This article is part of our latest Design special report, about creative people finding fresh ways to interpret ideas from the past. What is the ideal sofa height? I’m pretty tall, but my partner is about six inches shorter than me. I was in Milan a couple of weeks ago and went around to a…
This article is part of our latest Design special report, about creative people finding fresh ways to interpret ideas from the past. Vicki Bodwell is an internet retail executive who moved to New York City from Texas in the late 1980s. Over breakfast recently, she told me in great detail about the very authentic bagel…
This article is part of our latest Design special report, about creative people finding fresh ways to interpret ideas from the past. When Joyce Poulson was awakened by her fire alarm in the early morning of Nov. 12, 2018, she didn’t see any flames or smell smoke. She went upstairs in her butterfly-roof house in…
This article is part of our latest Design special report, about creative people finding fresh ways to interpret ideas from the past. Excavating deeply into design history, and the ways the past is continuously reinterpreted, can suggest paths to fresh ideas. These five new books reveal how much monastery desks, rosebushes tangled in ancient orchards…
This article is part of our latest Design special report, about creative people finding fresh ways to interpret ideas from the past. The married founders of the architecture and design firm Roman and Williams, Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, are known for their dramatic room schemes that often use saturated colors and layers of objects…
Unexpected color choices are gaining traction, such as black window trim: “I can remember when that was considered so weird,” Ms. Sloan said. Shabby chic surface treatments, with simulated patina and distress marks, are appearing on woodwork newly subsumed by pastel pigments, and blues and oranges in blazing sheens are being striped on wood side…
Before last year, Whitney McGuire hadn’t seriously considered stashing an emergency survival kit in her home. But as 2020’s record-breaking fire season descended on the West Coast, the attorney, sustainability strategist and mother, who lives in Brooklyn, found herself considering what she might need to prepare if climate change-related disaster were to strike closer to…
There are a number of different ways to quantify belief among Americans in so-called paranormal phenomena. One way is to ask a selection of people representative of the population if they believe in ghosts. In a 2019 IPSOS poll, 46 percent of respondents said they did. Another is to ask what they fear. This year,…
Courtesy Winter weather makes getting dressed hard. It becomes a mind game in balancing practicality with style, and at least for me, the former tends to win. But the easy loophole for looking on-trend and staying warm is updating your accessories. They instantly add to your look without sacrificing warmth or comfort, with the added…
Welcome. Outside my Brooklyn building, a life-size witch dangles an alarmingly lifelike orange tabby by one foot over a bubbling cauldron. Enter the building and a skeleton dressed as a butler stands by the elevator, proffering a bowl of mini Kit Kats. You’ll tiptoe around all manner of rubber rodent and spider en route to…