthetic preferences and make you happy. That alone will make your home unique.

I hope these tips are useful to you! Feel free to let me know what you think by posting to the blog.

These are 3 of my personally crafted, time tested elements of the Furbish Look:

1. Every room must have velvet. Seriously. No other fabric has the ability to capture such depth and richness of color, to look like a jewel, to refract light so beautifully, to be so snuggly tactile. I honestly cannot imagine many rooms without the velvet touch.

2. Go for texture. I will strive to add an array of contrasting textures to any room. If we do something with a chunky texture in one place we will look to do something with a tighter weave elsewhere. If there is a lot of texture can we add in leather or something with a sheen to it. Linen is close to being a must have fabric for me as well because of the earthy, textural component it brings. The juxtaposition of linen with velvet, by the way, gets the right dressed up/dressed down look that so epitomizes what we strive for with every project.

3. Add some sparkle. For most people wood surfaces in their homes go without saying. Hardwood floors, hardwood tables, side tables, etc. Design today is a lot about playing different elements off of one another to avoid looks that are too one note. I will always look at a space and figure out where can I add some glass, polished metals, crystal, mirror. You can have too much of a good thing here. What you are looking for is the right bit of shine to help bring in a more fluid energy into rooms that would otherwise be heavy with fabrics and woods.

I invite you to the showroom this week to observe the presence of “the rules” everywhere. You can also check out some big changes we made to the layout of the store. Be sure to watch out for the next post detailing more elements of Furbish style just for you!

I am sitting in the Millburn Public Library, which is just a few blocks from furbish. I just left a busy, noisy café in the area where I tried to sit and write and think, but it didn’t suit my mood or the level of introspection I needed at the moment. I came here on a whim and I am more than pleasantly surprised. The library, while not glamorous, is blessed with magnificent arched windows that stretch two stories from floor to ceiling. Seven of them sit in perfect symmetry with brick-laid panes of glass adding more geometry to the effect. The view outside these windows is an expanse of trees: the foot of our very own South Mountain Reservation. As of yet these trees are bare. But they are still beautiful in every shade of gray-green to grey-brown one can imagine. And there are thousands of them. THOUSANDS of trees! Right here outside these windows! All of them preparing to send out their first buds for the spring. The wonder of this profusion of trees. The generosity of it. The pure generosity of nature.

The best interiors always have an underlying element of generosity, like these towering windows. I always find that nature is the clearest sign we have that we are meant to live in beautiful spaces and live generously too. Think fields of flowers in an unimaginable array of colors, oceans with such depth of color that stretch for as far as the eye can see. Skies that grace us with a kaleidoscope of colors at every dawn and dusk. Mountains so tall we can see them from a hundred miles away.

Windows, light, and space fundamentally give a feeling of generosity. But even the simplest interiors can be generous. Being generous is about giving to us what we need to live and feel our best. It is about celebrating abundance, which we have even when we think we do not. Think richness of color, collections of treasured items well-displayed, a house filled with things we love, or one done with masterful detail. All are shows of generosity. A bowl of oranges on a dining table, a vase of gerber daisies by the bedside, carefully selected pillows, glasses, and tableware. These are all details which add generosity. Paintings and accessories which give us great joy. Spaces which function exceptionally well. Soft comfortable fabrics made of natural materials. Comfortable places to sit or breaking a room up into a variety of sitting areas is generous. How will you add a feeling of generosity to your home? Consider some of the tips below.

3 tips for making your home feel more generous

Make accommodations for the things that make YOU feel like you are living the good life. If you love to read, set up a nook with a comfortable chair, a good reading light, a spot table, and a nearby bookshelf. Get some nice tray tables so that you can have breakfast in bed. Make storage space for the baby’s toys in every room in the house so you always have something on hand to entertain them. Buy beautiful glasses for the wine you love to drink. Get storage custom-built for your record collection. Whatever you love, whatever will make your life function more smoothly, or make you feel like you are being treated, make a special place for it.

Find a design element you love and repeat it. Maybe it is a bright accent color repeating itself in several places in your room. A row of three matching bud vases sitting on a window sill. Matching table lamps in a striking shape flanking each side of the sofa or the ends of a buffet table. A series of black and white photographs. The repetition makes the accent more of a key element and it looks intentional rather than accidental. Make it about giving yourself MORE of something you really love anyway.

Be prepared to entertain. Have a game plan ready for when well-loved visitors are in the house. Is spare seating readily available or is there an easy way to rearrange furniture to facilitate conversation instead of TV viewing? How about keeping a tea tray and snacks on hand. Or wine and nuts and a block of cheese. Impromptu entertaining always feels very generous, and it is fuss free! Here’s the cool thing about how others view your home: If you have taken the above steps, your home will naturally feel generous to others because you have already been generous to yourself.

gen-er-ous adj.

1. Liberal in giving or sharing.

2. Marked by abundance; ample: a generous slice of cake.

3. Having a rich bouquet and flavor: a generous wine.

Interiors in everyday homes have changed over the past few decades, drastically, and in many ways for the better. I just do not miss floral chintz in peach and seafoam green : ). But what about the whole trend towards less formality in decorating? I may risk colliding with some of you on this, but I just don’t think the trend towards casual is all good. Interiors have changed to accommodate the way we live, but we also have the task of shaping our interiors to represent our ideal lifestyles as well, and don’t we want just a little bit of glam?

Let’s speak for a moment about casual lifestyles so we know what we are dealing with here. A good place to start is with the open floor plans that proliferated through the 1960’s and into today. These open plans with “Great Rooms” allow for kitchen, living, and dining spaces to open into one another so that various members of the family or guests could all commune while doing different activities. The move to open floor plans epitomizes the shifts in the way we live. Television and media were centerpoints. Cooking now more of a social activity. Entertaining includes children. Another basic trend we have seen is the increased importance of home offices and media rooms over the past two decades. These changes do reflect real changes in how we live, but can you get a sense of how function has perhaps been overriding form?

There is another trend I’d like to throw into the mix, that I call the “barrel and barn-ing” of interiors, or mass produced, mid-end, fairly style-conscious furniture. Ok. Someone did need to do something about the floral chintz and simplify our forms on a mass scale, but hasn’t this come at the expense of unique personality and charm in many of the houses we see today? Sometimes when I do the whole Sunday open house thing, I feel like I’m witnessing the un-decorating of America. People hardly have any furniture because they are trying too hard to be uncluttered, or everything in the home has a generic, seen this before kind of feeling.

In the meantime quality has surely suffered. We are furnishing our homes in the most ecologically unsound ways imaginable. We buy furniture we know will only last a few years and then contribute it to the landfills. We opt for quick fixes instead of taking the time to really know and express ourselves in our homes.

And what does all this come to mean for our lifestyle? I think we really might be losing out here! Many of us are not giving ourselves the space to host great parties, or space to live with a little bit of luxury, or space to express ourselves, or space to be just a little bit glamorous. I am not the queen of practicality, but if you wanted that you probably would not be reading my newsletter! I like my interiors just a little bit glam. I believe every room should have something that might seem impractically beautiful in it. It is my invitation to myself to aspire and know a little bit of transcendence.

In the end, I think all this is about wanting things in life to be a bit special. People do not use dining rooms very much anymore, but hardly anyone I know wants to repurpose the dining room or buy a house that doesn’t have one. Why? Because dining rooms are about holidays, entertaining, enjoying family and friends, good food and wine, and pretty much all the best that life has to give.We don’t want to let go of what the dining room symbolizes.  And that is really very glamorous in my book.

I have put together my own personal rules of decorating that I use for all my projects…”The Furbish Rules.” They represent a great step towards getting us just the right bit glam, while still leaving room for a more relaxed lifestyle. Keep an eye out for my email introducing them! In the meantime, check out my go GLAM tips below.

5 ways to GO GLAM at home

1. Add some wallpaper. I love my clients and I learn at least as much from them as they do from me. Several of them have asked for wallpaper in one or two of the rooms in their home. We’ve been doing gorgeous textured paper, like grasscloths and other weaves, and modern prints. Both totally glamorous. Wallpaper went on the decline because it felt dated and people wanted a cleaner look at home, but textural papers and the new designs out there keep things clean, fresh, and just a wee bit fancy.

2. Don’t skip out or skimp on window treatments. Many of you are afraid to adorn your windows, feeling like drapes are too dressy and valences too fussy. The reality is that nothing adds polish and finish to a room the way a window treatment will. Here’s the secret: do simple panels or roman shades in a simple fabric that has beautiful texture or color to it. Skip prints if you are not sure what feels current today. Another great option if you like really modern looks is solar shades or higher end roller shades. If you need help you can use our window treatment consultation.

3. Do something custom. It could be a sofa or a chair,  your windows treatments, commissioned artwork, or some built-ins. Even custom ordered pillows. There is something SO luxurious about knowing you have ordered something that is unique and special just to your room. And it DOES make a difference. People will know and it will likely be the most talked about element in your room.

4. Dress up your casual spaces. I love rich velvety fabrics in family rooms. What better fabric to snuggle into? Beautiful little spot tables or stools in interesting shapes or materials are like jewelry for your room. Woodframe chairs to set off a comfy sofa will dress up a comfy space.  And definitely do not skip accessories in your every day spaces. This is where you spend all your time. Great artwork, lovely lamps or mirrors, vases will all give you plenty to look at and enjoy while you live in your space.

5. Add some shine! This is one of my most valuable decorating tips. You need to break up wood and fabric surfaces with materials that are more shiny. A little crystal or porcelain in the lighting. Some mirrored surfaces, metal and glass. Even fabrics with a bit of sheen. You need to figure out where to get the shine from in each room in your house. This is the glimmer that keeps the eye entranced without it knowing why. True glamour.

Environments stimulate our imagination, but it works the other way around too. We need to imagine a beautiful place before we can create it. Read my tips below for letting imagination rule more of the roost in your home.

3 tips for giving space to imagination in your home

Create an inspiration board and a file of images: If you do not have a file folder of images that inspire you, please start today. Get a stack of magazines. Include some travel and lifestyle glossies in addition to design magazines for best results. You can even go to the library and make color photocopies of pictures in back issues if you like. Stretch yourself and pull non-decor images too. I love tearing out beautiful photos of fruit and flowers to inspire color palette ideas. Paste or tack 10 to 15 favorites on a board that you can look at every day. Keep the rest in a file folder and every month review and update. As you go about your days you will notice patterns in what inspires you. Incorporate into your home at your own pace. Or when you are ready have a designer help sort through the images and make a plan. A good designer will be very skilled at sensing the patterns in your file.

Create displays of beautiful objects at key focal points: Sit in your favorite chair at the dining table, your favorite spot on the couch, or where you sit in bed, and notice where your gaze falls. Find a few key places in your direct line of sight where you can create a grouping of beautiful objects, or objects that resonate with one another in an interesting way. Maybe it is a mirror over a painted chest topped with a footed bowl, or a side table with a great lamp and a fantastic photograph hanging on the wall just behind. A strong grouping will hold your eye’s interest for years and stimulate your imagination about other possibilities, but you can also change it up when you think you need fresh perspective.

Fill your home with art and books: Reading stimulates our thinking in a very direct way, and having books you love where you can see them will serve as a reminder of the ideas, information, or experiences contained in those books. This starts young. If I recite a line from a favorite book to Aadi while getting him dressed in the morning, he will wriggle away from me and point to the shelf where the book is. The books are part of our everyday life and we refer to the stories in them and things in our immediate environment interchangeably. Art on the other hand, often bypasses language and speaks to our subconscious mind directly, which can be a nice change of pace. Find some pieces you love and let them be windows into other worlds as you go about your everyday life.

Similarly, whenever I see a room gone wrong it always seems it can be attributed to one of two things:

1) No one had ever developed a plan for doing the room.

2) There was a plan but somewhere in the execution the plan was wantonly abandoned.

That is it. There is no in between. People may think that designers are people who sashay into spaces and say, “Oh you must do this, that, and the other thing,” on first sight. Or that a designer will see a room and head straight out shopping to find must have pieces. Here is a BIG secret. No no no!

A designer will see your space and head straight to their drawing board and materials library and spend considerable time and resources to devise a plan. And then he/she will sashay back into your space and say, “Oh you must do this, that, and the other thing, and I know it will work because I can see it in the plan.”

I recently read that Sister Parish, the mother of American decorators, spent hours daily in her studio considering how to marry fabrics with trim and all such other details. I also recently read on celebrity designer Vicente Wolf’s blog that he would never even consider what he should do with a space until he had measured it and could see what was what. The expertise comes in knowing the plan is sound and will create the desired effect, but there is always a plan.

The MAGIC is in the plan. Whether it is a showroom vignette that looks casually brought together, or a major renovation project, I live by my plan. It is a major part of my job to keep clients from getting distracted by all the bright, shiny objects that will lead us astray along the path to executing a plan, because we live in a world of options and ideas. This abundance can invite distraction and the desire to try this or that. But you sacrifice results when you approach design this way.

That doesn’t mean you can never allow yourself to stumble upon a great find again. There are times when I or one of my clients will find the exact, perfect piece or finish or color very serendipitously. And we will dance with joy over it. But there is a reason why we both know the piece is perfect and will work without a doubt. And that is because we can clearly see where it fits in our overall plan. Here are my tips for getting MAGIC:

Catch yourself on dangerous turf: If you ever find yourself out in a store going crazy over a find that you have to have, ask yourself if you have ever considered having a piece of the scale, style, or size before in your space. If you are telling your significant other, “I know we said we would do green, but we could just do purple instead,” STOP! You will likely need an entirely new plan to make your fabulous find work, and that could cost you.

Steel yourself for some discomfort: If you are doing your room in stages, there is a chance that somewhere along the way you are going to feel your space doesn’t look or feel quite right, and you will be very tempted to abandon your plan. Don’t do it! I can tell you from experience, that a partially completed room can feel random even if it has been done according to plan. And you may be tempted to try something very off plan to compensate for that. Trust the plan even when — no, make that ESPECIALLY when — you are only half way through.

Get some graph paper: Use the grid to make a scale drawing of your room and draw furniture in to scale as well. One foot equals 1/4″. Keep working on placement until you find a good layout. Draw in elements like floor covering and occasional furnishings to get a clear sense of how the space will work. A good layout will be apparent when you see it on paper. The floor plan itself should have a certain beauty to it, with a level of attention to geometry.

If you feel you need help with that magic plan call us at 973.761.0311 to learn about our design services.