Most of you live in places where winter happened this year. I heard about it and even saw it on the news (and by news I mean Facebook and Instagram). At first it looked romantic, then chilly and then just terribly inconvenient what with your coat wearing and all. Well, I think that Spring is finally here and we are styling about it. The newest Target video is up, and it’s all about creating a happy sunroom to celebrate spring. This time we actually transformed the space because nothing is more satisfying than watching something improve right before your eyes – like Matthew Lewis. Target’s new spring line is very good, as you can see, full of blues, whites, natural materials and whimsical beach-y motifs. We simply mixed in a couple vintage/DIYs to create this very happy, bright and well-rounded sunroom for your viewing pleasure. Click on through … This room was clearly a good shell – it was bound to be happy no matter what direction we took it. We (along with Chris and Scott) came up with this concept of a bright yet soft beach inspired sunroom full of Target and a few vintage pieces.
So we shopped, styled, played and installed this pretty little room to ease all your winter blues. Slowly the room came together – as demonstrated in my favorite gif ever made on the internet: The daybed was just a simple twin frame, with two foam pads on top wrapped in canvas dropcloth (that had been washed and dried 10 times). While we obviously wanted to show off Target product we knew that bringing in a few vintage pieces would be more realistic and tell a fuller story (nobody has pieces from just one store). The two trunks were just vintage trunks from the flea market ($40 each) that we painted and added legs to. The woven chair is vintage but you can buy a new/similar one here, and the daybed was something we really just threw together and added pretty linens and pillows on top. We added that pretty fan collection, the old bedspread and some real sea shells and books, but, everything else is from Target. Every side table, accessory, bookshelf, pouf and pillow. Man, I love this happy room, full of clean, bright colors that are just so easy for the eye to understand.
Sometimes when you go ‘bright and fun’ it can become chaotic, but not these white and blues – it’s just simple, mediterranean-inspired, happy living … with a California bent. Blue and white can go a bit cold, so we kept it feeling balanced and warm with all those natural materials – wood, the woven pouf, the hanging wood sculpture in the window and the woven side table. The greenery added that perfect accent = cactus, succulents, olive branches and even the fern which helped us obscure that dark functionless fireplace.Art by Kate Smithson My friend Anne Sage stopped by and we chatted about spring decorating, blogging, our upcoming books and the fact that she looks smarter because she wears glasses. And probably because she is smarter. We’ve known each other for years via the blog-u-verse so it’s always fun to actually see and touch people in person. So I gave her my friendly ‘elbow touch’. Anne wrote a lovely post about the experience here on her blog.
Hurricane Candle Holder | Dark Blue Vase Large | Wooden Candle Holder | Silver Leaf Clam Shell | Antique Navy Milk Bottle Vase |Ceramic Whale Bone | Dark Blue Vase Small That shot up there is such a good example of how you can mix whites, creams, and taupes and have them look so inviting and warm together. That blanket is one I’ve had forever – and you can find them on eBay or at the flea market pretty easily if you just rummage through the piles of fabric riddled with tea stains and mold. The fresh new pillows make that bed spread feel relevant and trendy, and the vintage granny blanket give the pillows a little bit of quirk and soul. The throw next to it, with the fringe, is Target, too.Ikat Dot Pillow | Diamond Ikat Pillow | While my heart still belongs with brass (a matte brass these days) I am beginning to love silver more and more. Here is the quiet metallic – still going a bit glam but needing less attention. That gif clearly exhausted me – so I decided to lay down and tell you about my spring, with my eyeballs.
Wooden Candle Holder | Ikat Design Pillow | Blue and Clear Table Vase | Ceramic Sea Urchin | Wooden Bird Figure | Chair Vintage (find a similar one here) In case you missed the first round of Target videos go check them out here. Let me know what you think about the new video and once again, if you are into the products up there grab them before they sell out. Because they do sell out. The easiest way to shop the whole new line is to go here or check out this post for more of my Spring picks. 1.Wooden Candle Holder 2.Basket 3. White Candle Holder 4. Silver Leaf Clam Shell 5. Diamond Ikat Pillow 9. Ceramic Sea Urchin 10. Ikat Design Pillow 12. Ikat Dot Pillow 13. Blue and Clear Table Vase 16. Dark Blue Vase Large 18. Wooden Bird Figure 22. Antique Navy Milk Bottle Vase *Photos by Tessa Neustadt for Target. Hair and Makeup by Danielle Walch, Wardrobe by Jordan Rudd.Server currently undergoing maintenance. Webmaster: please contact support.Michael Graves may be one of the most prolific designers of our time.
The Indianapolis native founded Michael Graves & Associates in Princeton, N.J., in 1964, and has designed more than 350 buildings around the world since. Through Michael Graves Design Group, he has also created more than 2,000 products for companies like Alessi, Steuben, Dansk and Disney. But when it comes to product design, he is probably best known for the work he has done for Target. Mr. Graves was the first well-known designer to create a line for the mass market chain, a relationship that began 15 years ago.And although he has been paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair since 2003, the 76-year-old architect shows no signs of stopping. His most recent products for Target, cleaning tools and kitchen accessories, reached stores last week.What was your impression of Target before you designed for the store?I had never been in a Target before. They really weren’t in the East. They were a Midwest company based in Minneapolis and had stores all over Minnesota and Wisconsin, and some in Chicago or Illinois.
So when they called me, it wasn’t for design of objects for the store. It was, in fact, for the design of the scaffolding for the Washington Monument. They were paying for the restoration.How did scaffolding lead to a line of products?They asked me to lunch and said, “We’ve been knocking you off for 20 years,” and said, “Maybe you’d like to come and try designing for us, if we can keep the price at a Target range.” So we designed half a dozen things for them, and they liked it so much they said, “Well, let’s keep going.” Were you worried it would hurt your reputation?It was my hope to do that. I had been designing for Alessi and Swid Powell and Steuben and high-end people, and people always complained, “Michael, we’d love to buy your stuff, but it’s too expensive.” I always wanted to do what Josef Hoffmann, Wiener Werkstätte and the Bauhaus wanted to do, which they never got to do because they designed in a craft mode. We have behind us all this mass production, so why not take advantage and bring the price down for everybody?
It was Target who called it the “democratization of design.” I figured, if it’s going to get designed, let’s do it well. So that’s what we did, and I’m happy about it. The other part implied in your question is, Would you take a certain buffeting from the press or colleagues? And at the beginning there were snide remarks. I remember being at a black-tie dinner, which was a roast for someone else, and my designing for Target came up. I laughed, but I thought to myself, “It won’t be long until you’re doing that, too.”Do you live with your own stuff?My kitchen looks like Target and Alessi.So now you must have a consumer relationship with Target. You mean do I buy stuff there? We’ve got one on either side of Princeton. When it first opened, I’d tell the people in Minneapolis that I can’t get out of there without spending $200. But I was buying my own things then. You had to buy your own things?Yeah, I got a discount, but I bought my own things. I got 10 percent off.
But now we have things that we have to go to Target for. Like Legos: I have an 8-year-old son, so it’s off to Target to get the new Lego. I heard cleaning products were tested in your home.That’s true, it’s not a ploy. I came home to change clothes and get ready for a meeting in New York, and there were about a dozen people in my kitchen scrubbing my floor.I don’t clean now, because I’m paralyzed. But let me tell you, I would clean. I cleaned and I ironed. It’s my inner femininity. I remember bringing guests through my house, and Alex Lee, who used to work with me but is now with Oxo, was there. He said: “Michael, your bed is made. Did your maid come in this morning?” And I said, “Alex, I make my own bed.” Was cleaning a Zen thing for you?No, I’m neat, but I’m not like Richard Meier, who is really tidy.I don’t think I’ve ever met a messy architect.It’s in our DNA to keep it clean.Can you talk a little about why you use certain colors in your products?
It’s from the Renaissance. I lived in Rome for a couple years, so all that stuff affected me. We use blue on the handle of the Alessi kettle. Blue is cool, so you’re supposed to think that it’s not hot. And the bird is red: you’re supposed to think to be careful to remove the bird. And the new cleaning products are blue.That’s an interesting story. When we started with Target we had a blue box that all our decorative accessories were packaged in, and buyers from Target would say, “Blue is a killer, it will never sell.” And if you look at Target now, there is so much blue it makes me smile. What is it about blue?I also like green. In fact, I used a kind of gray-green early on in my practice for painting steel, to make it look more like it had a kind of patina to it, like copper and bronze and so on. The color I used was a Benjamin Moore color called 2012. My then-young daughter started calling me 2012 — it was my nickname.Is there anything positive about being in a wheelchair?
Two things for me: One, that I realize how bad the health-care situation is for people, and being a designer I can do what I can do relative to that industry to make it better. So that wouldn’t have happened if this hadn’t happened. I don’t think I’d be in health care unless someone had asked me to do a hospital or a clinic or something. That, and I have more time to paint now.You’ve also designed products for Stryker medical.We’re going from one project, to the next, to the next. We’re cleaning up the patient room and ultimately everything you’d expect someone like me to do in a hospital besides technical equipment, as well as the room itself.Patient rooms are pretty awful — shades of mauve and bad wood.And beige and beige and beige. I had a woman come to me — she’s a Zen freak and likes rocks — and wants to color my hospital rooms. She said, “I will make it seem like motherhood.” And I kept listening to her, and I said, “What color would you use?” She showed me a palette and asked what I thought.