"More than three-quarters of [University of Georgia 46 freshman girls'] rooms were decorated in... a 'LoveShackFancy Southern mishmash.'"

"(The luxury brand LoveShackFancy’s dorm decor includes a $225 shower curtain and a $115 heart-shaped throw pillow.) [The resident assistant] said she hasn’t seen professional interior decorators on the halls, but she watched in awe as parents took three to four hours to set up their daughters’ rooms.... The flouncy decorators, she said, are typically extroverts who plan to be a part of Greek life on campus, and they come to college to befriend similar people. A minimalist decorator, on the other hand, is 'maybe doing a major that is a little bit more analytical, or is into more niche activities.' She added, '... they really won’t interact, even on the floor.'..."

From "The over-the-top world of luxury dorm decorating/Wallpaper, custom headboards and $469 mattress toppers aren’t the norm in college rooms. But they are everywhere on TikTok" (WaPo).

This is how it looks on TikTok:

"It’s a weird, decades-long fixation for a president who wanted a White House ballroom years before he became president..."

"... although he hosted just two state dinners during his first term. But majestic spaces are where the political and social elite — kings, aristocrats, tycoons — have traditionally asserted and cemented their power. 'It was a place where these structures of society were reiterated and brought into being, ... a kind of social, political, dynastic space of performance,' said Robert Wellington, author of the forthcoming book 'Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury from Louis XIV to Donald Trump.' The modern ballroom — the one most of the American bourgeoisie have come into contact with — is a staid, multimodal, commercial space: a cavernous hotel room with collapsible wall panels in aggressively beige tones, a perfectly adequate place for hosting weddings, charity dinners and professional conferences. Ask anyone to describe a 'ballroom,' though, and most will conjure something from HBO’s 'The Gilded Age'...."

From "Trump loves a swanky ballroom. So did the Gilded Age elite. The president’s vision for a palatial addition to 'the People’s House' showcases the historical ties between architecture and power" (WaPo).

That's a free-access link, because there's much more about the history of ballrooms, with plenty of interesting photographs, interspersed with the anti-Trumpism you've got to expect.

But it could be way more anti-Trump than it is. I know when I hear the theme "architecture and power," I think of the Nazis, but there's no mention of Nazi architecture in this article. Why not? The easiest answer is that Trump's aesthetic is not like the Nazis'. It's gold leaf and chandeliers. French. The Nazis wanted "an impression of simplicity, uniformity, monumentality, solidity and eternity." Ironically, it's the absence of that sort of thing in Trump's ballroom that seems to be bothering The Washington Post. 

There's no better interior decoration than Amy Sedaris interior decoration.

"If I see anything I like, I'm allowed to take it...."

🚨 LMAO! President Trump confiscated a good-looking clock from Marco Rubio and the whole room is cracking up

Marco wanted to keep it 🤣

"If I see anything I like, I'm allowed to take it. I'm in Marco's office, I see this gorgeous clock...I said 'Marco...' he didn't know about… pic.twitter.com/INmNEZ2P3O

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 8, 2025

Hilarious. Especially bragging about it. And humiliating little Marco... who can't say a word and must duly chuckle.

And, by the way, it's an incredible clock.

"Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani."

The headline for a Michelle Goldberg column. Excerpt:

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others....

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism.... Ultimately.... New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel.... 

The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition.... But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring....

Earthy.  

I was moved to unearth every "earthy" in the 21-year archive of this blog. They're all quotes of other people. I've never once used the word (except for one instance, now corrected, where I clearly meant to type "earthly" ("I didn't think you would be terribly sad to see that Robert Blake has left the earthy scene")).

"She sold antiques and handmade goods meant to conjure a slow, bucolic life: taper candles, spongeware vases, frill pillows mismatched to perfection."

"To Ms. Gelman, the store felt safe, like a 'cozy sort of womb,' she said. The entrepreneur whose brainchild had once attracted a $365 million valuation — who had named a conference room in San Francisco after Christine Blasey Ford and a phone booth in Washington after Shirley Chisholm — was now content collecting woven Longaberger baskets and dreaming up fictional English villagers to inspire the shop...."

I'm reading "First, a Feminist Utopia. Now, a Dollhouse in the Country./Audrey Gelman, the creator of the Wing, is taking another stab at shaping millennial tastes, this time with a pastoral inn — and more hotels on the way" (NYT).

The "Feminist Utopia" was the store that "felt safe, like a 'cozy sort of womb.'" Who knows what's feminist about dreamy nostalgia about English villages? 

The "Dollhouse" is an inn that the NYT describes as "a hallucinatory boardinghouse furnished by a flea market picker and haunted by Ichabod Crane" with rooms that are "almost entirely shoppable: scalloped rattan coffee tables from England ($2,250); mattresses from Massachusetts (starting at $1,349); hand-painted dinner plates ($59) from Italy; a thrifted pig-shaped cutting board ($55)."

"Did I lie? Yup. Did I also write a book that tore people to shreds? Yeah."

Said James Frey, quoted in "Oprah Shamed Him. He’s Back Anyway. Twenty years after 'A Million Little Pieces' became a national scandal, James Frey is ready for a new audience" (NYT)(free-access link).

As Frey sees it, the public has gotten increasingly comfortable with falsehoods, without getting fully comfortable with him. He finds it all a bit absurd. “I just sit in my castle and giggle,” he said.

I'm using my 3rd free link of the month of June on this because I am a long-time admirer of photographs of the interiors of writers' homes. As I wrote 12 years ago: "I love this book, 'Writer's Desk,' with excellent photographs by Jill Krementz (who was married to Kurt Vonnegut) and an introductory essay by John Updike."

I see Frey has an "extra-large mohair Eames chair, which he had custom-made so that he could sit in lotus pose." I identify. I've been buying chairs that accommodate the lotus position since I first bought furniture, which would have been in the 1970s. I wish I still had the chair I bought at Conran's that got me through law school. I'm one of those people who feel more comfortable with my legs folded up. 

Speaking of things written on this blog long ago, I've been around long enough, doing this low-level writerly thing that I do, to have covered the "Million Little Pieces" foofaraw when Oprah was agonizing:

"Lately the American president has been spending quite a bit of time redecorating the Oval Office. The results can only be called a gilded rococo hellscape."

I'm reading "All Hail Our Rococo President!" —  "an installment of Visual Studies, a series that explores how images move through and shape culture" — by Emily Keegin, in The New York Times. That's a free-access link.

There is a parade of golden objects that march across the mantel, relegating the traditional Swedish ivy to a greenhouse. Gilded Rococo wall appliqués, nearly identical to the ones at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, are stuck to the fireplace and office walls with the same level of aesthetic consideration a child gives her doll’s face before covering it in nail polish....

Lots of photos, analysis, and historical background, so go to the free link. I'll just quote one more thing:

Right before the 2016 election, Fran Lebowitz called Mr. Trump “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” On the campaign trail, he didn’t look or sound like the rest of the new American billionaires. He wasn’t polished or smooth. His appearance was shoddy, strange, lacking all polish. And all that gold in his house? Well, yes, it looked fake. It was Rococo. He was a normal guy self-consciously performing wealth, something Americans had been doing for the previous 20 years. Not to mention the past 240....

Would America be less of a hellscape if it were polished and smooth? 

Odd that we got that metaphor out of nowhere — the little girl covering her doll's face in nail polish — and then the word "polish" became the essence of the way educated, intelligent people "perform wealth": "He wasn’t polished or smooth." And then the author doubled down about polish: "His appearance was shoddy, strange, lacking all polish."

"In what is now the guest bedroom, original lath and plaster smoothed over a rough brick insulation called nogging, had decayed in sections..."

"... and was coated in five layers of paint. Gentle application of a scraper revealed a floral lattice wallpaper, which he left as is, creating a distressed cottage-core atmosphere."

From "A 'Romantic Idealist' Renovates a Derelict House on an Artist’s Budget/A street artist had to depend on patrons to help him buy a 19th century house and had to depend on himself to restore it" (NYT)(free-access link, because it's a great story with great photos).

"This house is healing medicine to me,' he said of the 1897 three-story vernacular just steps from the Hudson River. 'It is my deliverance from the darkest of nights and it’s my phoenix rising.'"

(Gift link working now.)

"A bothy is a basic shelter, usually left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge."

"It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are found in remote mountainous areas of Scotland, Northern England, Ulster and Wales. They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands, but related buildings can be found around the world...."

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Bothy," after encountering this word, which I don't remember ever seeing before, in the London Times article "Have William and Kate fallen for ‘west coast bothy frenzy’?It’s never been more fashionable to hole up in the Scottish isles like the Waleses, says Victoria Brzezinski."

Ben Pentreath, head of the architectural and interior design studio of the same name, is widely reported to have assisted the Prince and Princess of Wales... has had a connection with the Scottish west coast since he was a teen.... In 2018 Pentreath and his gardener husband, Charlie McCormick, bought a teeny pair of buildings (a Victorian two-roomed cottage and a much earlier stone bothy) on a sea pink-covered estuary in the far west coast of Scotland. “It really does feel a long way away,” Pentreath says. “Bothies really can’t be more than one or two rooms. And I think we all find romance in living in small places — for a while!”

"Benjamin Franklin pointedly wore clothes of homespun cloth to the Court of St. James's, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes wore slippers when receiving presidential visitors."

"Nowadays, however, Americans enjoy leavening republican simplicity with touchingly absurd attempts at grandeur: There are, surely, communities where Kiwanis Club lunches are held in Holiday Inns’ Versailles Rooms, cheek-by-jowl with hardware stores and grain silos."

Writes George Will, in "Trump’s gaudy-awful Oval Office is all too American/The redecorated Oval Office reflects an American taste for wretched excess" (WaPo)(free-access link, because I've hit the use-it-or-lose it point for April).

Eric Lee's photograph of Gretchen Whitmer in the Oval Office is a sublime work of art.

 

From the golden eagle under the table in the lower left to George Washington's camel-toe pants to the 3 shades of blue in the too-tight clothing of the 3 human figures to the insane line-up of gold objects on the mantle to the now-iconic desperate gesture of hiding behind binders, the photograph is perfect.

Link to NYT page: here.

You're either there or you're not. You can't concoct a way to not be there when you are there. It's like the way a baby might think in the early stages of learning the game of peek-a-boo. It's reminiscent of thousands of photos of perps — walked in front of the press — trying to hide behind their collar.

It made me think of Magritte....

Trump has his framed mug-shot on the wall next to the door to the Oval Office.

Everyone who walks into the Oval office has to see Trump’s epic mugshot.

It’s a reminder of what they did to him and why he won. pic.twitter.com/22qJKDSgqC

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 14, 2025

"Finding a studio that made her 'feel comfortable enough to be creative' took time, she said, and eventually, she found Pot, a studio in Los Angeles that seeks to empower people of color in ceramics."

"'In that studio, I met a lot of people that help me feel safe and feel able to create whatever I want without thinking: Am I going to sell this or is this going to be something that people are going to want in their stores?' said Ms. Muñoz, who now lives in El Paso and has a studio in Guadalajara, Mexico."

From "That Art Piece on Your Coffee Table? It’ll Get You High. Cannabis paraphernalia is joining the world of home décor. Here are some of the most interesting new designs and designers" (NYT)(free-access link).

I'm expending one of my 10 gift links on this one because I want you to see some of the godawful pottery the NYT is promoting for artists and empowerers of people of color. I found this article at the top of the NYT home page, right next to "Trump Favors Blunt Force in Dealing With Foreign Allies and Enemies Alike." No pun intended, I'm sure.

I'm old enough to remember the kind of gigantic atrocious ashtray that was regarded as an "art piece on your coffee table," back in the heyday of tobacco smoking. 

Smoking paraphernalia "joined the world of home decor" a long time ago.  

By the way, did you ever look and look and finally find a place where people helped you feel safe and feel able to create whatever you want without thinking and then you relocated to Mexico?

Now, get out there and be creative. Creative for the people. Of color. Perhaps orange. Or avocado....

Designing the nursery for the baby boy.

A TikTok video, so I'll put it after the jump.

"When Exit Here organized the funeral last year of Poppy Chancellor... who died at 36, guests shared photos of the 'leaving party,' as the service was called, on social media."

"Inside the West London crematory were big, beautiful banners emblazoned with slogans like 'Embrace joy today' and 'I want to see you dance again.' In one video, guests were doing the limbo to the silky vocals and pulse of Beyoncé’s hit song 'Heated.'"

From "They’re Putting Some Fun in Funerals/Modern, even hip, mortuaries around the world are hoping to answer one question: How do we commemorate death in 2024?" (NYT).

Is this hip? Big, beautiful banners with slogans like "Embrace joy today"? Seems too close to the "Live/Laugh/Love" approach to home decor — the antithesis of hipness, no?

But I'm not the arbiter of hipness, so I'll just say....

Inside the West London crematory... Beyoncé’s hit song "Heated"....

Crematory... Heated.... intentional?

"For more than a month now, people across social media have been bragging about the scuffed, worn-out shoes..."

"... they’ve been wearing since middle school and how they use their makeup all the way till the very last drop. They’re proud that they’re using decades’ old pans, inherited from their parents. Or how they don’t buy food storage containers; they just use old mason jars. This all sounds like Depression-era behavior, but it’s not. It’s a trend that has been exploding throughout the summer, under the hashtag 'underconsumption core.'.... As I’ve written in the past, companies tend to be very sensitive to changes in consumer behavior because their financial success depends on responding to trends. The 'underconsumption core' trend has had a relatively long life, for an internet trend. It’s continued to bubble up for months now. Brands, take note...."

From "Why TikTok’s ‘Underconsumption Core’ trend won’t die/Brands, are you listening? Millennials and Gen Z are sick of poorly made products designed to fall apart. It’s time to change your business model" (Fast Company).

I noticed the "underconsumption" hashtag on TikTok today and saw it as a rejection of following trends, but, to Fast Company, it is itself a trend. Theoretically, "brands" can cater to it, with better quality items that won't be replaced and can be more expensive. That seems out of line with the heart of the "core," which is to love/accept second-hand, second-rate stuff that you already have.

I liked this TikTok from a young woman who bought a house and everything in it. The previous resident had died, and it was up to her to discover what was there that she could use and what to throw out or re-home. Her response to the scuffed up wood floors is quite charming.

Some of the videos show young people discovering things I figured out for myself long ago, on my own and inspired by various things, notably hippiedom and "The Tightwad Gazette."

"[Chef Thomas Keller] inspired the chef Rob Rubba to display a plaque — 'always be knolling' — near the pass at his award-winning restaurant, Oyster Oyster..."

"... in Washington, D.C. The phrase, popular in the world of art and design, refers to arranging objects so they are parallel or at 90-degree angles. At Oyster Oyster, it’s meant to encourage chefs to organize their work spaces, and, by extension, their minds, 'like an opening yoga sequence or tuning a guitar,' Mr. Rubba said. 'As people in hospitality, we look to things to keep us inspired, to motivate us,' said William Bradley, the chef and director of the Michelin-starred San Diego restaurant Addison. Especially for a restaurant staff that is 'performing at the highest level.' After Addison earned its second star in 2021, Mr. Bradley huddled with his staff and agreed to install an engraved plaque in the kitchen with the Navy SEAL call and response, 'All in, all the time.'"

From "Live, Laugh, Lowboy: Fine Dining’s Love Affair With Inspirational Quotes/Sayings from Navy SEALs, furniture designers and Steve Martin are just a few examples of how restaurants use signs to motivate their staffs" (NYT).

It's funny to see these word wall signs presented as cool when hung by men in restaurant kitchens. For years, people have been mocking women who put up these signs in their homes. I can see from the article — not from my own TV habits — that the coolness has something to do with the show "The Bear" (the restaurant in that show has a sign that says "Every Second Counts").

Reminds me of: "I should get one of those signs that says 'One of these days I'm gonna get organizized...."/"... like those little signs they have in offices that say 'Thimk'":

About that new (to me) word "knolling": I found this, from last year, in Dwell: "The Life-Changing Magic of 'Knolling'/Before purging your belongings to tidy up à la Marie Kondo, consider this organizational tactic championed by two artists with ties to the American furniture manufacturing company."

"I know that Tom Sachs is where it proliferated," says Amy Auscherman, director of archives and brand heritage at MillerKnoll..... "It’s a point of pride to be able to say the company name is also a verb." While the blue-chip artist laid out the rules for knolling and championed the concept into the creative world, sculptor Andrew Kromelow originally invented it. Both men worked in Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica studio during the late 1980s; Kromelow was in charge of keeping the workshop tidy as a janitor and would feverishly organize so that workers could quickly and clearly see all the tools at once. At the time, the Gehry studio was constructing a bent-plywood chair for Knoll. The name stuck.

From the internal link:

HOW TO KNOLL

1. Scan your environment for materials, tools, books, music, etc. which are not in use.
2. Put away everything not in use. If you aren't sure, leave it out.
3. Group all 'like' objects.
4. Align or square all objects to either the surface they rest on, or the studio itself....

Sachs’ studio mantra was instituted - ABK - ‘Always Be Knolling', a riff on the salesmen’s ‘ABC - Always Be Closing’ recited by Alex Baldwin in the screen adaptation of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. It is an exquisite subversion of the capitalist creed into a sense of creativity in the display of the tools of craft. It is a riposte to the real estate snake-oil sales culture in the form of a celebration of making and order.  

"It was technically illegal, of course, but everyone was benefiting.... By the end of the ’70s, however, loft living had become quite fashionable..."

"... and some landlords were looking to cash in, pushing out the artists for a wealthier clientele. The artists pushed back, and in 1982 state lawmakers enacted Article 7-C of the New York Multiple Dwelling Law, which is commonly known as the 1982 Loft Law. This legislation gave protection and rent stabilization to people who had been living in these spaces. It also required landlords to bring the units up to residential code. When the law was enacted... there were tens of thousands of artists living in lofts across the city. Now just a few hundred remain...."

From "A look inside New York’s historic artist lofts, the last of their kind" (CNN). Nice pictures of present-day artists lofts.

"There was some flooring that was laid down. A mini desk. Her clothing. A Keurig coffee maker. A printer and a computer – things you’d have in your home."

Said a police spokesman, quoted in "Michigan woman found living inside rooftop store sign with desk and coffee maker/The woman told police she had been living inside the grocery store sign for roughly a year, and had been able to get electricity" (The Guardian).

"I honestly don’t know how she was getting up there. She didn’t indicate, either."

This is an interesting and ingenious person. Who is she and what is she doing now? They're not telling.