apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I was SO disappointed with this issue. I was all set to spend the afternoon looking for ideas and products to blog about, but NOTHING was accessible. Big bummer.

I have to agree with you. I was going to buy it last night and after skimming through it I decided I had seen enough.

i bought the latest O at home and Cottage Living last night, and was very satisfied. I ripped out approximately 12 pages for the idea binder, including an article about moonflowers! its a vine that blooms at night, and gives off a delicious smell! we're looking for something to grow on the lattice beside the hot tub we installed in our backyard, and i can't think of anything better!

I can't believe I'm about to give gardening advice, in the middle of February, on a thread in Aparthment Therapy NY headed up by Elle decor...but what the hey?

Jamie, moonflowers are terrific plants, but pretty tricky to grow from seed. The exterior of the seed needs to be nicked and the seeds soaked for a while to get them to start germinating.

My husband and I have been avid gardeners for 15 years and have started all kinds of green things from seed (my husband can hardly eat a tangerine from the grocery store without wanting to try to sprout the pips) and moonflowers are still a challenge.

Support your local nursery and buy 'em already started. Happy gardening and enjoy your hot tub!

Elle Decor is not ever going to come across with good design ideas for the not rich and famous. They are all about money, expensive items and people who can afford interior decorators. Interestingly, when I surveyed influential Bay area designers a few years ago, Elle Decor was one of the top shelter magazines they said they read for inspiration and ideas. So, rich and famous fits right along that concept.
There has been a real hole in shelter magazines ever since Apartment Life (or some such title I can't remember exactly) became Met Home. There hasn't been a place where people passionate about modern design but without six figure budgets can look to actually find things and come up with ideas. These blogs like Apartment Therapy are filling that hole. Thanks for being here!

I like Elle Decor because it is fantasy. One can be inspired by the spaces they show and bargain-saavy designers can go for the same looks on a budget. When I want something less expensive, I go with Domino, Dwell, Cottage Living, Coastal Living, etc. It is a shame that Budget Living bit the dust.

one "keeper issue" I still have featured Sarah Jessica Parker's Hampton's house, where the designer used many items from the flea market and IKEA to create that rich E.D. look.

Plus, ED US is a deal - I think I pay $12/year for it, whereas the UK version would cost me about that much for one issue.

By the way, this is last month's E.D. - I received the new one in yesterday's mail.

I understand what you mean, Becky and Norine. Elle Decor is not meant for the Average Jane. Sometimes it's nice to look at the glossy pictures and sigh. E.D. is simply the highest end version of my shelter magazine frustration, though. I find even Domino frustrating in that many of their featured products (and especially their larger items) are way out of the regular person's price range. Has anyone tried Blueprint? What do you guys think? My teeny little store in town doesn't have it yet...

yeah--I don't usually read Elle Home--but I bought it in the airport this week, and was entranced by Smith's home, but not really by anything else. And the beauty of the Smith home was a difficult thing to relate to. I can't build a house where every has access a terrace, or with an onx shower, or a realy Rubens painting, much as I would like to...

I did like Smith's line about TRADITION, though:
"Youthquakers are embracing tradition, and why not? It's the last meaningful thing."

If you want a magazine with great rooms that belong to people you've never heard of, created by design-world nobodies just as often as by famous designers or pop stars, the magazine to read is The World of Interiors. Almost nothing in the feature articles is available for sale, and I can't remember the last time a whole photospread was nothing more than a glossy eight-page advertisement for some clebrity's new furniture collection, the way so many articles are in some magazines. Too, TWOI isn't ashamed to show life as it really is. That is, the priceless 18th Century Swedish desk has a full wastebasket underneath & a can of pop on top, the industrial steel bed looks like it's still warm from whoever just got out of it--probably the same person who left a big puddle & a wet towel on the bathroom's copper floor--and the breakfast on the tray has already been eaten, leaving nothing but an orange rind & half a pice of toast behind. Too, that dark corner of the study is actually dark, not lit up with a bunch of hidden spotlights, and the tea kettle on the cluttered enamel stove in the crowded kitchen even has scorch marks on the botom.

That's why I love TWOI. The homes in its pages don't look like perfectly styled stage sets, but like real homes inhabited by real people, like our homes, only better.

OK, maybe if I could afford to have an onyx shower I would.
BUT, I get so much satisfaction from the home that I am making lovely with my own two hands and a really tight budget that I fail to see how writing a whopping check would ever give me the same thrill.
Room by room, I am taking a house neglected for 35 years into being "my home" and excess of the type I see in so many magazines is just not where I want to go.
I don't want a guest to walk in and go WOW and be afraid to sit down or feel bad that they don't have jewel encrusted bathrooms! I want them to unclench and feel safe and calm.

Casey--I love Blueprint. I feel that there's less of a an emphasis on furniture pieces and products than it is on DIY and decorating solutions.

Also, does anyone know where I can get back issues of the now-defunct Budget Living?

I'm a big fan of Blueprint but I am still hopelessly devoted to its older sister, MSL. I might be the only person in my generation (late 20s) to be going for a more traditional look as opposed to mid-century modern, so maybe it's just my aesthetic, but I really find MSL to be inspiring, and it too has lots of decorating advice and DIY ideas that make it manageable on any budget. Good recipes, too!

I find it strange that people don't have these complaints about VOGUE. Ie, we all accept that it's attrociously high-end. It's inspiration isn't it?

Why isn't it the same for Elle Decor?

Shannon, try eBay and Amazon. Also, I subscribed to B.L. right before it went belly up, and they replaced my subscription w/ House Beautiful, so perhaps try there?

I stopped buying Architectural Digest years ago after they featured Sylvester Stallone's HIDEOUS Miami home - it was all bling bling, totally awful, and I couldn't imagine who in good taste would ever feature it. I swear I get subscription deal offers from them every other week and I'll never pick up another issue. I guess that's how the original poster is feeling about E.D. - I would imagine they feel the same way about H&G? A really over-the-top luxe mag was Vogue's recent Vogue Living, and Bazaar also did a home issue recently. I liked them both very much, but the actual products were rather unattainable for the average Joe & Jane.

Blueprint is fun - it has a mix of home and fashion and other goodies - the decor stuff is usually really informative, do-able, and fun to look at. It is a little bit sparse, but it's a new magazine so that is to be expected.

I agree, TWOI stands apart. Dare I say that it seems to investigate the intellect of design instead of being a compendium of commercial trends slanted toward a kind of elitist "to the trade only" paradigm? One will find great excess but usually attatched to 3 centuries of collecting. But above all else an appreciation of the indivdual expression of character in an interior...It rocks. I miss Nest.

it seemslike they get a lot of flak from their readers if they deviate from high end spreads.
remember the John Derian apartment feature, the vehemenece of critical letters prompting a defense of it from Margaret Russell?
(his apartment was a long term labor of love, gorgeous if you like a delicate, slightly rustic or non-plush, flea market aesthetic.)

i think one of the coolest design mag features ever was Architectural Digest's entire apartment makeovers, by up market designers, of small apartments with $5,000.
fantastic!
too bad they don't run that feature monthly...
a lot more inclusive than cheapening....

elle Decor US that is (capital e won't work on my keyboard!)

becky wrote: >

I totally agree. But the latest issue? Uninspiring.

Now the April version of Living Etc. on the other hand - yowsa!! Loving every issue of my hyper-expensive subscription...

this issue was mediocre at best, and in consistent with this mag's general downward trend. i took one look through it and tossed it.

and...can someone please tell me why the publisher (or is it the editor)is always posing every month w/some hotshot in the design world. those pictures of her are so cheesy.

typo - i meant to say "is consistent".

and it's those posed pics with Margaret Russell that I find so cheesy and horribly self serving.

loved mike piazza's place though...

i had a deja-vu when i saw this ED cover - felt like it had been done before. I can't remember the issue date but about a year earlier cindy crawford's place was on the cover and looks very similar - of course it was done by the same designer. but not very origianl cover by ED.

i have another beef - ivanka trump's apartment was featured in in style magazine a few months back and she said she didn't use a decorator. this is totally false. there are two magazines that featured her place (vogue living australia and elle decor) and they gave credit to decorator emma jane pilkington. it really irked me that trump not only didn't acknowledge emma jane but actually said she didn't get any help. seems that she has inherited her father's over-sized ego, despite always trying to portray herself as down to earth...sorry had to vent.

i still think Elle Decor does a great job though, showing a range of styles.
(and that everyon'e right on about World of Interiors and Elle Decor UK, their show of great color schemes or textiles and innovators.)