“Design is coming to grips with one’s real lifestyle, one’s real place in the world. Rooms should not be put together for show but to nourish one’s wellbeing.”

—Albert Hadley

We don’t think twice about clearing out a closet that no longer fits our identity, nor do we hesitate to throw out an expired condiment, or a skincare serum that no longer serves us. We do it without ceremony.

Yet, when we purchase a sofa or coffee table, it often becomes a permanent fixture—regardless of how much our life changes around it, or how poorly it actually serves the people using it every day.

Rooms don’t have to work that way. Once you start thinking of a room the way you think of an outfit, the paralysis disappears.

This isn’t entirely new; William Morris said it over a century ago:

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Both Staples and Layers must meet that standard. The distinction isn't utility versus beauty; it’s scale and structural support versus story and personal expression.

Buy Well. Buy Slowly.

Interior designer Rita Konig lives by a simple rule: buy well, buy slowly. That mindset is the heartbeat of this framework. Speaking on The Blackberry Podcast about the insecurity people feel around personal style, Konig noted that confidence is often the missing ingredient in decorating—adding that:

"bad taste can actually be quite fun."

There’s a pervasive modern habit of shopping reactively—treating furniture much like fast fashion (and increasingly, ‘luxury’ fashion) treats a trend: quick to buy, easy to replace, and discarded after a few seasons. The instinct I have been endlessly drawn to is the opposite: buy less, buy better, gather intentionally over time, and let pieces earn their place across decades rather than quarterly cycles.

That way, they truly become your own.

A well-made chair isn’t a fleeting expense; it’s a decision you ideally only make once—and one someone else will be glad to inherit. I always wince when a friend spends thousands on a designer bag without batting an eye, but balks at the price of a dining table they will gather around three times a day.

I’ve had variations of this conversation with my husband about investing in substantial pieces that hold up over time—translating it, for instance, into his language: “Imagine opening your favorite bottle of “Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Quintarelli, only to drink it out of a small plastic cup!”

This framework isn’t sorting for budget or rigid taste. It’s sorting for longevity, support, and ease. That, to me, is real luxury. It’s building a home that feels precisely like a legacy, rather than a fleeting post-it note.

Part I: The Staples

Think of these as your anchors: your best-fitted denim, a pristine white button-down, a pair of comfortable leather loafers, a black tailored suit. In a room, these are your sofa, rug, bed, your dining or coffee table. Chosen for scale, proportion, and human habit, they hold the architecture of the room together. Once placed, they rarely move.

Because Staples carry high price tags and long commitments, people often mistake foundational for safe. We default to neutral sofas, generic rugs, or invisible tables out of fear of getting it wrong.

But a Staple never has to be neutral to be foundational—it just has to be chosen for your actual life, not an audience. Buying furniture to perform for others is a short-lived high that always leaves a room feeling hollow. A true Staple should be grounded in the life you actually live, as well as the one you aspire to step into.

Some of the most memorable rooms in design history are anchored by a cabbage-pink sofa, a sculptural, odd-shaped coffee table, or mismatched chairs around a formal dining table. Boldness was never the enemy of a solid foundation; timidity born out of indecision is. The true test of a Staple isn’t whether it’s neutral or safe, but whether its proportion, comfort, and character will still hold up for you ten plus years down the road.

Part II: The Layers

If Staples are the architecture, Layers are the atmosphere. They are the vintage silk scarf, fine jewelry, the well-worn leather belt. In a room, they are the lamps, side tables, art, ceramics, and treasures carried home in a suitcase—pieces chosen out of a deep urge to own rather than pure functional necessity.

While Staples require careful budget considerations, Layers are where your personal style leaves a paper trail. They bring personality down to the detail, speaking a language your Staples were never meant to be fluent in.

As a stylist, I know how easy it may appear to simulate this for a photo shoot: an armful of prop objects with no history, styled on a coffee table to look inherited. But in a real home, a genuine Layer carries energy—the character of a life actually lived, or the distinct point of view of a contemporary artist that you or someone in your household deeply resonates with. You might not subjectively love every Layer in someone’s home, but you can’t debate that it has an opinion.

Staples fulfill your baseline physical needs. Layers are where your antagonist word gets to play—bringing in the friction, warmth, and subtle contrast that keep a space from feeling like a showroom.

“The best rooms are always those that have something to say about the people who live in them.”

—David Hicks

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A Case Study in Layering: Paris, 2019

For me, Staples are where I still have to challenge myself to be bolder and more honest. My Layers, however, feel more like a deeply personal timeline—an evolution as I get to know myself better.

In 2019, while traveling in Europe, my sister and her now-husband got engaged. I hopped on a last-minute flight to celebrate with them in Paris for 24 hours.

A few hours before they arrived, I hit the ground running, first stop was Paul Bert Serpette market, sourcing small, unattributed treasures I still cherish. Later that afternoon, I stopped by OFR Paris. In the back gallery space of the bookstore, they were showing works on paper by Alex Foxton, an artist I had followed closely whilst he was still exploring his practice and designing under Kim Jones at Dior Homme.

I fell in love with the collection of works and purchased a floral work on paper for $1,200, rolling it carefully into my carry-on luggage. I desperately wanted a second piece of Foxton’s to pair with it, but couldn't justify another impulse spend after a whirlwind day—which led right into a dazzling evening at Hôtel Costes celebrating my sister. I can still vividly picture the hotel’s Pierre Frey Les Colonnes embroidered walls and that deep Yves Klein blue sky at 11 p.m as we sat laughing over champagne.

Swiftly after, Foxton was represented by Galerie Derouillon in Paris and the chance to secure another work was slim. In 2023, while styling the home of Various Small Fires founder Esther Kim Varet in Los Angeles for W Magazine who represented the artist in the US and had a small work in her home, I shared my story and Esther mentioned Foxton’s large-scale works were selling for upwards of $40,000.

I don’t share that to talk about market value…I am in the practice of collecting for personal resonance, not art dealing or market speculation. I share it because that $1,200 piece was bought purely out of gut reaction and admiration for a strong point of view. Every time I look at it, I’m reminded to trust my instincts.

The Luxury of Function

The older I get, the more I realize true luxury has very little to do with prestige or price. Real luxury is function and intuitive ease—design that serves your daily rituals and evokes joy.

• It’s an exceptional mattress that supports your daily energy—because a few nights of poor sleep turn us all into the worst versions of ourselves.

  

• It’s a kitchen that’s as intuitive to cook in as it is beautiful to look at—where function clears the way for pure enjoyment.

• It’s the premium espresso machine on the counter that pays for itself a hundred times over in morning (and often afternoon) satisfaction, and consistency.

• It’s a dedicated desk with a pen within reach and a door that closes…a sanctuary for quiet focus that matters infinitely more as a mother today, giving me room to be fully present when I step away.

• It’s a nightstand thoughtfully scaled for real life: wide enough for a book, a lamp, a glass of water, and my Loftie clock, with room to spare so nothing teeters on the edge. (I don’t have this exact setup in place yet, but it’s very high on my wishlist!)

• It’s a side table placed exactly where your hand drops when curled up on the sofa reaching for a glass of wine with a friend.

These aren’t frivolous decorating choices; they are direct extensions of how you live. Staples hold the space steady so that your Layers can evolve as your life shifts.

As decorator Billy Baldwin noted with one of his iconic observations:

“Stick to the things you really love. An honest room is always up to date.”

The goal isn’t to accumulate more of either category. It is to buy less, choose slowly, and select pieces with enough intention that they serve you daily…and perhaps someone else after you.

The 3-Step Room Audit

1. Identify the Anchors: Look at your room's Staples (sofa, dining table, bed, rug). Are they providing true physical support, proportion, and joy—or are they just lackluster placeholders taking up space?

2. Find the Friction: Look at your Layers. Do these objects carry a story, a memory, or an opinion you actually care about, or were they bought quickly just to fill an empty surface?

3. Map Your Rituals: Walk through your actual daily routines in your space. Where is the physical friction? (e.g., poor task lighting, nowhere to put down a mug, cooking utensils without a designated home). Let function dictate your next edit. When a room truly works, it stops demanding your attention and simply becomes the backdrop for living.

   

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We took a road trip up to Los Olivos, checking into Mattei’s Tavern, dining at Bell’s and stopping by Bettina at Montecito Country Mart for arguably the best pizza in California, and visiting Juniper Clay, where Kristina showed us around her pottery studio and I walked away with a sublime bowl in chocolate-glazed and matte-black ceramic, anchored by a single hand-painted golden line that captures the gesture of her hand. We also popped into Godmothers bookstore and a few antique shops.

Back in Los Angeles, we leaned into our Sunday tradition: gathering produce, flowers and bagels at the Melrose Farmers Market, paired with plenty of home-cooked meals—including my dad’s delectable lemon and sugar crepes and my mum’s french toast always served with good humor. These rituals have been kept alive since I was a child.

Mum and I went to see Olivia Dean live—how refreshing to see a young woman so naturally grounded in sense of self. Dressed mostly in Chanel by Matthieu Blazy, she was a marvel…The last time my mum and I saw a concert together likely would have been Destiny’s Child! We planned our visit to Holbox beforehand for uni, fish tacos, and grilled prawns, rounding out a week of incredible meals at Anajak Thai, E Baldi, and RVR.

There is truly nothing that fills my cup like being with family. When you leave your home country, you don’t fully realize how a sequence of decisions will eventually map out a life on the other side of the world. My home is here in the US—with my husband, my son, and the life we are building—but I deeply cherish those quiet, in-between moments of chatting about everything and nothing over a cup of tea, filled with uncontrollable laughs and spontaneous swims in the garden. Anyone living away from home knows that familiar, bittersweet ache, so I simply soaked up every second with them.

And in other ponderings…

In the previous essay, we broke down the foundational philosophy behind my personal three-word compass: Refined, Romantic, and Archival.

To see how this design vocabulary translates into physical space, I have assembled a micro-collection of pieces that satisfy this specific compass. Each item provides a component of clean, disciplined forms with tactile warmth and a sense of historical endurance.

The Disciplined Desk

Elevating the workspace through tactile utility and biomorphic forms.

• Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co. — Ballpoint pen in Sterling Silver or Lacquered Rouge: Peretti was the absolute master of scaling organic, biomorphic forms into functional, everyday art. This sterling silver purse pen by Tiffany is equally timeless. For a durable and more democratic daily staple, I am never without the classic Uniball Rollerball Pen.

• Post-It — Flags + Highlighters : I will be honest in revealing the standard color offerings do bother me, but they are so damn practical…And if they a favorite of Oprah’s, I guess I must put my snobbery aside.

• Stellar Factory — Stainless-Steel Book Darts: For a more refined option, I have recently discovered these and am using them for thoughtful note-taking in my art and photography books.

• Retractable Tape Measure: I too frequently find myself needing a tape measure, I keep one in my handbag at all times (my son seems to enjoy them too). The pastel tones feel joyful and unserious. For a more luxurious option vintage sterling silver tape measures from Tiffany & Co. are available on the resale market, but these pastel options do the job well and aren’t a heartbreak if lost or passed on.

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The Culinary Artifact

From historical whimsy to regional pottery, elevating the small rituals of gathering.

• Ted Meuhling — Tea strainer and Porcelain Coral Spoon: An invitation to make the minor, daily moments feel indulgent and enduring. Muehling translates nature’s delicate geometries into functional poetry for the tabletop.

• Andrea Kashaniapour — Ceramic Wine Stoppers (Exclusively at Nickey Kehoe): Handcrafted ceramic stoppers that function as miniature, conversational sculptures for the tabletop. Having cherished a Salvador Dalí version of my own for years, I currently have my eye on the Marie Antoinette and David Bowie iterations.

• Z.d.G. by Zoë de Givenchy — Heritage European Decorative Arts: Zoë de Givenchy’s exquisite collection breathes new life into specialized regional European artistry. Working directly with multi-generational family workshops, the collection champions hand-painted Faïence earthenware pottery from Moustiers-Sainte-Marie and exquisitely woven, crisp French linens. For the ultimate expression of rustic refinement, look to the Brique À Vin terracotta sleeve (a tribute to Hubert de Givenchy) paired alongside a matching, hand-woven Panier à Champagne basket.

• Isigny Ste Mère Butter (with Guérande Sea Salt Crystals): A non-negotiable condiment in our kitchen—rich, golden, and churned to perfection, with the distinct crunch of sea salt. Once you elevate a staple this simple, standard supermarket butter just won't do. For Los Angeles locals, I stock up on ours at Epicurus Gourmet.

The Printed Page

Building an enduring bibliography of art, form, and philosophy.

• Sheila Metzner — Color & Objects of Desire: A photographer who remains one of my most enduring core creative inspirations. Her vivid, painterly use of color—mastered through the rare, historic Fresson printing process will always be pure visual magic.

• Katy Hessel — How to Live an Artful Life: An absolute cornerstone from the creator of The Great Women Artists. Moving beyond her work deconstructing the traditional art canon, Hessel’s book serves as an intimate daily guide, offering vital reflections from history’s great creators to help unearth daily creative inspiration. I’m just beginning to dip into its pages…consider this an invitation to participate in your daily pages along with me.

• Atelier AM — Houses: While we wait for their highly anticipated new volume, New York, (releasing this September), their monograph Houses remains an absolute masterclass in quiet authority, impeccable proportion, and layered interiors that effortlessly bridge the past and present.

• Axel Vervoordt — Stories and Reflections: The definitive, deeply personal memoir mapping the pivotal moments and global encounters that formed Vervoordt’s guiding philosophy of wabi. An indispensable companion for anyone seeking to understand the true soul and endurance of an object and the obsession of being a collector at heart.

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The Intentional Home

Where architectural precision meets the warmth of slow craftsmanship.

• Studio EBUR — Chimera Ceiling Lamp & Ebur Giza Suspension: Founded in Paris by Dahlia Hojeij Deleuze and Racha Gutierrez, EBUR elegantly balances West African heritage and Mediterranean warmth with the disciplined lines of mid-century European design. I am particularly drawn to the soft, architectural glow of their plaster and silk combinations.

• Studio Ford — Handcrafted Block-Printed Textiles: A California-born textile atelier that celebrates the soulful, slow art of traditional block printing. Deeply informed by vintage fabrics, their pieces are hand-printed in small batches by master craftspeople in Jaipur. Their latest collection, which debuted on marionette puppets at the iconic Bob Baker Marionette Theater, and I had the joy of previewing in person—brings a whimsical, theatrical narrative to quilts and pillows, adding a storied layer to any room.

• Perfumer H — Orange Blossom Candle: An essential study in sensory design from Lyn Harris’s uncompromising London fragrance house. Orange Blossom fills the air with an immediate, intoxicating presence, housed in a fluid glass vessel hand-blown by artisan Michael Ruh that brings an old-world visual allure to the room.

The Daily Basin

Elevating the utilitarian markers of the day through heavy textures and historic scents.

• Santa Maria Novella — Tabacco Toscana Liquid Hand Soap: A historic Florentine staple that brings a deep, smoky, yet entirely refined archival atmosphere to the sink side.

• BAINA — Ebon Veil Body Wash: Rooted in bathing as a daily design practice, this deeply nourishing wash uses a meditative blend of sandalwood, vetiver, and frankincense. It offers a clean, elemental counterweight to the historic weight of Santa Maria Novella.

The Cultural Ledger

A global exhibition digest to anchor our visual landscape.

• David Geffen Galleries at LACMA (Los Angeles)—The new permanent collection wing is exceptional. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the concrete and glass structure housing extraordinary paintings, textiles, furniture and pottery was the selected location for Jonathan Anderson’s recent Dior Cruise show.

• Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity (LACMA, Los Angeles): June 14 – October 12, 2026. A landmark exhibition tracing a century of cultural transformation through more than 70 rare ensembles, featuring modern Chinese femininity from late-Qing robes to sleek 1930s qipao presented on custom mannequins styled by Jason Wu.

• Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses (Brooklyn Museum, New York): On view through December 6, 2026. Having its North American debut, this exhibition pairs over 140 of Van Herpen’s haute couture architectural garments with historic contemporary art, design, and scientific artifacts.

• Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte (The Jewish Museum, New York): On view through November 15, 2026. Showcases over 200 works by 30 female artists, highlighting their pivotal role in early 20th-century design. The exhibition, organized with Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts, corrects historical neglect by focusing on key figures such as Vally Wieselthier and Felice Rix-Ueno, while also highlighting the vital role of Jewish female patrons.

Until next time…

Warmly,

Lauren

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ENTICEMENT . Los Angeles

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To author a space that is genuinely your own, you must uncover your personal interior handwriting.

It unfolds in exactly three words.

Bypassing the Catalogue

Before building a framework, think of a space you have deeply loved: the chaotic warmth of a kitchen midway through a dinner party, the amber-hued gravity of a moody hotel lobby, or a quiet, sun-faded corner of your childhood home.

Now, describe it to someone who will never visit—without relying on a single inventory noun. You cannot say, “There is a green sofa and two brass lamps.”

Notice what happens immediately. Without a retail inventory to lean on, your memory is forced to articulate how the space actually felt…how it held you.

"It possesses a rare, unforced elegance—entirely devoid of preciousness yet undeniably refined."

“It is dim in a generous way, casting a flattering, candlelight glow over the space even at noon."

“The atmosphere has a tight, protective intimacy, as if you are entirely sealed off from the rest of the world.”

Images show us the scenery, but words write the script.

This instinctive language—the words that surface the moment the visual crutch is stripped away —is your design intuition trying to speak.

Intuition provides the vocabulary; the compass gives it a grammar.

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The Formula: Structure + Atmosphere + Antagonist

You may be familiar with fashion stylist Allison Bornstein’s Three-Word Method: Practical, Aspirational, Emotional. It's a brilliant framework for a closet, but clothing is interchangeable.

Interiors are structural, architectural, and—ideally—enduring; they play by different rules.

In fashion, you can wear a fully cohesive, head-to-toe look. In a home, if every single piece perfectly matches your “aesthetic”, the space risks becoming a flat, one-note showroom.

Interiors require tension to feel alive.

To map your interior handwriting with deliberate dissonance, your three-word compass needs three distinct pillars—not three variations on a mood, but three entirely different functions.

To see this formula in practice, here is how I map my own interior handwriting:

1. The Structure

• What it does: Governs the permanent layer—the architecture, the clean lines, the physical flow and sculptural form. This word keeps the space grounded in functionality and reality. It is the backbone everything else leans against.

• My word: Refined.

2. The Atmosphere

• What it does: Orchestrates the sensory experience—the textures, the lighting, the palette, and the way the room physically embraces you. This word dictates the emotional temperature of the space and hopefully makes people want to linger.

• My word: Romantic.

3. The Antagonist

• What it does: The disruptor. The black sheep. This word arrives to fracture the perfection of the Structure, and cut through the polite ease of the Atmosphere. It injects history, patina, and deliberate visual friction — the element that makes you look twice.

• My word: Archival.

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Case Study: Modern Meets Collected

To see this formula in action, let's apply this exact blueprint—Refined, Romantic, and Archival—to cultivate an environment defined by un-precious grandeur.

The furniture is substantial—possessing strong, masculine silhouettes with the architectural weight required to anchor a grand space (Refined). The club chairs offer a classic, inviting roll arm, their softer profile balanced by levity when elevated on simple legs (Romantic). These are finished in a textured wool or a heavy stone slub silk (Refined), executed with immaculate, tailored precision.

Beneath it all: a deeply faded, storied Aubusson rug, its colors worn to something softer and more beautiful than they were new (Archival).

Lighting provides the ultimate point of tension. Low-set table and floor lamps cast a warm, amber intimacy, throwing soft, cinematic shadows over matte limewash walls (Romantic). This ambient glow is deliberately countered by the sleek logic of a contemporary task lamp or architectural sconce (Refined)—a productive argument between eras. At the windows, sheer drapery diffuses the daylight without blocking it (Romantic).

On the walls, contemporary art provides a refreshing contrast (Refined), with select pieces cheekily housed in heavy gilt frames in the old-master tradition (Archival)—a deliberate nod to history and craftsmanship. This is the sophisticated approach to interior handwriting that I personally return to again and again.

The atmosphere is highly intentional, with a dedicated home for everything (Refined), yet soulfully layered with an eclectic mix of objects gathered slowly over time—pieces that trace personal history and the early, evolving chapters of our life as a family (Archival).

Ultimately, the goal is a home that feels fundamentally collected and enduring: a space that lived other lives before us, and will gracefully live others long after.

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The Anti-Precious Standard

I believe true luxury isn’t about pristine insulation from the world; it’s about material honesty—the critical distinction between things that wear out and things that wear in.

Authentic craftsmanship acts as a shock absorber for a life lived well. It is a form of structural generosity, found in tactile, grounding materials that refuse to apologize for being used. By relying on surfaces built with the integrity to absorb the friction, heavy steps, and spontaneous gatherings of daily existence, a well-crafted space translates human interaction into character rather than damage.

When a room is shaped by human hands and visceral textures, it doesn’t ask you to perform for it. It has already agreed to host, record, and celebrate the beautiful messiness of reality. The moment the objects around you no longer require protection, the architectural anxiety evaporates. The room stops being a fragile display case and finally becomes a home—your home.

In the end, design in its most profound sense means creating an environment that holds you in a protective embrace—where the soft imperfections of age are treated as the highest form of decoration. The result is a relaxed, soulful elegance; a space layered, weathered, and deeply lived-in, yet assembled with such an unerring eye that the casualness becomes a deliberate art form.

Pressure-Test Your Compass

Before committing to your three words, run them through these structural pressure tests:

• The Synonym Test: If two of your words can trade places in a sentence without shifting the room’s energy, they are redundant. Scrap one and find a counterweight that genuinely pushes back to create tension.

• The Catalog Test: Could a mass-market retailer plausibly use all three of your words in a single marketing email? (“Discover our warm, inviting, timeless collection!”) If so, your design antagonist isn’t doing its job. Sharpen the friction.

• The Stranger Test: If you handed these three words to a stranger, would they execute a specific, dimensional room or a vague lifestyle category? Cozy, Warm, and Natural produces a meaningless blur of beige bouclé. Enclosed, Wool-heavy, and Severe immediately dictates sharp, tangible design choices. Always aim for the latter.

The 11 PM Diagnostic Tool

Here is a filter I use when the midnight glow of a screen threatens to confuse my actual intuition—the antique chair on an auction site or a lamp glimpsed in someone else’s home on a social media feed, carrying the false urgency of a digital impulse.

When you love design, your gut will often scream yes to beautiful things. But late at night, it is easy to mistake a passing novelty for a deep, permanent connection. Before you check out, use your three words not as a rigid restriction, but as a quiet conversation with your handwriting:

“Does this object actually speak to the story I am writing?”

An object can never be judged in isolation; it must be evaluated as a single sentence within the broader paragraph of your home. If my triad is Refined, Romantic, and Archival, and a midnight find reads as Futuristic, Brutalist, or Plastic, my gut might recognize its quirkiness, but my intuition knows it won’t harmonize with my personal narrative.

It doesn’t matter if it’s on sale, or if it looks spectacular in someone else’s space. This query isn’t a trap to limit your freedom to collect; it is a guardrail meant to honor your specific taste. It gives you the clarity and confidence to look at an objectively gorgeous object and say:

“Beautiful—but not for my story.”

Coming Up: Staples vs. Layers

Now that you have your three words, how do you actually execute them? Not every object in a room carries equal architectural weight.

Over the coming weeks, we will break down the execution framework: Staples vs. Layers. We will explore exactly how to distribute your vocabulary across a room to elevate it from a flat, two-dimensional mood board into a soulful, living environment.

But first, look out for the inaugural edition of The Footnotes—an edit of antique finds and items in my daily rotation…un-earthed from the depths of the internet's best archives.

In the comments: Let's begin decoding your handwriting. Even if you are only working with half-formed ideas, drop your proposed triad below. If you are stuck choosing between a few conflicting words, leave a note and we can pressure-test them together.

Warmly,

Lauren

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ENTICEMENT . Los Angeles

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To dissect the magic of an interior, you must first recognize that history, architecture, and context dictate the vocabulary of a space. Over the coming weeks, this series moves from philosophy to practice across four distinct phases:

• Phase 1: The Mindset Shift (How we see)

• Phase 2: Personal Vocabulary (How we define)

• Phase 3: The Framework (How we categorize)

• Phase 4: The Spatial Prune (How we edit)

Starting with philosophy because, quite often, the buying isn't the sole problem. The seeing is.

The Noun Trap

When we see an inspiring space—whether it’s a deeply layered Jacques Grange interior or a restrained, tactile composition seen at The Row—our immediate instinct is to copy the nouns. We hunt down the specific chair, the exact lamp, the precise rug. Then, we drop those objects into our own rooms.

And they fall flat.

Why? Because we failed to translate the adjectives. We missed the scale, the texture, the tension, and the light play. You don’t actually want the chair; you want the atmosphere the chair creates—the unspoken association with a life you would like to inhabit.

The Noun: The Object (The specific chair, lamp, rug, or paint swatch).

The Adjective: The Frequency (The scale, texture, light play, age, and atmospheric mood).

The noun is seductive because it is immediate; it has an “add to bag” button. But a compelling atmosphere cannot be purchased as a quick fix. It is engineered slowly through proportion, repetition, restraint, and an active dialogue between the elements.

A noun can be bought. An adjective must be crafted.

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Room Dissection: Shifting from Passive Scrolling to Active Decoding

A brief note on method: True design mastery is infinitely layered. To make these case studies actionable, I am deliberately distilling the immense talent of these creators into a simplified framework. The goal isn't to reduce their genius, but to translate their core principles into tools we can actually apply.

The Home of Rose Uniacke: The Monastic Serene

• The Nouns: A slipcovered Belgian linen sofa, a large-scale white plaster dome pendant, a raw oak trestle table, pale lime-wash paint, and patinated antiques.

• The Adjectives: Monastic, luminous, unhurried, weightless, grounded, harmonious.

• The Mechanism: Anchoring structural volume with substantial furniture and generous negative space. Uniacke rejects rigid, gallery-like perfection in favor of an "undone" comfort. Rather than filling a room to its edges, she anchors the layout below its horizontal mid-line, leaving the upper pocket of the architecture entirely open to breathe.

The Anatomy of the Space

• Air as a Material: Where most decorators see an empty corner as a problem to solve, Uniacke treats negative space as a luxury. She deliberately under-furnishes. Furthermore, she consistently favors furniture elevated on legs rather than pieces that sit flush to the ground. This introduces an architectural levity, making heavy, grounded objects appear to float.

• Light Absorption over Deflection: Standard modern interiors rely on synthetic paints that bounce light aggressively, creating glare. Uniacke utilizes chalky, mineral-based lime-washes. These deeply matte surfaces absorb and softly diffuse light, allowing the walls to shift tones naturally as the daytime environment changes.

• The "Undone" Element: To strip away the stiffness of a staged showroom, Uniacke intentionally introduces casual imperfections: a heavily weathered antique table, a rumpled linen slipcover, or a slightly off-center light fixture.

“An element of the unfinished or the casual is a reminder that we are human.”

The Actionable Lessons

You do not need a sprawling London townhouse with six-meter ceilings to scale this philosophy down to a standard room. You simply need to execute these three principles:

1. Texture Is the Decoration: When your palette is strictly narrow (whites, creams, raw oak), texture must do the heavy lifting. Create friction by pairing hard, unpolished surfaces directly against hyper-soft ones—like placing a cold, honed-stone table next to heavy linen upholstery.

2. Prioritize the "Hero" Scale: Stop buying small, scattered decorative items (guilty) that accumulate into visual noise. Invest your visual capital into a single, beautifully scaled piece of furniture or lighting that can command the room entirely on its own.

3. Keep Your Staples Honest: Every foundational piece must prioritize physical comfort and daily utility over mere sculptural posture. If you are constantly policing your own living room, the design has failed.

“It’s boring if you have to worry about where to put your glass down. Life is complicated enough without that.”

• The Nouns: A white slipcovered club chair, black-and-white ticking stripe fabrics, an oversized monochrome abstract expressionist painting, floor-to-ceiling recessed bookshelves, an antique iron dictionary stand, and high-gloss ebonized black floors.

• The Adjectives: Graphic, literary, disciplined, high-contrast, un-compromised, classic, tailored.

• The Mechanism: Translating a rigorous personal uniform into a high-contrast architectural canvas. Goodman completely evades the trend cycle by restricting her shell to black and white. While many standard monochrome interiors end up looking cold and sterile, her home feels entirely different—balancing extreme graphic discipline with deep, literary warmth.

The Anatomy of the Space

• The Home as a Personal Uniform: Goodman’s home is a direct spatial extension of her legendary wardrobe—the same disciplined uniform of white jeans, a black turtleneck, and loafers she has worn for decades. The architectural shell mirrors this exact graphic restriction: a fixed canvas of ebonized black floors and crisp white walls that completely evades the trend cycle. Within this hyper-edited environment, traditional color is banned, save for a few highly calculated, deeply sentimental exceptions:

“The only color that I really have is from red tulips. And I have two paintings that my son did when he was in kindergarten that are simply newsprint meticulously covered in red.”

• High-Density Intellect, Tamed by Geometry: Typically, thousands of books create visual clutter, leaning into a chaotic or maximalist sensibility. Goodman achieves a clean, disciplined frequency by flush-recessing her floor-to-ceiling bookshelves directly into the drywall. The books become a flat, vibrant architectural texture rather than a protruding mass of objects, allowing a massive personal library to feel completely integrated and calm.

• Pure Modernism Meets Historic Bones: Rather than filling her 150-year-old townhouse with traditional antiques, Goodman applies what she calls “the Italian approach”, confronting historic period architecture with pure, sharp modernism. Time-worn, ornate 19th-century crown moldings directly frame an unadorned contemporary slip-covered sofa and abstract expressionist art. The history provides the weight; the layout provides the air.

The Actionable Lessons

“My style is very distilled,” Goodman notes. When you establish a rigorous personal framework for a room, you eliminate the need for decorative filler. Execute her look using these three principles:

1. Pick Your Multi-Dimensional Neutral: High-contrast minimalism requires more than just opposing pigments; it requires a variance in texture and sheen. Pair a high-gloss, light-reflective ebonized finish on the floors (an aesthetic I grew up with in my family home, common to the 'Black Japan' timber floor stains of Australian terraces) with a soft, deeply matte white on the walls. The contrast comes from how the surfaces handle light, preventing a monochrome palette from feeling sterile.

2. Inject Color Solely Through Life, Not Decoration: Goodman famously allows only two primary sources of color into her spaces: the spines of her books and fresh flowers. Stop buying colorful decorative "nouns" (pillows, trays, trinkets) to fix a boring room. Let personal artifacts, children’s art, or a simple vase of flowers do the work for you. The color in your room should be generated exclusively by signs of a life actually lived.

3. Commit to the “Abbreviated” Edit: If an object does not serve the overarching architectural line or the daily functionality of the space, prune it ruthlessly. Swap decorative fluff for a direct, utilitarian layout.

“I do operate from a uniform—because it is simple, and it is direct, and it is the easiest thing to do.”

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The Lens of Fabrizio Casiraghi: The Sophisticated Intimate

• The Nouns: A specific shade of high-gloss lacquer paint, an antique Persian rug, a silk pendant light finished with a tassel, lacquered millwork, carved African masks and mid-century Italian furniture.

• The Adjectives: Historic, intellectual, nonchalant, patinated, unexpected contradictions, eclectic, nostalgic, sophisticated.

The Mechanism: Engineering calculated friction within a strict architectural framework. Many people attempt "eclectic" design, but it frequently descends into a chaotic flea market. Casiraghi completely avoids this by anchoring deeply layered, global artifacts inside highly disciplined Milanese layouts.

The Anatomy of the Space

• The Ten Years Illusion: Casiraghi aggressively fights the crisp, clinical look of a newly completed project. He intentionally selects items that blur historical timelines—pairing an 18th-century chair with a Josef Hoffmann lamp and an Uzbek kilim rug. Because the origins are so completely obscured, the space lacks a modern “date stamp” and looks as if it has been organically inherited over generations.

• The Hidden Intellect: While traditional decorators design grand, floor-to-ceiling libraries to conspicuously exhibit a book collection, Casiraghi deliberately does the opposite. He prefers to stack art monographs and literature casually in piles on the floor or tucked completely underneath side tables to prioritize intimacy over ostentation.

“The most beautiful homes evolve naturally, layer by layer, without needing to flaunt anything. In fact, they almost hide their culture and taste. I don’t like it when clients ask me to design a massive library just to display how many books they own. I keep my books under the table, in a pile on the floor… and I don’t care about putting them on a coffee table just to show them off to dinner guests.”

• Calculated Textural Friction: Casiraghi combines his foundational training in structural urban geometry with Italian decorative freedom. He loves to introduce a high-shine curveball into an otherwise quiet room—like painting built-in shelves in a glossy “Portofino Olive” lacquer, or mixing raw wicker and rattan with sleek, contemporary glass. The friction between natural, matte materials and highly reflective surfaces is what injects his rooms with a sharp, youthful energy.

The Actionable Lessons

You do not need an inventory of rare global antiques to scale this philosophy down to a standard room. You simply need to recreate the tension between the lived-in and the refined using these three principles:

1. Master the High-Low Tension: Intentionally mix humble, organic materials like wicker, rattan, or burlap with high-shine lacquer or sleek glass. The natural elements introduce a sense of ease and relief, while the reflective, razor-sharp finishes inject a necessary layer of sophistication.

2. Build a Dialogue Between Eras: Stop trying to match your furniture periods. If you inherit a traditional antique or pick up a piece from a trip abroad, place it directly next to a crisp, contemporary element. The conceptual friction between disparate eras is exactly how you build a room with a soul.

3. Dethrone the Showpieces: Refuse to isolate your most valuable items. Casiraghi masters nonchalance by treating precious antiques and casual, everyday objects with the exact same weight—blurring the lines between high design and daily life to keep a room from looking like an uptight showroom. He routinely subverts museum rules by hanging fine art surprisingly low (sometimes at waist-height right next to an armchair) or intentionally off-center on a wall, instantly taking the preciousness out of the objects.

“When I enter a room, I always check if the space is staged or truly comfortable. A beautiful room is one where you instantly feel like staying for at least three hours. I hate those bean-shaped sofas where you can't stretch out and read on a Sunday.”

Giorgio Armani’s Palazzo by Peter Marino: The Cinematic Atmospheric

The Nouns: A high-gloss black lacquered table, tubular chrome-and-leather chairs, parchment-blocked walls, French-polished ebony trim, goatskin coffee tables, and bordeaux-red dome lamps.

The Adjectives: Cinematic, tailored, atmospheric, disciplined, atmospheric, luminous, sensual, reductive.

The Mechanism: Imposing a rigorous geometric order softened entirely by low-level, ambient light play. When Giorgio Armani commissioned architect Peter Marino to design his private Milan quarters to evoke 1930s Paris—an aesthetic Armani summarized as “modernity without futurism”. Marino proved that a rigid, masculine envelope can feel warm and deeply seductive.

The Anatomy of the Space

• The Architecture of the Grid: Marino imposes a relentless geometric order across the entire shell of the space. You see it in the square, hand-painted grid of the library and the paneled, parchment-blocked walls. Because the skeleton of the room is bound by straight lines and right angles, the brain registers extreme visual discipline and calm.

• Textures as a Substitute for Color: There is virtually no traditional pattern or color in the space. Instead, Marino utilizes highly tactile finishes as the primary ornamentation—wrapping walls in genuine parchment, doors in light-reflective ebony, and low tables in smooth goatskin. The layout relies exclusively on materials handled with absolute modern precision. The luxury is predicted purely on the varying sheens and tactile feel of the materials.

“It’s not about color, pattern, or decoration…it’s a game of textures and finishes.”

• Trapping Light over Bouncing It: Rather than relying on sterile white walls that bounce a flat, clinical glare, Marino wraps the surfaces in milky, translucent materials (vellum, oak, goatskin) that absorb, trap, and diffuse light from within.". Illuminated solely by low-level table lamps and backlit panels, the surfaces puddle the light rather than deflecting it, causing the room to hum with a warm, golden frequency.

The Actionable Lessons

Consider this sophisticated friction in your own space, using three core principles:

1. Texture and Finish Over Decoration: If a room feels flat, do not try to fix it by adding a patterned pillow or a colorful rug. Change the physical finish of a surface instead. Swap a matte painted side table for a high-gloss lacquer piece, or exchange plain drywall for a textured, gridded wall covering.

2. Tame Luxury with Geometry: When working with rich, warm, or highly figured materials (like heavily veined marble, rich burl wood, or tactile sheepskin), keep their profiles entirely linear and square. Strict, modern geometry prevents opulent materials from feeling gaudy or old-fashioned.

3. Anchor with an Ultimate Contrast: To keep soft, tonal materials (like parchment, goatskin, or blonde oak) from looking washed out, frame them with a disciplined, graphic anchor. Trace your perimeters with ebonized baseboards, dark floor finishes, or ultra-slim black metal casements to tell the eye exactly where the architectural lines begin and end.

“The law of luxury is not to add, but to take away. I am convinced simplicity is strength. Simple is never the starting point, but always the point of arrival.”

A space that feels collected, not decorated, is available to anyone willing to acquire pieces slowly. But before you can build that layered reality, you have to establish your foundation.

The Diagnostic: Decode Your Inspiration Image

Before you open another shopping tab, select the single most-saved interior image in your archives and run it through this three-step exercise:

1. Ban the Nouns: You are forbidden from naming a single object. Look past the "marble console," the "linen sofa," or the "brass lamp."

2. Isolate Three Precise Adjectives: Reject lazy and generic descriptors such as "intimate" or "minimal." Be fiercely specific:

• Instead of “comfortable”: Think upholstered, low-slung, deeply textured.

• Instead of "minimal": Think tonally cohesive, under-furnished, rigorously edited.

• Instead of "eclectic": Think collected, patinated, historical friction.

3. Identify the Physical Mechanism: For each adjective, ask yourself: What is physically engineering this atmosphere? Is it the dramatic scale of the furniture relative to the low ceiling? Is it the fact that every single light source sits below eye level? Is it the strict, rhythmic repetition of only two raw materials?

This exercise immediately illuminates past design regrets. The expensive item you bought and eventually resented didn't fail because you lack taste; it failed because it served zero of the adjectives you were actually drawn to. It served someone else's world. Recognizing this is incredibly liberating—it means your home isn't broken, your translation tool was just misaligned.

A Final Caution

Before you fall completely in love with those three new words, remember: they still belong to the room in the image. Decoding someone else’s adjectives is how you train your eye—but adopting them wholesale is simply an upgraded form of copying. It is a subtler trap, but a trap nonetheless.

In our next installment, we turn the lens inward to extract your own personal vocabulary. A framework I call The Spatial Compass—and the single, counterintuitive ingredient that keeps a space from ever looking like a sterile, copy-pasted assembly of obvious reference points.

Consider this a collective experiment. Look at your absolute favorite inspiration image and isolate its essence. What are your three words? Share your adjectives in the comments below, or link to the image itself, and let’s decode the underlying mechanisms together.

Warmly,

Lauren

ENTICEMENT . Los Angeles

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Today, scholar and curator Charlotte “Chip” von Hardenburgh takes us directly inside the buried history, intimate engineering, and radical world of Bauhaus pioneer Fran Hosken.

Then we step onto the showroom floor with DESMAR founder Marissa Jartcky to examine the visual mechanics, avant-garde pedagogy, and distinct business acumen required to bring historic preservation into the contemporary stream of commerce.

Rewriting the Monograph and Creative Autonomy

LDB: You have made a conscious choice to diverge from well-trodden design histories to dive deeper into the lives of overlooked female pioneers like Bonnie Cashin and Emma Amos. What drove that specific urgency for you, and what lessons do you hope readers take away?

CvH: The women I study—Fran Hosken, Dorothy Liebes, Bonnie Cashin, Helen Hughes Dulany, Emma Amos—share a remarkable ability to keep moving forward despite structural barriers. What connects them is not simply talent; it is conviction.

Again and again, I encounter women in history who were denied opportunities, excluded from institutions, or written out of historical narratives. Yet rather than waiting for permission, they created new pathways. They redirected their skills into alternative mediums, built communities, developed independent practices, and continued producing meaningful work. Their lives remind us that creative autonomy often begins with trusting your own instincts. You may not always be recognized immediately, and your path may not resemble the dominant narrative of success. But history shows that some of the most influential contributions emerge from precisely those unconventional routes.

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On the Method of Archival Inquiry

LDB: For readers sitting on family heirlooms or forgotten treasures, what is your best advice for honorably researching and preserving the histories hidden within our own lives?

CvH: A huge part of my day-to-day research involves sifting through correspondence, notes, publications, photographs, and personal records. Address books tend to be my favorite because they reveal networks—who knew whom, where people lived, how ideas and opportunities circulated. They’re incredibly ordinary objects, yet they can unlock entire worlds.

Although it’s tempting to spend hours simply browsing photographs and letters, the most productive archival research begins with a specific question. Approach archival materials as potential answers rather than a blind starting point. For example, my past research project on Dorothy Liebes is what first led me into a decorative arts detective—seeking clues to solve the mystery of her matching metallic cuffs.

Archival work beautifully combines detective work with storytelling. You gather fragments—a letter here, a photograph there, a receipt, a note scribbled in the margin of a book—and slowly a full picture begins to emerge. For personal collections, start asking questions now. Talk to relatives, write down stories, and record names, dates, and locations. Often the most valuable information is not the object itself, but the context surrounding it. A photograph without names can become an absolute mystery within a single generation.

Preservation doesn’t have to be complicated: store materials carefully away from light, avoid excessive handling, and create digital copies whenever possible. Document what you know. Future generations will be deeply grateful. Some of the richest archives begin in our own homes, and they deserve the same curiosity and care we bring to museum archives.

The DESMAR Partnership

LDB: Your partnership with DESMAR feels like an intuitive, necessary meeting of minds. By embedding this rare, historic design archive within a contemporary space defined by such rigorous visual merchandising, what do you hope visitors and collectors walk away understanding?

CvH: What excites me most about partnering with DESMAR is the opportunity to place Hosken’s work into an active contemporary conversation. Too often, archives are treated as static repositories of the past. I believe they are living resources capable of informing the present.

DESMAR offers an environment where visitors can encounter these objects not simply as historical artifacts, but as relevant examples of innovative design thinking. The gallery’s thoughtful approach to display creates an ideal context for understanding the sophistication of Hosken’s work and its continued resonance.

My hope is that visitors leave with a deeper understanding for Fran Hosken not only as a jewelry designer, but as a multifaceted practitioner whose architecture, photography, urban planning, feminism, and humanitarian advocacy were deeply interconnected. Ultimately, I want people to see her jewelry as evidence of a much larger story—one about creativity, resilience, and the brilliant ways women have shaped our visual world, even when history failed to acknowledge them.

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In Conversation: Marissa Jartcky on the Architecture of Creative Commerce

The Conceptual School of Thought

Lauren Davis Britvan: Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons represent the global pinnacle of avant-garde visual merchandising. How did your formative time leading buying in that highly conceptual world shape your spatial eye, and how does that uncompromising perspective translate to the antiques and custom furniture you design for DESMAR?

Marissa Jartcky: I learned an incredible amount during my years at Dover Street Market. Working within the world created by Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe, I witnessed the power of an uncompromising vision. What struck me most was the unwavering conviction, an ability to pursue an idea with clarity, regardless of convention or outside expectations. That philosophy was embedded in every aspect of Dover Street Market and informed everything from buying and merchandising to the design of the spaces themselves. Every decision was guided by what felt authentic to the vision. I came to understand that the most compelling environments are the most deeply considered and the most true to themselves.

The Mechanics of Visual Display

LDB: There is a distinct art to creating vignettes that force disparate objects to actively converse with one another. When you are composing the layout of a room or a visual display at DESMAR, what are your personal systems when it comes to scale, lighting, or pairing unexpected textures?

MJ: At DESMAR, the showroom really comes together organically. I have the DESMAR pieces as a foundation, and as new antiques arrive, I begin moving things around with the goal of allowing the new piece to become the focal point. I really have to build slowly with the pieces in person. No matter how much planning you do, it almost always looks different once the pieces are physically in the space. I wing it to a certain degree. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I don't mind the process.

The Shift in Intimacy

LDB: Moving from the hyper-accelerated, seasonal cycles of fashion buying to the permanent, slowed-down domestic sphere of antiques and custom furniture is a profound philosophical shift. What has this transition taught you about the way people genuinely want to inhabit and experience their private spaces today?

MJ: Moving from fashion into furniture and antiques was a complete 180. Fashion is incredibly fast-paced, especially now. The buying calendar was relentless, as major brands began showing outside the traditional schedule and I felt like I was on a plane every other month. Fashion houses were also changing Creative Directors every few years, making it difficult to develop the kind of long-term relationship and loyalty that once existed between brands and their clients. Furniture and antiques operate in an entirely different rhythm. I'm not producing a full collection twice a year or responding to seasonal cycles. I'm introducing pieces slowly and thoughtfully, allowing them to evolve naturally over time. After spending years managing thousands of units, there is something incredibly rewarding about working at this pace and with this level of intention.

Calculated Poetry

LDB: You possess a rare, powerful duality: a hyper-discerning aesthetic eye backed by a high-level operational understanding of commerce and data. How has this rigorous business acumen protected and elevated your creative freedom for DESMAR?

MJ: I think the strongest businesses are built when creativity and commerce work together. My years at Dover Street Market showed me that having a strong point of view is essential, but so is understanding the practical realities that allow that vision to survive and grow. You can have impeccable taste, but if you don't understand the business behind it, it becomes very difficult to sustain. Not every idea needs to be pursued immediately. Not every opportunity is the right opportunity. Sometimes the most important business decision is knowing what not to do. My best advice is not to rush. Everything goes so fast these days, that doesn't mean you have to also.

The Shared Alphabet of Craft

LDB: This collaboration brings Fran Hosken's rare 1940s architectural jewelry directly into conversation with DESMAR's physical furniture. What do you hope visitors walk away with after witnessing this dialogue between an eighty-year-old archive and a contemporary living environment?

MJ: When I was first introduced to the work (by you!), I couldn't quite tell whether the pieces were contemporary or historical, they felt so timeless. As I learned more about Fran Hosken and her practice I became so excited by the possibility of showing the jewelry alongside DESMAR. The collaboration felt almost meant to be. Here was a woman designing both furniture and jewelry in the 1940s, moving effortlessly between disciplines. There are only limited quantities remaining from the archive and owning one of these pieces truly feels like owning and wearing a piece of design history. Fran Hosken was the third woman to be admitted to Harvard Graduate School of Design, a true pioneer in her field. These pieces aren't just beautiful objects, they represent the vision and determination of a woman who was forging her own path long before it was common to do so. Wearing one feels like carrying a piece of that legacy forward.

The Hosken Inc. archive is currently on view this week at DESMAR in Los Angeles. Please reach out to info@desmarstudio.com for private appointment times.

For museum acquisitions, institutional placement, or purchase inquiries directly related to the Archival Jewelry of Fran Hosken, please contact Charlotte von Hardenburgh at charlottevh@newschool.edu.

Warmly,

Lauren

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ENTICEMENT . New York

Long before I owned these Hosken Inc. regal pieces, I had spent years quietly admiring Charlotte von Hardenburgh’s curatorial vision. She has dedicated her professional life to recovering brilliant, overlooked female pioneers from the margins of history, a devotion that earned her the inaugural American Women’s History Initiative Research Fellowship at Cooper Hewitt. Her scholarship has been instrumental in shaping landmark moments, from her contributions to the retrospective exhibition of American textile pioneer Dorothy Liebes, to unearthing the uncompromising designs and monumental humanitarian work of Austrian-American Jewish émigré Fran Hosken.

Charlotte commands the room not just with this immense curatorial rigor, but with a sharp, utterly singular personal style. When I finally tracked her down to purchase a few pieces for my personal collection, it felt like a race against the clock. I secured them just as they were being selected and spoken for by major museums. Slipping them on for the first time, I felt the distinct weight of stewardship. I wasn’t just wearing jewelry; I was the custodian of an archival legacy that demanded to be honored, respected, and worn with a matching reverence.

The physical objects prove that truly exceptional design carries an elastic longevity, effortlessly crossing generations, medium boundaries, and decades of quiet storage.

The catalyst for this week’s collaboration, however, traces back to the beginning of this year at Frieze Los Angeles with Marissa Jartcky, the founder of DESMAR. There is nothing more pleasurable than navigating the dizzying terrain of an art fair with a friend who intimately understands the architecture of it all, from the gallerists and the artists to the nuanced machinery of its commerce. We were standing at the Hoffmann Donahue booth, admiring Adam Alessi’s work, right after several people had stopped to ask about my Hosken earrings. In one of those beautifully serendipitous moments, we ran into writer Dalya Benor. Beyond being Alessi’s partner, she is a formidable editor at The Slowdown and The Pleasure Lists, and as it turned out, she was already firmly initiated into the inner circle of the Fran Hosken archive.

Standing there in the crowd, we bonded instantly over our mutual reverence for “Chip”, as Charlotte is affectionately known to those close to her. Right then and there, a seed was planted: Marissa, with her hyper-discerning eye at DESMAR and Charlotte, with her exceptional, excavated treasury of Hosken Inc. pieces, simply had to partner. It was an aesthetic inevitability to bring this preservation-led work to light, creating an exhibition and intellectual shopping experience where the curation is impeccable.

It is rare that I suffer from true fear of missing out, but being in New York this week while their collaborative preview comes to life in Los Angeles has me wishing I could step through a portal just to support them in person. Still, I am deeply thrilled to share this space with them today. The work of both of these incredible women reminds us that quality design and exploration is never bound by a single era or medium. It deserves to occupy more eyes, more minds, and more conversations—to be worn on the body, integrated into the home, and met with the absolute homage it commands.

Anatomy of a Collaboration

The DESMAR x CvH preview currently unfolding in Los Angeles is a living study in creative ancestry. By bringing the rare, 80-year-old architectural jewelry of Fran Hosken into direct dialogue with DESMAR’s contemporary custom furniture and collected antiques, Jartcky and von Hardenburgh are proving that exceptional design operates on a singular, interconnected frequency.

To understand the weight of what they have staged, one must look at the distinct intellectual blueprints both women bring to the floor.

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I. The Scholar’s Eye: Charlotte von Hardenburgh

In a design landscape dominated by flat, digital consumption, von Hardenburgh’s practice operates as a vital, tactile counterweight. Whether she is guiding her fashion history students at FIT or leading typography students through hands-on archival sessions in stone-carving and typesetting, her ethos is rooted in physical, slow-made literacy.

By eschewing traditional museum frameworks to open her private gallery, CvH, within a domestic Brooklyn townhouse, she has democratized how we interact with history. In her world, an archival object isn’t isolated behind glass; it is integrated into the daily cadence of an interior space. Backed by a background in Gender and Sexuality Studies from The New School, her research acts as a radical historical restoration. She bypasses well-trodden design paths to recover the creative autonomy of female pioneers—proving that a singular woman can comfortably occupy the space of both a custodian of beauty and an uncompromising activist.

II. The Merchant’s Blueprint: Marissa Jartcky

If Charlotte provides the historical heartbeat, Marissa Jartcky provides the sharp, spatial choreography required to bring it into the contemporary stream of commerce. Having cut her teeth leading buying and merchandising within the hyper-conceptual, avant-garde world of Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons, Jartcky possesses a rare, powerful duality: an uncompromising, daring eye backed by a rigorous, data-driven business acumen.

At DESMAR, Jartcky translates this fashion-bred pedigree into the domestic sphere, designing custom furniture and procuring antiques that offer a slow, grounded alternative to algorithm-driven trends. Her compositions are masterclasses in form, lighting, and textures—vignettes that force disparate objects to actively converse with one another. By staging this offline, highly tactile encounter in Los Angeles, DESMAR bridges the grand scale of furniture with the intimate scale of jewelry, reminding us that true style is never a transactional choice, but a deeply interior act.

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In Conversation: Charlotte von Hardenburgh on the Archaeology of the Archive

Formative Lens & Material Memory

Lauren Davis Britvan: Was there a specific moment or environment in your early life that first ignited your desire to look at design through a historical lens? How does developing that eye early on change how we view ordinary surroundings?

Charlotte “Chip” von Hardenburgh: I often trace my interest in design history back to my mother’s burl wood jewelry box—specifically, her sterling silver charm bracelet. Whenever she wore it I loved hearing the charms clanking as she moved her slender, tanned arms while animatedly telling a story. Growing up, I was fascinated by the bracelet—not simply because it was beautiful and felt like a circus on a wrist, but because every charm carried a story. Some marked milestones, others commemorated trips, friendships, or personal achievements. My favorite part was when I was allowed to help choose a new charm to add to the bracelet. It felt like participating in the preservation of family history.

Looking back, I realize that the bracelet taught me one of the most important lessons of my career: objects are never just objects. They are vessels for memory, identity, and lived experience. Long before I knew the terms “material culture” or “curatorial practice,” I was already learning how stories become embedded in things.

Developing that perspective at a young age changes the way you move through the world. Ordinary objects begin to feel extraordinary. A receipt tucked into a book, a handwritten note, a piece of jewelry, or a worn piece of furniture all become clues to a larger narrative. As a historian and curator, I am constantly reminding people that history is not confined to museums or archives. It exists all around us, hidden in the objects we live with every day. The challenge—and the joy—is learning how to look closely enough to see it.

Tactile Literacy & Slow Craft

LDB: You have your students at FIT and Parsons physically engage with historic processes like stone-carving, calligraphy, and typesetting. Alongside seasonal field trips to New York City’s rich archival landscape, why is that hands-on connection to physical craft so vital today?

CvH: My students are makers, designers, and artists. They thrive when they are creating something with their hands, so as a history professor I am always looking for ways to connect historical lessons to physical experiences. Typography is a great example. Before typefaces existed, there was handwriting. I often ask students to slow down and reflect on the handwritten letter as a way of understanding typographic form. The fluidity of an ink pen gliding across paper reveals so much about why certain digital letterforms look the way they do. Suddenly typography is no longer an abstract concept—it becomes a physical process.

What has fascinated me since I began teaching in 2021 is that although my students are deeply connected to technology, they are equally drawn to analog experiences. They love the texture of coarse paper, the beauty of a crumpled receipt, the imperfections of letterpress printing. It’s almost as if physical objects feel retro to them, and therefore novel; there is a genuine craving for materiality. These activities do more than teach historical content. They cultivate patience, process, and empathy. When students spend even a few minutes carving stone, practicing calligraphy, or setting type by hand, they begin to understand the time, labor, and skill that historical makers invested in their work. That understanding creates a powerful connection across generations.

I also believe tactile experiences help cultivate an independent point of view. In a culture that moves incredibly fast and often encourages immediate reactions, making something by hand requires observation, reflection, and decision-making. It teaches students to trust their own eyes and their own judgment. That ability to slow down, engage deeply, and form personal conclusions is perhaps one of the most valuable creative skills we can develop today.

Curating Outside Institutional Walls

LDB: You chose to open CvH as an intimate gallery within your private home in Brooklyn rather than staying entirely within large-scale museums. What does a domestic setting teach us about experiencing art?

CvH: The opening of CvH was the result of several experiences converging. A close friend wanted to host a pop-up shop in New York and needed a venue, so I offered my home. I had so much fun transforming the space that I immediately started looking for opportunities to recreate that feeling.

Around the same time, I had completed my fellowship at Cooper Hewitt and was working for a gallery in Tribeca that had strict business hours and restrictions. My boss encouraged me to develop exhibitions using objects from the gallery and present them in my own home. That led to my first at-home exhibition, CERÁMICA ‘64, and gave me the confidence to continue curating independently.

The truth is that I have a lot of ideas and a cumbersome amount of energy. Institutions do extraordinary work, but they often move at a pace that cannot accommodate every idea. Creating CvH allowed me to experiment, collaborate, and build projects on my own timeline. Historically, museums began in domestic spaces through the kunstkammer tradition, which invited visitors into private homes to view collections of art, curiosities, furniture, and textiles. In many ways, CvH is participating in that lineage.

I hope the space encourages people to think differently about their own homes. A home can be transformative—a gallery, a performance venue, a classroom, a library, or a gathering place. We often imagine culture as something that exists elsewhere, but some of the most meaningful encounters with art and ideas happen in intimate spaces. There is something powerful about viewing historic objects while sitting in someone’s living room. It reminds us that art and history are not separate from everyday life; they are woven directly into it.

Art, Activism, and the Multitudes of Fran Hosken

LDB: You hold a graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from The New School, which offers a profound perspective when looking at Fran Hosken’s dual legacy: her whimsical, modular spring-jewelry on one hand, and her monumental, urgent humanitarian work in The Hosken Report on the other. How did your background in gender studies shape the way you unearth a narrative as multi-layered as Hosken’s? What does her life teach us about the expansive capacity of women to be both custodians of beauty and powerful voices for human rights?

CvH: First, thank you—that’s such a beautiful way of framing Fran Hosken’s legacy.

The very first exhibition I ever proposed and executed was for a grassroots feminist archive in New York in 2019. This organization had been active for more than fifty years and played a significant role in the effort to make Plan B available over the counter in New York. That project profoundly shaped how I think about archives, history, and activism. It taught me that archives are not neutral repositories of the past; they are records of people who actively worked to change the world.

In many ways, that project prepared me for Fran Hosken. I was introduced to her through a jewelry historian who recognized the overlap between my interests and Hosken’s life—a woman whose commitment to feminist humanitarian work existed alongside a sophisticated Modernist design practice.

My background in Gender and Sexuality Studies has encouraged me to resist simplified narratives. Too often, women are expected to occupy a single category: artist or activist, intellectual or maker, designer or advocate. Hosken’s life refuses those distinctions. Her jewelry, architecture, photography, urban planning, and humanitarian work were expressions of a coherent worldview centered on equity, access, and human dignity.

The same woman who designed playful spring-wire jewelry also became one of the world’s foremost voices against female genital mutilation through The Hosken Report. At first glance, those achievements can seem disconnected. Yet they anchor a lifelong commitment to understanding the relationship between bodies, power, and autonomy. Whether she was designing objects for the body or advocating for bodily rights, she was ultimately concerned with human freedom.

My research often focuses on women whose contributions have been overlooked because they don’t fit neatly into established categories. Hosken reminds us that creativity and activism are not opposing forces. Beauty and social responsibility can coexist.

Fran Hosken demonstrates that a life can contain multitudes. She was an architect, designer, photographer, writer, feminist, and humanitarian. Rather than diluting her impact, those identities strengthened one another.

Her legacy encourages us to embrace the full complexity of our interests and to recognize that meaningful change can emerge from many different forms of practice.

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On Hosken’s Fleeting Jewelry Chapter

LDB: Fran Hosken was a true force: a Bauhaus protégée, a UN speaker, an architect, and an uncompromising voice for human rights. Yet, her incredible modular jewelry output spanned only a brief four-year window between 1947 and 1951 in an otherwise vast life. What else was she building or fighting for at that time, and why do you think she poured her energy into wearable art during this specific, fleeting chapter?

CvH: What fascinates me is that her jewelry compresses architectural ideas into an intimate scale. The spring-wire forms embody repetition, flexibility, and industrial production—the same principles that shaped postwar Modern architecture. During these years she was not simply making adornment; she was experimenting with how design could operate on and around the body. Looking back, the jewelry becomes an early chapter in a lifelong commitment to access and human-centered design, concerns that would later appear in her work as an architect, urban planner, feminist, and humanitarian.

Intimate Engineering & The Body

LDB: Hosken translated heavy Bauhaus architectural principles like modularity, spring-wire versatility, and machine-poetics into something intimate and playful for the body. Why do you think her jewelry feels so singular, even when compared to the broader landscape of postwar modern design?

CvH: I often describe Hosken’s jewelry as architecture at the scale of adornment. The body becomes the site where Modernist ideas are activated. Rather than asking people to inhabit a building, Hosken invited them to wear architectural principles directly on their skin.

This quality distinguishes her from many of her contemporaries. The jewelry is intellectually rigorous, but it never feels cold. It balances engineering with intimacy, structure with movement, and precision with joy. Additionally, Hosken’s jewelry is singular in that she truly embraced the machine, seeking to make mass-produced, affordable jewelry—a very Bauhaus mindset which integrates the ethos of democracy with exacting design.

Creative Seasons and Motherhood

LDB: It is incredibly poignant to note that Hosken Inc.’s brilliant, prolific design run wrapped up around 1951, directly intersecting with the birth of Fran’s first child. It highlights a reality so many modern readers navigate: the intense, delicate act of carving out space for artistic creation while experiencing the profound shifts of motherhood. From your deep dive into her personal archives, how do you see Fran navigating this pivot between her identity as a maker and her role as a mother? What does this chapter teach us about honoring the changing seasons of our own creative lives without viewing pauses as a compromise?

CvH: We tend to measure artistic success through continuous production, but Hosken’s life challenges that assumption. After jewelry, she devoted herself to architectural photography, urban planning, writing, and eventually humanitarian advocacy. The pause in one creative practice made room for others. Rather than viewing motherhood as an interruption, I see it as part of the broader evolution of her life and work.

She was also a very atypical mother—she divorced her husband following the birth of their last child and proceeded to caravan her young children around Europe, teaching them from the Calvert Homeschooling Method and arranging ski lessons in the Alps during the winter. It was the sort of curriculum that was anomalous at the time and completely enviable in today’s educational landscape.

For contemporary creatives, especially women, Hosken offers a liberating lesson: a change in medium is not a loss of identity. Creativity can migrate and take new forms. A season of apparent quiet may actually be laying the groundwork for the most consequential work of one’s life. It’s also a great reminder to not be so precious with identity and strictly categorizing oneself as a jewelry designer, architect, mother, or photographer. You can freely test out ideas, embrace new personas, and then move on to the next thing that excites you.

The Hosken archive is currently on view this week at DESMAR in Los Angeles. Please reach out to info@desmarstudio.com for private appointment times.

For museum acquisitions, institutional placement, or purchase inquiries directly related to the Archival Jewelry of Fran Hosken, please contact Charlotte von Hardenburgh at charlottevh@newschool.edu.

Revisit this space tomorrow for Part II of our conversation, where we shift from the archive to the showroom floor. Founder Marissa Jartcky of DESMAR takes us inside the mechanics of creative commerce, visual daring, and the contemporary design salon.

Warmly,

Lauren

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ENTICEMENT . New York

And yet the room was completely, unmistakably, someone’s.

That quality... of a room declaring its owner... is the thing I am always chasing. Not beauty in any conventional sense, not novelty, and not approval. It is something harder to name and far more worth pursuing: the sense that a space has been truly lived in... chosen so intentionally over time that it would simply fall apart without the specific person who inhabits it.

Having spent years in photo studios in New York with grand set designs, working on cinematic runway shows and photoshoots in Paris, and in client homes across Los Angeles… I’ve learned that treating your home like a temporary set is the fastest way to erase your personal style. We have all watched quite a disruption happening in how we approach our own spaces: we have started decorating for an audience rather than ourselves. But a set is engineered for a quick glance; it is built to freeze a narrative in time through a photographer’s lens. We see this everywhere now... in restaurants, retail stores, and hotels that prioritize the photograph over the actual guest service and customer experience.

A home cannot function this way; your specific space has to hold up to actual living. True personal style isn’t about creating a backdrop for a camera; it is about finding what anchors you when the world is shut out. When we chase a formulaic look for external approval, we exchange our own history and sensibilities for someone else’s staging. It is time for a return to telling a story that belongs entirely to you.

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Elsie de Wolfe defined good taste as “suitability, suitability, suitability.” I return to that word constantly. The question shouldn’t be: ‘is this beautiful?’ It should be: ‘Does this belong to me?’ Does it suit the way I live… the layout, style and needs of the room, and the life I am genuinely building, not performing for others? Suitability, I’ve come to believe, is a radical act today: it requires you to know yourself well enough to trust your own eye. The spaces that stay with me are never the ones with the most expensive or notable furniture and art; they are the ones that tell you, immediately and without apology, exactly who lives there. Decoration, at its best, is not a discipline; it’s a declaration.

The trouble... and I say this with warmth, because I’ve watched it in clients and in myself... is that we too easily confuse taste with approval. We choose the thing we think we should want, rather than the thing we actually love. Diana Vreeland said it plainly: “Style — all who have it share one thing: originality!” It is not a price point, a period, or a palette someone else handed you. Style is a language; a deeply personal relationship with yourself. It is worth resisting the idea that taste can be purchased wholesale or validated by a stranger on a screen.

Consider it a lesson in claiming agency from Lauren Hutton. An icon who fundamentally changed how an entire industry operated, she shifted the standard by negotiating modeling’s first exclusive, million-dollar beauty contract. Long before that historic milestone, Hutton understood the power of an independent eye and voice. She put it into seven words I keep coming back to: “Fashion is what others give you. Style is what you give yourself.”

That act of giving style to yourself requires a radical patience; it cannot be rushed to fit a timeline. The rooms that endure reveal themselves slowly. Andrée Putman noted that unless you have a feeling for that secret knowledge that modest things can be more beautiful than anything expensive, you will never have style. The best interiors are living compositions, layered over seasons and years, built to hold what Ruby Ross Wood called “the pleasant memorabilia of living.” The home of Suzanne Demisch, featured in Unconditional No.10. Co-founder of the esteemed gallery Demisch Danant, achieves exactly this warmth and hand-touch… where rocks and shells collected on trips with her son sit proudly alongside archival pieces by Maria Pergay and César Baldaccini.

Focus on layering pieces that inform one another as you collect them… allowing your home to evolve as you sharpen your own eye, your experiences, and your curiosities. It is these gathered elements that make a room feel inhabited and meaningful. Not everything needs provenance or a grand story; but all of it should feel specific to you, your family, your values, and your life.

Introducing you to my running edit of the elements circulating in my world right now... a simple look at what is anchoring my mind and catching my lens.

THE BACKDROP

The slow layer: the objects, text, and tones anchoring my space, and mind.

i. Procuring — Piña sheers from Tela…

Connecting generations of weaving knowledge, this pattern studio collaborates with Filipino artisans. I am particularly gravitating to sheers in raw silk, which I am looking to apply to a few window treatments in my own home. Produced in small runs to preserve the integrity of the craft, they utilize a technique once reserved for formal dress… I am not sure there is a more beautiful way to dress your windows.

ii. Reading — London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe…

I have found my new obsession: investigative narrative journalism done at the highest level. Keefe writes with the precision of a detective and the patience of a novelist. If you haven’t started, start immediately. My next of PRK book will be Snakehead.

iii. The Table — Pierre Yovanovitch x Cosima glassware…

Cosima, a tablescape extraordinaire who works closely with prestigious designers and private clients on curating their collections, has started releasing her own pieces. Having worked closely with Pierre sourcing tabletop pieces for his projects, this collaboration feels like an embodiment of the two creators’ aesthetics. The proportion of the hexagon shape fits perfectly in your hand, accented by the Fog & Barley color with the seafoam rim and the embossed handwriting revealed as you drink... a very Cosima touch, considering pieces from all angles.

THE FOREGROUND

The immediate landscape: what is active, and currently in my lens.

i. Watching — Tuner

See this crime-heist film at the cinema if you can, from film-maker Daniel Roher. It is so refreshing to be genuinely enthralled in a film... no distractions, pure focus. Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu are both vibrant in this role. It made for a perfect early evening date with my husband. I desire more experiences like this; the cinema is worth protecting, and now I suddenly need a vintage pearl timepiece. I will dream of this one.

ii. The Vanity — M.ph by Mary Phillips

Having my concealer & bronzer in one spot with a multi-use palette and dual-ended brushes have streamlined my routine for a barely-there, skin-enhancing effect. Yes, I also recommend the serum foundation and its accompanying brush. Repeat after me: “Clutter is unresolved decisions!!”

iii. Visiting — McGrath’s Current Exhibition

The team has been crafting such a gorgeous, eclectic mix of antiques and custom pieces in New York. It feels refreshing, educational, and expansive... the layers, the textures, the things placed together that absolutely work so well you ask yourself all along how you didn’t think of it. I’ll also be leaning into updates from Exhibits in New York for my upcoming trip.

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A room that truly belongs to you takes time. It cannot be purchased in a single afternoon or assembled from a single source. It is made the way most things worth having are made: slowly, with attention, by someone willing to take a few risks and evolve their mind. Sometimes, some things risk being misunderstood at first glance. That is usually a very good sign.

Play with your space. Shift the layout; allow things to be beautifully unresolved for a while. Trust that the elements you are genuinely drawn to... not the pieces you think you should want, but the ones you keep returning to... are quietly revealing your own handwriting.

Warmly,

Lauren

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ENTICEMENT · Los Angeles