We're moving!

The Nerdy Fashionista is moving to a new home! More design, less narcissistic rambling, and less (regretful sigh) Michael Phelps. Everybody head on over to Designers' Brew (http://designers-brew.blogspot.com/) and update your links--I'll see you on the other side!

WHEW.

For about two scary hours I thought I had done a number on the blog and somehow locked myself out of editing posts--yikes--but we're back online now, and better than ever! Or at least purer than ever (I deleted 97% of the Michael Phelps content).

So ANYWAY, moving on. It's my bedtime now, so here's some seriously kick-ass kitchens for you to contemplate:






All images from here.

Feel the love.

One of the most fun things about blogging is uncovering ones you totally click with--it reminds me of Anne of Green Gables (did anyone else read those obsessively as a kid?), overjoyed every time she met a new kindred spirit. Here are my recent exciting discoveries:

Susie Q at Eye Spy has a great eye, and writes long, deeply-sourced posts full of drool-inducing images and cool picks.


If the dubious distinction of being my bloggleganger weren't already taken, I think I would have to saddle poor Cassie at Roseland Greene with it; she loves crumbling old houses, industrial shelving, wide-plank floorboards and giant steel-mullioned windows... need I go on? I loved the blog so much I had to go back and read every post.


I added Une Fille Comme Moi* to my blogroll a while back but never really followed up with it; but thanks to the high-tech wizardry of this crazy "RSS" concept the kids are all talking about, I've now got my blogroll all queued up in my google (boy I bet that would sound like dirty talk to my circa-1996 self) and have rediscovered how gorgeous this blog is. It's a lot like the Sartorialist, only written by the kind of chic French girl we all wish we were, and featuring many more close-ups of her stunningly gorgeous subjects, like this girl, whose face knocked the wind out of me the minute I opened the site:


Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

*I had originally put This is Glamorous but HG corrected me--for some reason I get those two confused--indeed it is Une Fille. Thanks HG!

Bright, colorful hallways.

I noticed when I was watching Top Design that, as far as I could tell, when the contestants were decorating their LA townhouses, they completely neglected the upstairs hallway. Maybe that was because of budget and time constraints, or maybe it just didn't occur to them, but the end result was a bunch of separate rooms that didn't feel connected to anything else, or by anything else. Surely they could have at least spared some paint to make it look like they thought about it.

Hallways and corridors serve an important function in a house--getting you from place to place--but it's easy to neglect them, or just turn them into de facto galleries for art and photos you don't know where else to place. To me they present a perfect opportunity to make a statement, to introduce a bit of dense color or pattern that you might be afraid to use in a larger, more focal space. Here's some examples of hallways that really feel like something.

(Now if only I had a hallway to decorate. But alas, the presence of a hallways suggests you have multiple rooms that are far enough apart that you need a special passageway to link them. Ha! Ha ha.)

Skona Hem

Domino

Decorative painting by Chris Pearson

photo by Evan Sklar

photo by Jonny Valiant

photo by Ngoc Minh Ngo

Domino

photo by Joe Schmelzer

Rum

Do you really need to go to interior design school to be a designer?

This is such a tough question, and always seems to be a topic of heated debate when it comes up (not least in my office, where we have two trained designers, a boss whose design training is in different disciplines and who took a very roundabout route into interior design, and an assistant who wants to be able to be a designer without having to shell out the serious cashola demanded by school). A lot of people firmly believe in working their way up the old-fashioned American way, whereas others are fiercely protective of the value of their education and training. My answer? It depends.

For most people, I would say that to get an entry-level interior design job, you need at least an associate's degree; and if you think you'd like to work on commercial projects like restaurants, bars, hotels, and stores, then you'd do well to get a bachelor's, which offers more in-depth training on topics like space planning, building codes and safety guidelines for public spaces. Now, the assistant at our office is a perfect example of the fact that you can learn everything you need to know about the administrative aspects of residential projects on the job: she places orders, keeps project binders, oversees installations, and shops for fabrics and decorative accessories. But what she can't do is draft, sketch, space plan, or, if she leaves our firm and tries to get a junior designer position somewhere else, show a portfolio of work highlighting her design and presentation skills. Which is what everybody else she's going to be competing against for that job will have.

And even aside from providing basic skills that are required for the job, school hones and refines your eye in a way that working can't, and in a much shorter time frame. Your projects are for imaginary clients with infinite budgets and no objections to anything you suggest, and you're presenting your work to professors who push you to make it as bold and creative as possible. The constant, intense competition with your classmates, while it gets you semi-hysterical and strung out on Redbull in the days leading up to a presentation, also forces you to push yourself harder than you ever realized you could. All in all the process is basically identical to the forged-by-fire montage they show in those Marines commercials.

But notice I only said "for most people" a degree would be necessary. I think that since the field has become so popular, and design education so much more structured and competitive than it used to be, anyone looking to get hired by a company is going to be expected to have it. Which means the way around it is to open your own firm. If you are lucky enough to find people willing to pay you money to design spaces for them, it couldn't matter less what classes you did or didn't take, as long as your clients are happy. There are a lot of designers out there with no formal training, and some of them are really good. Many of them transitioned over from other visual/design disciplines. But the reality is, to get where they are, most of them had either great connections or great wealth, or both. That's not bitterness talking, that's my objective observation.

So do you really need to design training to be an interior designer? Most of the time, yes. For me, absolutely. The difference between where I was when I started school, barely able to draw, and where I was when I finished was nothing less than astonishing. But I was coming from a liberal arts background, where writing analytical papers about art history was the closest I got to design, so I had a lot of ground to make up. But if you've already got a solid art or design foundation, and can take a few drafting classes at your local college so you can learn autocad (which you DO need to know, no matter what, and you MUST know how to draft and sketch in scale), and you have clients ready and waiting to ply you with money, then fuck it. Go for it! It's the American way.

Under the rafters

Lookie! I found a new collection of atticky (atticular?) goodness for ya:

Met Home

Design Sponge

Someone's really cool post about an Austin guy who built this house himself... help?

Skona Hem

Skona Hem

If the Lampshade Fits

Which one's your favorite? I think mine is the last one: incredible half-timber roof, crooked little dormer, sexy unmade bed... yes please.

Big beds in wee spaces: yea or nay?

Michael Smith, via la Lampshade

Miles Redd in Domino

House Beautiful

Mary McDonald in Domino

Celerie Kemble in House Beautiful

You can't really tell from the angle of the Celerie Kemble photo, but the room is pretty small--the wall is about two or three feet away from the bed on the other side.

What do you guys think?