Trend Spotting: Garland

As you already know, everyday is a party here at DC headquarters.  Unfortunately, the South South Austin branch of our conglomeration is not reflecting this ideology all too well.  Enter, a trend I've been spotting all over the web:  Garland.  Both festive and feminine, these lovely paper cutouts say "Yeah, it's Wednesday, why don't you just go ahead and get your groove on?"

via Please Sir

The flag banner in it's most basic form.  Can't you just smell the turkey legs and screaming children?

Artist Sophie Cuvelier juxtaposes the flag banner hype with quite interiors:

The small scale of her hand cut pieces become blissfully overwhelming when produced en masse. I can see these in every single room of my house.  If only I had the patience and time it must take to assemble these suckers. 

Wedding stylist Rebecca Thuss  Brings the jamz with her large scale garland alter.  I am wondering how my husband and mother will feel if I file for divorce so that I may remarry (same man) under this insane piece.  I will not be wearing that blue dress, though.

For a totally over-powering paper cutout experience, check out the works of stylist Zoe Bradley  her garland displays are to-die-for and probably even bring window-dresser-to-the-stars, Simon Doonan, to his Burberry knees. 

Zoe combines boxes, bags, paper and bows to make a Karly-Flavored dream display

If you need to water down your garland fashion for everyday wear, perhaps something like this is a bit more your style:

This garland inspired necklace from flickr user Vera Joao creates an instant traveling party.  Perfect for running errands or taking your cats to the vet. 

One of my very favorite flag banner pieces is this print by artist Elisabeth Dunker.  It has been my desktop image for as long as I can remember, one day I will own it in the flesh but for now it cheers me up every time I hop on my computer (which is almost every second of the day).  Note:  much more inspiring than a keep calm and carry on poster/pillow/towel/trash can liner.

You may remember that I have a smallish obsession with twins, when twin brothers Marc and Ian Hundley were featured on the Selby with their garland I almost fainted.  Seriously, why don't you just throw Christain Bale into the shot so I can be completely sent over the edge?

If like me your heart rate has excelled to a no-longer healthy pace and your head is spinning with visions of garland throughout your house but you find the task of construction a bit daunting, you can always visit our fine friends at Etsy:

clockwise from top left: cupcake garland by etsy user Frivolous Whimsey; Garland of Paper Flowers by Millalove; Royal Garland and Royal Garland detail by Royalbuffet; Baby Mama Papel Picado by Aymujer

While (thank god) I don't have a use for the Baby Mama garland, I think it's probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen.  Millalove's paper flowers are so delightfully perfect. I can barely fold a booklet and this gal is whipping out paper dalias like it's nobody's business.

I'm a pretty crafty lady, but the one quality I possess that outweighs my creativity is my aversion to tedium - I'm willing to bet a million dollars that I never knit an entire scarf - so it's good to know that these Etsy kids have my back and are willing to bring the party while I kick back and spike the punch.

+++++

UPDATE!  2 of our lovely readers reminded us about these lovely flag banners:

Woodley Park Zoo welcomes her new Feesh flag banner style.  I dare you to find a cuter fish welcome sign.

And thank you, Anna, for reminding me about my favorite Ikea fabric (how could I forget????)!!!  

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday break filled with family, food, spirits, and more food. The new year is coming -- and with it the urge to purge -- but it's not over until the fat lady bursts, which is scheduled to occur sometime around midnight on December 31st, 2008. So until then, let's continue to eat, drink and be fabulously merry, shall we? A tour of some famous fashion designers' private homes ought to keep the momentum going because, as the great poet William Blake said, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom; for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough." Let's head toward the palace of wisdom by starting out with a tour of the Pucci ancestral home, owned by the family since the Renaissance. Because, that much history is definitely excessive.

Oh, you know, it's just a room full of 18th century plasters arranged around an antique marble sculpture of the goddess Diana. Nothing special.

I know Karly wants that gilt wood console table, and the ornate draperies made at the Pucci's centuries old silk workshop are fit for a king, although I wish they were psychedelic Pucci print. Then they would be fit for me.

They had me at fresco. Add in some bespoke 18th century crystal glassware, and I'm sold. I just hope these fools never invite me to dinner while the good china is out, as I'm prone to break the pricey stuff, although paper plates and Ikea stoneware are always safe with me. Even my subconscious behavioral tendencies have expensive taste.

I'm sure the 17th century bed and its linens are machine washable.

Now that view of the Duomo from the Palazzo window is just over the top, people. Seriously, could you take it down a notch or a million? Pricelessness is so gaudy.

For a contemporary "more is more" aesthetic, check out Dolce and Gabbana's shiny gilded modern Liberacesque love pad, gorgeously photographed by Rebecca Duke.

Yes, Virgina, there is a Santa Claus. And he can fit a solid gold bedroom in his knapsack.

Oh, yes they did. If that's not excessive, I don't know what is.

Although a million pillows covered in matching Steven Tyler heads comes close. Ok, savvy readers, whose head is on those pillows? I'm sure that one of our fashion conscious brethren can unearth the answer. Whoever it is, the overall effect is awesomely creepy.

You ain't got a thing, if you ain't got that bling. Black + gold/crystal  = high quotient of lustification.

What the Pucci curtains should have looked like.

Moving on, I found the ultra modern Florence home of Roberto Cavalli to be equally excessive in its own, special way. Pictures courtesy of Home Design Find.

What's that, you say? How is this home ridiculously excessive? Yes, it's pink, but is it really comparable to an entire room encrusted with zebra hides? Friends, Cavalli's home designed by Italo Rota CHANGES COLOR on a whim. And I'd guess that Roberto might be a twee bit whimsical...

It's like the Epcot Center on acid. Dude, it IS a small word, after all!

It's also kind of like a modern update of the hall of mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. I'm not going to lie. I'm ready to pack my bags and move to Florence.

I'm a bit concerned about the bathrooms, though. I'm not convinced that the lighting is the least bit flattering. Plus it needs more gold in there. And maybe a disco ball. That's a pretty big dance floor Roberto's got going on.

Finally, the late, great Yves Saint Laurent may not have had an ancestral home since the days of the Renaissance (he wasn't that old, you know), but he certainly found a way to trick out his Paris apartment in a princely fashion.

He just filled it with with treasures a museum would die for, including a 15th century tapestry, a Theodore Gericault painting and a Juan Gris painting, worth $5 to $6 million each. Hold on, though -- you ain't seen nothing yet.

Oh, that's just a little Francisco Goya on the easel, and a wee Giorgio de Chirico on the wall.

Or perhaps you'd fancy a 20's Eileen Gray dragon chair. It's worth about $5 million, so don't let the kids jump on it. Actually, keep the rugrats out of the salon, entirely, because you wouldn't want them to chip the wooden Brancusi sculpture, smudge the Picasso painting in the background, breathe on the Cezanne watercolor, or muss the Fernand Leger painting. Any incidents could set you back $50 million -- the estimated worth of the contents of THIS ROOM ALONE.

Laurent also owned a crazy ovoid metal bar designed by recently deceased, zany mastermind Francois Xavier Lalanne. Oh, and that's a Mondrian in the background. No biggie.

Lalanne's wife, Claude, designed the wall of mirrors in the background of the music room, which also features a terracotta sculpture from 1707 and an Eileen Gray chest with an estimated value of $3.8 - $6.4 million buckaroos. Note to self: invest in anything Eileen Gray made except for that douchey table that everyone and their mother has knocked off/re licensed.

Finally, the man himself, Yves Saint Laurent (circa 1980), would like to wish you all a fantastic New Year. With any luck, this post finds you healthy, not too unwealthy, and a little bit wiser from all our indulgent excesses. And here's to hoping that we all look as natty whilst casually leaning against our Egyptian sarcophogi. Monsieur Laurent wouldn't have it any other way.

No Mercy

Hey kids, as promised we are reposting some of our greatest hits during the holiday break. Think of this as a super rare reissue with fancy new cover art... or whatever. I don't really know anything about music. But I do know I love Julian Schnabel. I just finished watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a movie about the former editor of Elle magazine who was paralyzed by a massive stroke at the tender age of 42. It was such an amazing film, so luminous and unexpected, that I was curious about what other projects director Julian Schnabel might be currently involved in. I already knew he was a famous painter and respected film maker -- having seen Basquiat I was expecting great things from his latest movie and I was wholly undisappointed -- but I didn't realize that he had also extended his creative pursuits to interior design.

Now I know hotels are usually Karly's forte, but since I'm nursing a mental crush on Schnabel, I thought I'd check out his take on the newly renovated Gramercy Park Hotel in New York:

Is it just me, or does the (grand) entryway look like it belongs in a Harry Potter book? I think it's the script on the custom designed carpet... I have to admit I've always wanted a checkerboard floor, though.

Here's a better look at the hotel's art collection which rotates some pretty heavy hitters. Although I'm not familiar with the particular pieces, I'm pretty sure that's a Warhol on the left and what must be a Cy Twombly on the right. Schnabel also included several cast bronze pieces he made, including that creepy Beetlejuiceified lamp.

There are plenty of bars in the hotel, which suits the decor well since bar design seems to lean toward the theatrical anyway. Of all the rooms, I think these two are my favorite. The Damien Hirst spin art painting on the left is a great counterpoint to that amazing pendant light display and the red curtains, and I love the pink walls with the gold Warhol Rorschach painting on the right. The Beetlejuice bronze definitely looks better as a chandelier than as a floor lamp.

The rooms themselves are a little... different. Instead of relying on art as decoration, they almost look like paintings themselves. This suite is very Vermeer, I think.

The penthouse is similarly jewel toned, with extremely bold color choices. I wonder what it would be like to actually sleep there, not that I'll ever have cash enough to find out.

When talking about his paintings and films, Schnabel claims that he's "aiming at an emotional state, a state that people can literally walk into and be engulfed." It's funny that his movies, not tactile in the conventional sense, do exactly that, but that his hotel seems superficial in comparison, despite its obviously tactile and luxurious environs. I think it's a little cartoonish, sort of like Disney meets the Whitney Museum, and that it misses much of what makes his films and paintings great: a sense of scale and proportion, a willingness to mix real with surreal, and enough grit to take the shine off the decorative.

What do you think? And I being to hard on my new hero? Does adulation always doom the adored?