Monthly Archives: August 2022

More Than A Letter: A Design philosophy for life

Posted in Architecture, Fashion, Uncategorized by
Me in the Nashville Dry and Wash Scarf Activation. 2017

The tenants on their own are inspirational, steeped in the heritage of their humble beginnings. It is with my marketers heart in hand that I bow down to them with love and deference year after year. They are brilliant. It starts with a theme which is carried out in the collection. The collection is comprised of clothing, furniture, bags, fragrance, shoes, watches, jewelry and their famous scarves. To be tethered is to open up to the boundless. What bursts forth is genius. It’s aspirational. It’s humbling with a capital “H”.

I’ve been wearing my Hermes “H” belt for over two decades now. It’s part of my uniform and I wear it proudly. It stands for all the things I hope to someday be or embody: a spirit of conquest, authenticity, patience born out of a desire to craft beautiful objects, independence, and quality. To aspire to embody the qualities of a brand may sound unusual to you. Ridiculous even? Ponder that, we’ll come back to it.

Brooklyn . NYC – Fit to Pop
Cash and Carry?

Their spirit of conquest takes them on some unusual journeys. The outfitting of a luxury yacht. The hand-stitched seats of a Bugatti Veyron Fbg which sold in 2010 for a cool $2.1M. Exclusivity creates longing. Which is why I squirreled away the little money I had to spare for years before I was able to purchase that belt. Patience has never been a strong suit, but the pull of exclusivity, shockingly exerted a will stronger than my need for immediate gratification.

Out with the old and in with the new – Launder and Dye.
Style comes in so many shades and colors.

All that ingenuity doesn’t just sit in the store on a shelf waiting for you to notice it when you happen to walk past in a big city or airport. It comes out to meet the people in unexpected places, catching you unaware, converting the young hopefuls into the new, the next, the now Hermes generation.

Style makers. LA . Fit to be Fashionable.

It is their last foray into the wild that has me celebrating its brilliance and lamenting my lateness to the party. I am sad to report that it’s over. It was held in November for 4 short days in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Scarcity, a powerful tenant of marketing. A pop-up fit gym. Who would have ever thunk it? An instagrammable, influencers haven. A hipsters hunt for the next craze realized. A gal with a marketer’s heart – throb. Ridiculous I ask you again? In what way did this inspire you? Please share.

Swoon Worthy

Posted in Coastal Design by

Articulating what is worthy of knocking you off kilter, and awash in emotion, can challenge even those that haven’t come across a word that they didn’t love. And a lover of words is rarely at a loss as it pertains to finding inventive pairings. So what exactly is it about this phenomenon that has us begging to teeter, to become unbalanced, to feel as if we might fall? I like my breath like the best of you, but would happily have it robbed from my chest if it meant spotting a space, a place, or a swarthy man that made me dizzy with desire. Falling can be a very good thing to do.

Tucked in, cozy, intimate and inviting despite its size, the deep hues are intoxicating.

I did just that when I saw The Vanderbilt Hotel. While clandestine affairs are not my thing, grand gestures that include real estate deeded to me, most certainly are. To think that Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt had an in-town, Newport “Love Shack” designed and built for his married lover is wonderfully scandalous. To know that he never had one moment of unwedded bliss in the place is another. It is our happy fate, that it is one of the few that is open for more than a museum tour. 33 Luxury rooms await, and they have all been designed “to a fair-the-well” as my father would say. I have to agree, and steady myself as I gaze longingly at the photos.

First impressions are critical – Swoon at the entrance or forever hold your peace.

Dallas based design visionaries, Samantha Sanos, and Partner Joslyn Taylor of Swoon, don’t just tackle interiors, they take on your brand, art direction, and more in a holistic approach to finding that je ne sais quo, that sums up the swoon vibe so nicely. After all, the allure of the unspeakable is magnetic.

warm and inviting, other worldly, traditional and modern, this hotel seems to “have one foot in tomorrow”.

From coast to coast, these gals are the most.

Home Scents: Creating your own reality with smell

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The buzz of the door signaled its release. I yanked it open anxious to step in out off the street and the 90 degree heat, and into the temperate environs of the cavernous double height space. Beautiful it was, a happy hipness that welcomed you to inspect a little closer, peak around the corner, but it wasn’t the design that created the first impression, it was the scent.

7INK . Inclusive Living. National Development does it again.

I’ve long been fascinated with smell. I don’t consider myself to be a “nose”, the special beings that can detect hints of this and subtle aromas of that, but I can wrinkle my nose up with the best of those presented with a fowl smell and expand my lungs beyond what seems possible to capture just one more tiny breath of an intoxicating memory.

Lemonade & Lilac. Intoxicating, youthful and happy.

That’s the thing about scent. It is more closely tied to memory than any of the others – senses. It’s attached to the olfactory bulb in our brain, which in turn is connected to the amygdala and the hippocampus. If our brains were pinball machines they’d be lighting up with emotional reactions and memories, lights flashing to announced you’d scored the jackpot.

The smell of a fire on a cool autumn night and hot apple cider – cozy.

7Ink had me at the scent in the foyer. Fresh, clean, and intoxicatingly green, I felt young again, and youth being wasted on the young as it is, I wanted more of it. So much so that it got me thinking about my own home and what I want to evoke. While I cannot control what others will feel as a result of what I choose, and certainly not what memories will spring forth, there are universally agreed upon scents that people seem to love. Clorox, cut grass, laundry, lemons. If you guessed that people like aromas that invoke cleanliness, you are correct. Baked goods are high on the list of likes, presumably for their yummy nurturing quality. There are the oddballs like gasoline and tobacco. The inexplicable – licorice. Those that calm, lavender and eucalyptus. A few that energize – peppermint, rosemary and cinnamon.

Snow has a smell. It’s called wonder.

I think I want seasonal scents for my home. Spring: lilac and lemonade. Fall: Cinnamon, Anise and wood fire. Summer: Salt air and Rosa Ragusa. Winter: I’m stumped. What would you suggest. I’m open to recommendations, it’ll be here before you know it.