Traffic-Stopping Window Boxes

WHO NEEDS SIGNAGE when you have overflowing window boxes like these? They literally stop traffic. I pass them almost daily, gracing the front of Della Femina, a restaurant in East Hampton, and more than once I’ve pulled over for a closer look.

There are three of them on the brick storefront. They are massive — each several feet long and at least a foot deep –  and they are stuffed.

Here’s what’s in them, far as I can make out:

• nasturtiums
• New Zealand impatiens
• English ivy
• sweet potato vine
• purple lantana



The keys to maintaining boxes like these: food and water. Dense container plantings need frequent feeding and copious water – at least once a day, twice in very hot weather.

Thus inspired, I stopped at a local nursery to buy some sun-loving annuals for the narrow patch of brightness along the back wall of my house. They look pretty insignificant right now — pathetic, really — but I promise that when they fill out, you’ll see pics.

What Glamour Is

NOBODY DOES IT like Metropolitan Home. I say this not because I’ve been writing for the magazine since 1981, but because — though it’s known mainly for a certain sleek, high-end modernity — it is also capable of forays into the avant garde, the eco-chic, the rustic and the bohemian (sometimes all in one project). ‘Mix it up’ is Met Home‘s motto, and it sure keeps us readers on our toes.

Met Home, edited by the same small group of people almost from the beginning, is always on top of trends, so when Donna Warner, the longtime Editor in Chief, decides it’s time for “drama queen staircases, elegant draperies, sexy chandeliers, Wicked Queen mirrors, and soothing daybeds,” you better believe it.

Below, Jonathan Adler’s Palm Beach home mixes vintage and new, plastics and marble, neutrals and brights

Glamour: Making it Modern is the newest coffee-table book from Met Home’s senior design team, written by Features Director Michael Lassell. More than 200 photos of 125 projects by some of the magazine’s favorite designers (and mine), including Benjamin Noriega-Oritz, Amy Lau, Celerie Kemble, and Jonathan Adler, employ principles that define this thing called glamour as it stands in 2009:

• oversized objects rather than little bitty ones
• luster, polish, shine and sheen, applied with restraint
• antiques and vintage alongside modern
• Asian influence on Western interiors
• the use of multiples (framed images, a pottery collection) to make a whole more than the sum of its parts

Below, designer Shamir Shah transformed a New York City apartment foyer into something uniquely glamorous with a ceiling made of 31 rice-paper lanterns

Some projects are more accessible than others, but all are inspiring. Some of the ideas in the book, like putting a chaise or lounge chair in the bathroom, as one designer suggests, don’t cost a thing.

Below, Nisi Berryman, owner of Miami’s NIBA Home, went all-out glam in her fuchsia-colored bedroom with a Baroque mirror, vintage vanity, and furry pillow on an acrylic chair

To All a Happy 4th

THIS COUNTRY is far from perfect, but considering most of the alternatives, aren’t we lucky to be here!

Victorian Farmhouse on Shelter Island

THEN

MY FIRST THOUGHT, when I met Debre DeMers last winter in a real estate office on Shelter Island, was “What is she doing here? She looks like she belongs in Brooklyn!” Turns out, Debre lived in Park Slope for a couple of decades before buying a Victorian farmhouse in near-shell condition “for the doors” (they’re arched and pointy and fabulous). The house had a new roof and a snazzy exterior paint job, but nothing on the inside except studs and insulation (the previous owner ran out of  oomph and money).

NOW

Aside from a few minor details (she’s from Montana, I’m from Queens), Debre and I have much in common: an interior design background; cats; collections (I’d never heard of Navajo bug pins before). I love the fact that almost all the building supplies and furnishings in Debre’s house came  from eBay, Craigslist, or yard sales, that she has two stacks of old doors on her porch, and that she’s laying a flagstone walk herself.

She’s been working on the house, which is on a small, sloping lot near North Ferry, for about 15 months, and the renovation is is well along. A wraparound screened porch has dramatically increased living space beyond the original 1,200 square feet. There are gorgeous new barn-wood floors, new doors and hardware, two new bathrooms, and most of a kitchen.

I’m impressed that Debre survived her first winter living full-time on Shelter Island, and seemed to like it. “It’s funny how quickly one adapts to life out here,” she wrote in an e-mail. “I’m always happy to return to my house in the holler.”