Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick's beachhouse dining room featured in Style & Substance, decorated by Eric Hughes, photography by William Waldron
A couple of weeks ago, Margaret Russell, editor-in-chief of Elle Decor, came to the Boston Design Center and presented a great slide show profiling some of her favorite images from her recent book Style and Substance.
Joni, Megan and I had a great chat with Margaret last fall over at The Skirted Roundtable where we discussed some of our favorite projects from the book. You can have a listen here.
The late decorator Chessy Rayner's Southhampton home from Style & Substance. (note the similarity between this image at the SJP room up top)
It's always fascinating to hear from editor's why certain projects made the cut - what about design or image spoke to them and how certain images became cover shots. It's certainly easy for the reader to say "I like that, I don't like that - what were they thinking??!?!" - it's kind of like arm-chair quarterbacking. Unless you're in the game, you're not privy to all the details. So, I really enjoyed listening to Margaret speak specifically about each image she showed and what about that image was so special. We all will never agree 100% of the time, but that's okay.
One of the things that always impresses me about Margaret and Elle Decor is just how "of the people" the magazine is. Not that it's not top notch design and designers, but that Margaret and the brand are all about being out and about - being part of the scene, supporting charities and just simply being involved.
Margaret encouraged the room of 500 designers that day in Boston to send in their projects for consideration. Now, that's a lot of email - but the invitation went out and hopefully the mailbox was filled with submissions. (Hear that New England designrs?)
And, Elle Decor has just launched a Designer's Registry where any designer can upload their photos, a brief profile and work images. The Registry is searchable by design style and sorts by region. This is a great example of how Margaret and ED are working with us. Of course, the magazine cannot publish every submission. I'm sure there are projects they would like to publish that they never end up having room for. But now all of us can stake a little claim on the ElleDecor.com territory - and that's pretty great. Registration is free for the first year to design pros who sign up before September 1st, after which there will be a small maintenance fee. I've got my profile up, so have my friends Scot Meacham Wood and Grant K. Gibson. Are you listed?
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