Is That Your Pupa, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

Jean Paul Gaultier is the latest in a succession of fashion industry giants to design a room for Elle Decoration Suite, and the results are predictably offbeat. Because you can't exactly expect a man obsessed with assorted fetish wear and tasseled conical boobies to suddenly morph into a winsome Nick Olsen type, now can you?

Employing various motifs found within his fashion collections, Gaultier's apartment reads like a whimsical S&M club.

There's something larval about this whole setup, but I find it to be credible as a concept room. This, however, frightens me:

Sorry, but dolls are always going to elicit a WTF?! response from most people.

Oh, and there's also an indoor jungle. As if you could have a fashionable apartment without one!

These days it seems that every Tom, Dick, and Zac, is jumping from fashion to interior design -- often with retinal scorching results. If the previous two iterations of Elle Decor Suite by Christian Lacroix and Martin Margiela hadn't been so worthwhile, I might altogether question the wisdom of these endeavors.

What do you dudes think? Love or hate Gaultier's take on apartment dressing? He is kind of cute in those stripes...

Ask Sanders: Rossana's Pear Green Nursery

It's time for another installment in our Ask Sanders series, wherein some lucky reader has their decorating dilemma solved by our resident paint guru, Sanders Gibbs. It's a dream come true, because in case you don't already know, Sanders is a badass. But don't take our word for it -- if you live in Austin, go visit Benjamin Moore Hill Country Paints, where Sanders puts his talents to the test as store manager. Not in Austin? Catch up by reading this interview with Sanders here.

Without further ado, here's reader Rossana's question:

"My husband and I are in the process of painting the nursery. We have differing ideas about what this should look like, but we have at least found a nice compromise with the Ben Moore pear green. The gender is a surprise! The room is about a 10 x 12 room with lots and lots of windows and the one wall that is solid will be the one that we put the crib on, and this is the wall that we will paint Pear Green. Question is: what other color would be nice with PG?"

First of all, great choice! Pear Green is a bright and versatile shade that pairs (ahem) well with many colors. Sanders gave us a broad selection of gender neutral choices to pick from, and many can be mixed and matched to different effect.

Amp up the drama by mixing pear green with bold brights.

Or tone it down with neutrals. It works well either way.

For a baby's room, you could play it sophisticated by painting the crib wall pear green, the other walls off white (Sanders gave us Mountain Peak White), and then adding in other colors through accessories and bedding. Or you could funk it up by painting the other three walls a jazzier color, and then using accessories in more neutral shades. Let's take a look at some rooms with pear green and see how Sanders' choices work in them.

This playroom in the home of Avocado and Papaya's Jackie Kersh features a cute, classic palette of green, red and blue.

Here's Sanders' palette, which would work well in a gender neutral nursery: Pear Green with Chili Pepper Red and Peacock Blue.

Another playroom, via Cupcake Wishes and Unicorn Dreams.

And Sanders' corresponding choices are Pear Green with Stardust and Violet Stone.

I know it's not a kid's room, but the color palette in this kitchen would be fab in a nursery.

Pear Green with Banana Yellow and Florida Keys Blue.

And then there's this hotness -- who cares if the Pear Green is on a couch and not a wall? Use your imagination goggles to see that this color combo is off the chain... Loves it.

Pear Green, Mountain Peak White and Silver Dollar. DRAMA. Add a dash of black here and there and you've got a winner for all ages.

And here are a couple more pretty palettes, just because I made them up all nice in photoshop:

The bold and the beautiful: Tequila Lime, Juneau Spring, Banana Yellow, Tangy Orange, and Pear Green.

Oh so quiet and sophisticated: Mountain Peak White (loving this white!), Silver Dollar, Taos Taupe and Light Khaki. Brilliant.

That's it for this edition of Ask Sanders. Rossana, I hope there's some helpful information here, and hey -- maybe we inspired some of y'all out there to repaint. Or perhaps even have a baby... After all, what better excuse could there be to redecorate?

I'm leaving you with this picture of Ike and Sanders. Ike LOVES loves him some Uncle Sanders, mostly because Ike is obsessed with Sanders' nametag, but also because Ike has good taste in people.

If any of you out there would like some professional advice regarding your painting dilemmas, send in a request and we'll forward it to Sanders.

Thanks for sharing your expertise with us, Sanders!

ModFruGal's Mini-Tour

Whatup DC readers! I'm ModFruGal, and I'm feelin' pretty lucky to be here...for one, Karly and Erin are superb style mavens I admire, and two, I'm not showing you a house 3 feet under water. You see, my poor city of Nashville had a pretty solid ass-kicking over the past several days. I'm posting this from my Crafty Counterpart's office since he has fancy things like electricity, phones and internet here. So, now that I'm in the land of the connectivity, I have the chance to show you our evolving digs...still very much a work in progress.

The CC and I bought the Regal Beagle almost 2 years ago and have been workin' it ever since. Think cottage cheese ceilings and smelly green shag as far as you can see...yeah, baby..that's the stuff...home sweet home. We are a little nuts like that.

We'll start outside and work our way in, shall we?

True story: I actually met someone who came to look at this house when it was on the market and turned around and left before they ever got to the top of the driveway. Serious.

The exterior alone was enough to repel them without even looking inside. Probably because the house had several hundred holes in the cedar siding which allowed the critters in the adjacent state park some free rent. After 6 months of repeated patching and various failed attempts to repel the wildlife from the house, we knew we had to re-side. Now we have a metal fortress. Here we go.....Pictures!

We are still tackling some of the landscaping (that didn't wash away) as we speak so, limited snaps at the mo.

It's taken awhile to get things going inside...A lot of my old furniture was weirdly out of scale for the new house. We came from a 1912 house with small chopped up rooms to an open 70's modern home, so it has taken some time to sell off the old and scrounge flea markets, e-bay and Craigslist for the "new to us" stuff. It's sloooowly coming together. Here's the living room before and now. There is no "after" in my world...it always changes. Oooh...let's say that in a Yoda voice..."There is no after, only now." Heh...yeah, that's creepy.

....and the dining room.......

....and the kitchen........this was a doozy. There's no IKEA in Nashville, so we packed up Thing One and Thing Two and drove 3.5 hours to Atlanta to get our kitchen. For the first 2 months we lived here, we had to set up shop in the dining room on camping tables while we slowly assembled the honkin' Swedish jigsaw puzzle that is now our kitchen. Best birthday present ever was the sink...no more showering with cutting boards! Ah...good times.

Since the dining room is RIGHT NEXT to the kitchen, we built a breakfast bar to keep the doorway clear.

Then there's the Master Bedroom...I'm still not feelin' it in here...

Yes, the bed is on the floor and yes, we are heathens who watch TV in bed. I don't know what to put over the bed, I just finished painting those orange tables and haven't gotten the glass cut yet...I don't think they'll stay there. Translation of rambling: MB needs tweaking all around, but it's home and it will evolve in due time as everything does.

There's still a LOT to do around here...namely bathrooms...back to work!

Thanks so much to Karly and Erin for having me over to hang out today!