Synopses & Reviews
Jettison the old rulebooks about home décor and “undecorate” your space. As the founder and creative director of DwellStudio—which is famous for its brightly colored, graphic textile designs for home furnishings—designer Christiane Lemieux challenges tradition in a quintessentially American way, championing a fresh, unconventional approach to creating a beautiful and comfortable home. Lemieux emboldens readers to push aside stuffy, professionally-designed décor, showing them instead how to infuse their own personality into their home.
Undecorate profiles twenty homes from all over the country, revealing their owners’ love of imperfection and penchant for surprise and unusual juxtapositions while inspiring readers to follow their own whimsy and practicalities in their personal spaces. An anglophile creates an English manor in Hollywood, mixing British flea-market finds with midcentury furniture. A car fanatic turns a vintage Airstream trailer into a master bedroom and situates it in the middle of a vast industrial loft in downtown Chicago. A couple transforms a log house in Nashville, Tennessee, by blending their modern and eclectic styles with the home’s rustic charm. Though the designs differ widely, the spaces all express an open-minded attitude. Some homes embrace their contexts, while others transcend them. All are shaped by instinct and imagination and share innovative ideas that readers can use to organically and elegantly create their home to match their lifestyle and tastes.
Lemieux gets to the essence of the homeowners’ distinctive styles, pinpointing the transformative ideas, thoughtful details, and useful solutions that make each home memorable. With more than 200 full-color photographs, Undecorate will both inspire and guide homeowners to a new outlook on home design.
Review
andldquo;Provides a multitude of ideas for how to display your vintage matchboxes and various other collections.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Delightful. . . . Collected: Living with the Things You Love highlights an array of idiosyncraticandmdash;and inspiringandmdash;assortments.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In Collected, expert collectors and decorating experts Fritz Karch and Rebecca Robertson present a tour of peculiar, elegant, and awe-inspiring collections from around the world. The book teaches readers the basic principles of the hunt while exploring the thoughtful and inventive ways people display their various collections, from the accessible and affordable to the aspirational extreme. The featured collections range from dice to cafandeacute; au lait bowls to 19th-century-French sewing tools to sand from world travelsandmdash;illustrating collections as expressions of personal style. From no frills (andldquo;The Modestandrdquo;) to ornate (andldquo;The Exceptionalistandrdquo;), Karch and Robertson examine the selected collections according to personality type. The book showcases 16 different collecting personalities, each with its own chapter, featuring gorgeous photoandshy;graphs, vignettes showing how the objects are displayed, and a collecting lesson.
About the Author
CHRISTIANE LEMIEUX is the founder and creative director of DwellStudio, a fast-growing home décor and children’s furnishings company. Known for her colorful, modern patterns, Lemieux launched a full-scale fabric line in 2010. She is also a featured design partner with Target and a frequent contributor to leading design blogs, such as Apartment Therapy and Design*Sponge. She lives in New York City with her husband, children, and her Labrador, the design studio’s mascot.