Honor Roll

Nina

I’ve read your blog daily for years and – though I rarely comment – I feel compelled to say something about your first link. The dining room window treatments are fabulous and, like you, I appreciate the explosion of color and texture, but the revival of orientalist decor is disturbing and upsetting and his entire design thematic depends on it. Design is never neutral, but this example is particularly alienating. As a person of color (or, really, just as a person), I wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting in a room where there’s a black slave figure holding up a side table. How is the French empire a fantasy except if you ignore/objectify/orientalize the bodies that are exploited for that fantasy (and then plaster them all over the walls of your house)? It’s his private home and of course he can decorate it however he wants, but promoting it on One Kings Lane (and here), I think, is a different matter.