A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of A Misspent Life


Mary Randolph Carter - 2010
    and stop worrying about everything being perfectly in its place.For all those who choose to live "imperfectly" with the messy things they love, this book shows how to do so creatively, happily, and with considerable style ideas from leading designers. A beautiful and inspiring volume, A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of A Misspent Life focuses on living well with everything that makes a house a home. If you have been influenced by the picturesquely cluttered studios of Pablo Picasso or Alexander Calder, or by the art- and book-filled house of Vanessa Bell, this unique style book will stimulate you with its creative ideas.This volume explores how real-life tastemakers (photographers, textile designers, fashion designers, writers, artists) integrate their life and interiors to live well with their passions, histories, conveniences, and inconveniences. In inspiring essays, Mary Randolph Carter muses on such key housekeeping concerns as clutter versus mess; open windows; and unmade beds. Combining practical tips with liberating philosophy—"Don’t scrub the soul out of your home"; "Make room for what you love"—this volume celebrates living beautifully and happily, not messily. Lavishly illustrated with intimate photographs of different living spaces, Carter exalts in the beauty of imperfection and in living perfectly in our "imperfect" homes. Life isn’t perfect—why should your house be?

Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave


Joanna Gaines - 2018
    This comprehensive guide will help you assess your priorities and your instincts, as well as your likes and dislikes, with practical steps for navigating and embracing your authentic design style.Room by room, Homebody gives you an in-depth look at how these styles are iterated as well as how to blend the genres you’re drawn to in order to create spaces that look and feel distinctly yours.In each chapter are practical takeaways to help problem solve potential pain points in your home. A fold out design guidebook at the back of the book offers a place for you to take notes and sketch out your own design plans as you make your way through the rooms.The insight shared in Homebody will instill in you the confidence to thoughtfully create spaces that you never want to leave.

Domino: The Book of Decorating: A Room-by-Room Guide to Creating a Home That Makes You Happy


Deborah Needleman - 2008
    The editors take readers room by room, tapping the best ideas from domino magazine and culling insights from their own experiences. With an eye to making design accessible and exciting, this book demystifies the decorating process and provides the tools for making spaces that are personal, functional and fabulous.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty


Andrew Bolton - 2011
    Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer’s career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own world-renowned London house. It features his most iconic and radical designs, revealing how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savile Row tailoring, the specialized techniques of haute couture, and technological innovation to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. It also focuses on the highly sophisticated narrative structures underpinning his collections and extravagant runway presentations, with their echoes of avant-garde installation and performance art.Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen.Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty celebrates the astounding creativity and originality of a designer who relentlessly questioned and confronted the requisites of fashion.

The New Bohemians: Cool and Collected Homes


Justina Blakeney - 2015
    They embrace free-spirited, no-rules lifestyles and apply that attitude to all areas of their existence, including their homes. With little distinction between work and play, the new boho home often includes an office, art gallery, showroom, photography studio, restaurant, or even a pop-up shop. The New Bohemians explores 20 homes located primarily on the East and West coasts. Exclusive interviews with the owners, 12 DIY projects created by Blakeney and inspired by objects found in the homes, and a "Plant-O-Pedia" offer insight into achieving this aesthetic. In addition, each home is accompanied by an Adopt-an-Idea section that offers general decor, styling, and shopping tips for easy duplication in your own home.

Design Bloggers at Home: Fresh interiors inspiration from leading on-line trend setters


Ellie Tennant - 2014
    A global network of creative, interior design bloggers has emerged, publishing fresh and inspiring content online every day.With diverse backgrounds and lifestyles, these individual bloggers combine to create a thriving online community of trendsetters and style gurus. The digital world brings with it design democracy; with the freedom to publish whatever they want, whenever they want and unhampered by the restrictions of larger corporate websites, these design bloggers offer a beguiling alternative to traditional media and have become an important source of inspiration and information for the homes enthusiast. In her first book, leading interiors journalist and stylist Ellie Tennant meets the characters and creative forces behind leading design blogs, exploring their online realms, their beautiful homes and their clever styling ideas. Thirteen in-depth case studies cover a panorama of cutting edge bloggers’ spaces—from a pared-back monochrome cabin in Scandinavia to a maximalist, color-filled apartment in California—while the final chapter offers advice on setting up your own design blog. The result is a coffee table tome to treasure—a visual feast of inspiring yet achievable interiors—with plenty of ideas to steal for your own home.

Design*Sponge at Home


Grace Bonney - 2011
    They don't have to be matchy-matchy or rigidly modern. They can just be comfy and unique and reflect who you are, no matter how small your budget or space.That reader is one of the 75,000 unique daily visitors to Design*Sponge, who make it the most popular design site on the web. The site receives 250,000 pageviews every day and has 150,000 RSS subscribers and 280,000 followers on Twitter. Design*Sponge fans have been yearning for the ultimate design manual from their guru, Grace, and she has finally delivered with this definitive guide, which includes:Home tours of 70 real-life interiors featuring artists and designersFifty DIY projects, with detailed instructions for personalizing your spaceStep-by-step tutorials on everything from stripping and painting furniture to hanging wallpaper and doing your own upholsteryFifty Before & After makeovers submitted by readers of Design*Sponge real people with limited time and realistic budgetsEssential tips on modern flower arranging, with 20 arrangementsWith over 700 color photos and illustrations and projects that are customizable, relatable, and affordable, this is the democratizing design book everyone has been waiting for and all for only $35.00!

Travel Home: Design with a Global Spirit


Caitlin Flemming - 2019
    Touring the homes of leaders in global design who share a deep affection for travel, the book explores interiors with influences as widespread as Marrakesh, Paris, Cuba, Tokyo, Portugal, and beyond. Vivid photography is supplemented with insightful essays, interviews, and hardworking tips for cultivating your own global home. For globetrotters and armchair travelers alike, Travel Home showcases the interplay between travel and design, revealing how we can take inspiration from the beauty we experience in the world and bring it into our everyday lives.

Humans of New York


Brandon Stanton - 2013
    With four hundred color photos, including exclusive portraits and all-new stories, Humans of New York is a stunning collection of images that showcases the outsized personalities of New York.Surprising and moving, Humans of New York is a celebration of individuality and a tribute to the spirit of the city.

Elements of Style: Designing a Home a Life


Erin Gates - 2014
    Drawing on her ten years of experience in the interior design industry, Erin combines honest design advice and gorgeous professional photographs and illustrations with personal essays about the lessons she has learned while designing her own home and her own life—the first being: none of our homes or lives is perfect. Like a funny best friend, she reveals the disasters she confronted in her own kitchen renovation, her struggles with anorexia, her epic fight with her husband over a Lucite table, and her secrets for starting a successful blog.Organized by rooms in the house, Elements of Style invites readers into Erin’s own home as well as homes she has designed for clients. Fresh, modern, and colorful, it is brimming glamour and style as well as advice on practical matters from choosing kitchen counter materials to dressing a bed with pillows, picking a sofa, and decorating a nursery without cartoon characters. You’ll also find a charming foreword by Erin’s husband, Andrew, and an extensive Resource and Shopping Guide that provides an indispensable a roadmap for anyone embarking on their first serious home decorating adventure. With Erin’s help, you can finally make your house your home.

Jonathan Adler on Happy Chic: Colors


Jonathan Adler - 2010
    Every chapter is devoted to his thoughts on one color scheme, and he reveals his go-to paint chips, favorite fabrics, and personal color muses, like Diana Vreeland and Grace Jones.

A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book


Frank Warren - 2007
    He has shared these PostSecrets on his award-winning blog, in an internationally traveling art exhibit, and in three electrifying books: the bestselling PostSecret, My Secret, and The Secret Lives of Men and Women.Now, in his most extraordinary book yet, Warren again delves into our collective confessions, presenting a never-before-seen selection of provocative and moving PostSecrets. A Lifetime of Secrets lays bare our private fears, hopes, regrets, and desires, from people as young as eight and as old as eighty. From painful admissions of infidelity to breathtaking revelations and endearing sentiments, Warren’s latest collection will shock and move readers of every age, revealing secrets that have haunted their creators for a lifetime.

The Sartorialist


Scott Schuman - 2009
    His now-famous and much-loved blog, thesartorialist.com, is his showcase for the wonderful and varied sartorial tastes of real people across the globe. This book is a beautiful anthology of Scott?s favorite images, accompanied by his insightful commentary. It includes photographs of well-known fashion figures alongside people encountered on the street whose personal style and taste demand a closer look. From the streets of New York to the parks of Florence, from Stockholm to Paris, from London to Moscow and Milan, these are the men and women who have inspired Scott and the many diverse and fashionable readers of his blog. After fifteen years in the fashion business, Scott Schuman felt a growing disconnect between what he saw on the runways and in magazines, and what real people were wearing. The Sartorialist was his attempt to redress the balance. Since its beginning, the blog has become hugely admired and influential in the fashion industry and beyond. Thesartorialist.com is consistently named one of the top blogs in the world. A self-taught photographer, Schuman shoots for publications including French Vogue, American GQ, Fantastic Man and Elle, and a growing list of advertising clients. Scott has also shown his work at the New York photo gallery The Danziger Projects and appeared in the GAP Style Icon campaign in the fall of 2008. He has been named the number one fashion photography trend by American Photo magazine, as well as one of Time magazine?s top 100 design influencers.

Street Photographer


Vivian Maier - 2011
    It is hard enough to find thesequalities in trained photographers with the benefit of schooling and mentors and a community of fellow artists and aficionados supporting and rewarding their efforts. It is incredibly rare to find it in someone with no formal training and no network of peers.Yet Vivian Maier is all of these things, a professional nanny, who from the 1950s until the 1990s took over 100,000 photographs worldwide—from France to New York City to Chicago and dozens of other countries—and yet showed the results to no one. The photos are amazing both for the breadth of the work and for the high quality of the humorous, moving, beautiful, and raw images of all facets of city life in America’s post-war golden age.It wasn’t until local historian John Maloof purchased a box of Maier’s negatives from a Chicago auction house and began collecting and championing her marvelous work just a few years ago that any of it saw the light of day. Presented here for the first time in print, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer collects the best of her incredible, unseen body of work.

The Kinfolk Home: Interiors for Slow Living


Kinfolk Magazine - 2015
    In this much-anticipated follow-up, Kinfolk founder Nathan Williams showcases how embracing that same ethos—of slowing down, simplifying your life, and cultivating community—allows you to create a more considered, beautiful, and intimate living space.  The Kinfolk Home takes readers inside 35 homes around the world, from the United States, Scandinavia, Japan, and beyond. Some have constructed modern urban homes from blueprints, while others nurture their home’s long history. What all of these spaces have in common is that they’ve been put together carefully, slowly, and with great intention. Featuring inviting photographs and insightful profiles, interviews, and essays, each home tour is guaranteed to inspire.