We all have our addictions. My mother (an art quilter) has collected thousands of fabric swatches. My best friend, hundreds of pairs of shoes. My personal addiction is books–seemingly harmless, but terribly unfortunate when it is time to pack up and move apartments.

On this week’s Saturday-morning jaunt to my favorite bookstore (latte firmly in hand) I came across a compelling interior design book by Marnie Fogg, a lecturer in fashion and culture at the University of Nottingham in England. Couture Interiors , $35.00, Amazon.com, examines the relationship between catwalk fashion and architecture, interiors and home design products.

Fogg reveals how the fusion between fashion and interiors is the result of several modern constructs, including the speed of manufacture, consumers who are increasingly more literate in design vernacular, and the dissemination of ideas via magazines and the Internet. Today, trends in interiors change as quickly as the fashions that roll down the catwalks each season.

So what does all of this mean to you and me? Well, take a look in your closet, then look at your home. Do you see a common thread? If you favor a casual, preppy, East Coast vibe, are your interiors decked in dark, clean-lined modernist pieces? If so, consider throwing in a few more bright, classic accessories, you might discover that you feel more comfortable in your rooms.

Or, perhaps your wardrobe is filled with edgy, contemporary pieces in blacks, grays and neutrals. If your home has more flower prints than a Laura Ashley catalog, it might be time to rethink those pink, floral draperies.

In short, it is important that your home directly reflect your personality and lifestyle. If not then you might as well be a guest in someone else’s house. The expression of your personal aesthetic is important, because if you don’t feel at comfortable in your rooms, then you will never feel relaxed. And, after all, what is home for other than maintaining a genuine reflection of happiness?

–By Kate Bailey

Technorati Tags: Couture Interiors by Marnie Fogg, interior design books, fashion and interior design, fashionable interiors, new interior design books, fashion and interior design, fashion design

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Before I moved to New York, a friend gave me some good advice: don’t waste too much time traveling up and down or east and west; plan your day according to neighborhood. So, in the spirit of good time management, I always look forward to my bi-monthly hair appointment. It’s not because I love the pampering, but because it takes me to Midtown and that means a little escape next door to Rizzoli
Bookstore. Now, Manhattan has a lot of fabulous bookstores (I’m a sucker for every one!), but Rizzoli’s is really something special. I could spend hours browsing through their three floors of pure heaven.

On my most recent trip, I picked up two new re-releases from the London publisher Thames & Hudson: English Style and Decoration and French Style and Decoration, both by the well-known design expert Stafford Cliff. Originally published about a decade ago, these small gems are a design junkie’s dream. Tagged A Sourcebook of Original Designs, each volume contains over 600 designs and patterns from company archives and pattern books. You’ll flip page after page of gorgeous textile designs, sketches of glassware and ceramics, furniture renderings, room schematics, pattern book recordings of everything from toast racks to iron fence designs, and so much more. You really will want to study each and every page. These books are good resources for a brief history overview of English and French design, but, mostly they are visual treats of beautifully designed everyday decorative arts.

So, set aside a Sunday afternoon, make a pot of tea, crack open one of these beauties, and toast the designers that make even everyday items pieces of art. Enjoy!

Visit Rizzoli Bookstore at 31 West 57th Street or at www.rizzoliusa.com.

Both books are available at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com.

–Jennifer Kopf

Technorati Tags: books, new releases, French design, English design, decorative arts, antiques, Rizzoli Bookstore, Stafford Cliff, French style, English style

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I’m super excited this morning because I can finally give you a sneak peek at my pregnancy book, which is coming out in March!

The cover was recently posted on Amazon and while it doesn’t tell you what’s inside, suffice it to say that if you or your friends have been craving a more modern, practical, realistic, lighthearted, and frank perspective on the wild and wacky road to motherhood, this is it.

You can learn a tiny bit more on The Real Deal Guide website, which will be more robust once the book launches, but what I really want to know is what do you think of the cover? What does it say to you about what’s inside? Inquiring minds want to know!

Also, while I’m on the subject of books and shameless self-promotion, if you’re entertaining this season and need last-minute recipes and ideas, grab The Last-Minute Party Girl…or drop me an email on my party-girl website. I’ll be happy to brainstorm with you.

Erika Lenkert

Technorati Tags: pregnancy book, hip, modern, practical, guide, best, easy, entertaining, books

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Enter to win this gift by clicking here and posting a comment here before 10am PST on Thursday, December 6, 2007.

Just how cool is The Book of Cool? Put it this way: My all-time favorite gift store Zipper in L.A. (and now in Sonoma, too!), which is the arbiter of cool, says it’s their best selling book EVER, with more than 5,000 copies already having been toted out the door by Hollywood hipsters.

But never mind that. More important is that this $40 purchase is today’s gift in the Gift A Day Giveaway and the absolute BEST present for any man in your life. Why? Because it comes with three DVDs showing more than 250 “cool” skills and tricks, from how to work it at the casino to the keenest football moves to how to perform crazy skateboarding maneuvers, from experts from around the world. (That’s nine hours worth of viewing fun for your man!)

Add on 320 pages of photographs and tips and trust me when I tell you that this is one gift that will never end up in a White Elephant exchange.

Get it for any guy and be golden this holiday–and try to win it here by clicking here and posting a comment before 10am PST on Thursday, December 6, 2007.

Good luck and to see if you won, check the Winners Circle on December 7.

Erika Lenkert

Technorati Tags: best gift for man, cool, book, holiday, free, gift guide

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–

I read about this book in a magazine. It enticed me with a multiple-choice quiz based on facts within the book, which is a real-life account of a waitress who who worked at famed chef Thomas Keller’s New York restaurant Per Se.

In three quick and quippy questions (with corresponding answers) it alleged that many Per Se diners eat so much at the four-star destination that they vomit. And that a rich couple requested a table for three so their Alf-like stuffed animal could join them for dinner (sounds like something I would do, just for fun, provided those around me got the joke). And that employees were required to get permission to change their hairstyles.

These juicy tidbits baited me, but they also put me off. I am a huge Thomas Keller fan–and not just because he’s always gracious when I see him and invites me to the restaurant’s holiday party even though we are just casual acquaintances. Or because he was kind enough to offer a quote for the back cover of my book “The Last-Minute Party Girl,” and openly celebrates his love for In N Out Burger.

The man is one of the most brilliant culinary minds of our time, and because I have so much respect for everything he does I can’t help but feel protective. I don’t warm up to the idea of a tell-all–especially because if you have had the Thomas Keller four-star experience you would say, “OF COURSE his staff has to get permission to change their hair! Duh!”

Keller’s culinary adventure doesn’t merely live on the plate or in the room decor. It is in every single nuance–each sight, sound, rhythm, taste, and smell of the dining experience. It’s dining drama at its most exquisite and detailed and the staff is a seamless part of the act. A mohawk would SO disrupt the harmony.

Besides, when people are paying big bucks for dinner they tend to look harder for anything they can classify as a flaw.

So, being an unofficial Keller club member I had mixed feelings about whether to buy the book. But I just popped onto Amazon and read some of the first reviews. (The book came out less than a month ago.) It seems as though the contents are less salacious than I thought. Perhaps I’ll grab a copy next week…If you’ve already read it, please let me know whether it’s worth checking out!

Erika Lenkert

Technorati Tags: thomas keller, service included, book

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