Winter 2017’s must-have pieces in the season’s signature hues and patterns.
High school taught me to use a cheat sheet, and college taught me to shop online. I still do both, and so should you. Search far and wide for the winter’s latest and greatest fashion. Or, get cozy on your couch and pull up Farfetch on your tablet. It’s all right there. To help you along even further, these are the trends (and the specific pieces) you should be hunting.
Styled by Jenna Knouse
Classic Frames Soft Square Glasses TOM FORD EYEWEAR $258.50
Everybody loves to eat these days, but the proposition of thoughtful cocktails served in antique glassware is too easy—and distinguishing—of an upgrade for your next dinner party to ignore. And we’re making it even easier by telling you how to pull it off.
By Scott Edwards · Photography by Matthew J. Rhein
Before we move forward, think back, back to your last dinner party and the way you let your guests have at your wet bar. Left to their own devices, a gin and tonic became a highball brimming with Bombay Sapphire, a glass of red became a goblet so full it needed to be sipped before it could be moved. In hindsight, their reception of each course was a little overly enthusiastic, even considering the care you invested in every morsel you plated.
Now imagine your next party, only this time, instead of saying hello and immediately retreating to the kitchen, you’re saying hello and escorting your guests, one by one, two by two, to a properly manned bar—your co-hosts for the night. You’re still dipping into the kitchen, but you’re doing so with a finely crafted cocktail in hand. Your guests are enjoying the same—in antique glassware, no less. And they’re actually enjoying them, not just getting blitzed.
Welcome to a night with Spirit Forward, a craft cocktail caterer. Yes, the “craft cocktail” part is worth noting because this is not a simple bartending service, like the kind you’re relegated to at a wedding. With all due respect, those are hired hands being paid to pour heavy (or light, depending on your budget). Spirit Forward, on the other hand, is Dan Hamm, who works as the bar manager at a.bar, which is pretty much the epicenter of Philadelphia’s craft cocktail scene, and Stephanie Smith, a consummate hostess who cut her teeth at the revered Vernick Food & Drink. Hiring them for your party is akin to recruiting Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid to fill in for your next rec-league game.
Cocktail catering is such an easy and distinguishing upgrade, it seems impossible that it’s not more prolific. Because it’s not, the inquiries that Smith and Hamm field are fairly simple: I’m having a party, and I’d like to do more than vodka and sodas and wine. What can you do? We tend to marry ourselves to the same drink or two for no real reason other than it’s what we’ve been drinking for as long as we can remember. Really, the idea of sifting through prospective candidates is exhausting, and we just want a drink, our drink. But what if you had an expert do the sifting for you? That’s essentially what this is like. They’ll ask you for the details of your party—how many people? What kind of vibe?—and then they’re going to ask you what you like to drink. And even if, try as you might, all you can come up with is “vodka and soda,” they’re going to be able to dig a little deeper to flesh out a full-on flavor profile. That way, you’ll end up drinking a revelation, even if it’s just the best vodka and soda you’ve ever tasted.
Hamm possesses a rare ability to elevate both the most tried and true and obscure classics with novel-but-appropriate twists, and always with an eye toward fresh and seasonal, not unlike a French-trained chef. He started bartending in the deep end. Overnight, he was expected to memorize the recipes for and accurately reproduce hundreds of cocktails, classic and contemporary. He responded by digesting it all remarkably fast and then promptly riffing on that newfound knowledge. In short order, finicky regulars started seeking direction from him. They’re the same ones who planted the seed for Spirit Forward. Can you teach me how to make this? Can you tend bar at my wedding?
Stephanie Smith and Dan Hamm make it look easy. It’s not.
He met Smith around the start of all this. And the more he began to conceptualize Spirit Forward, the more he realized how ideal a complement she was to him. “She has an amazing palate and she has that eye for design,” he says.
Smith’s fully capable of jumping behind the bar and thinning a thirsty crowd, but her stamp’s all over everything else—booking, planning, organizing, marketing and the staging. “When we go to an event, we really want our bar to look custom-made, as custom as the drinks themselves,” she says.
That’s right; they design their own bars. In fact, the only thing they don’t supply is the booze; it’s prohibited by law. So what they do instead is provide you with a detailed list of what they’ll need. If you were doing this on your own, you were going to stock the bar anyway.
Another reason we tend not to stray from our limited repertoire is a bar of any kind can be an intimidating and pretentious place. If you don’t have the ingredients and preferred brands of your drink of choice down, there’s a high degree of likelihood that you’re going to be sniffed out as a fraud. This isn’t that. For one, Smith and Hamm also teach cocktail-making classes through Spirit Forward, so there’s a conscious, gentle way that they go about enlightening. For another, this is your home and these are your friends. Should you or anyone else ask how a drink’s made—and you will—Smith and Hamm are obliged to stop what they’re doing and write it down. Experience has taught them that “that stays with them more than any drink you’ll make them,” Hamm says. The same will be said of the night as a whole.
We figured you would be, so we asked our favorite new hangout, The Dinky Bar & Kitchen in Princeton, to mix us up a stern cocktail that could hold up to a bitter chill and was low-maintenance enough that we couldn’t screw it up when we went to replicate it at home later on. This is what they offered up. The Coffee Cocktail looks like a latté and tastes like one, too. But you’ll notice the total lack of coffee. Magic. At least, it was in 1887, when this recipe was published in the reprint of Jerry Thomas’ seminal tome, How to Mix Drinks.
And that’s what we love about The Dinky: Everything old is new again. Which seems to be the predominant theme among this set of pages. The bar sits across the street from the McCarter in a 1918 stone building that housed a Dinky train station for the better part of a century. There’s still plenty of the original character there to encourage a deeper exploration of an impressively wide-ranging drinks menu that reaches from sake and hard-to-find ciders to smartly crafted cocktails like this one. Basically, there’s no going wrong. Here, either.
The Dinky’s Coffee Cocktail
1½ ounces port 1 ounce brandy ½ ounce simple syrup 1 whole egg 1 dash Angostura bitters Freshly ground nutmeg, for garnish
Combine the ingredients, shake hard, then strain into a wine glass. Garnish with nutmeg.
Spend less time prepping and cleaning up and more time gawking at Lady Gaga with your friends.
By Scott Edwards
Another entertaining season, rife with drama on the field (one step forward, two steps back for the Eagles) and off (this sport has to be hanging by a thread, right?), comes down to one last, opposite-of-entertaining matchup. The Patriots in the Super Bowl: Never saw that one coming. And, Atlanta has a team?
The silver lining: The less invested we are in the action on the screen, the more invested we can be in the action around it. After all, the communal watching experience is the real lure, not the game itself. The Super Bowl Party is more widely celebrated than any religious or national holiday in this country. Why? Because, as unaffected as a lot of us like play it, we all experience FOMO deep down, and the Super Bowl, sadly, is the most universal conversation we’re likely ever going to have. Miss out on the spectacle and you’re stuck on the outside looking in for the next week. And a week in pop culture is like five years in dog years.
If you’re hosting a Super Bowl Party, you know all of this already, have been hip to it since Janet and Justin. Less clear is how to pull off your party without losing weeks of your life to the prep and cleanup, only to end up watching all of the pivotal moments (again, rarely having anything to do with the game) later on, like a hermit. We can help with that. What we have here is a plan for the Low-Maintenance, High-Reward Super Bowl Party. It’s nothing revelatory. Just a whole lot of common sense. But when you’re planning the biggest gathering of the year, common sense can be in short supply.
Invitations
Evites over a mass text or email. And send immediately. As in, make it the first thing you do after you finish reading this. It’ll take less than five minutes. Sure, everyone’s aware of the date, and it may go without saying that you’ll be hosting, but a simple head’s up is just common courtesy.
In that vein, your guest list has probably long since been established. But that shouldn’t mean it’s closed to any editing. Think back to last year’s party. Were there any odd men out? Was it too crowded? Always be aware of balance. You don’t want to invite a couple of casual observers into a pack of rabid fans, nor do you necessarily want to include a new coworker in a tightly knit group, regardless of his or their levels of enthusiasm. It’s not total harmony you’re going for. You just don’t want any wallflowers. They’ll swallow your night whole.
Food, Drinks, Ice
Yes, this is a low-maintenance guide, but wings and pizza aren’t even trying. A few simple finger foods (see below for a couple of recipes that fit the bill perfectly) and a crockpot dish or two, like pulled pork and vegetarian chili, will leave everyone full and appreciative of the effort. And they’ll keep you out of the kitchen during the party, for the most part.
As for stocking the bar, read the room. If the majority of your guest list is arriving with the intent of blacking out by the third quarter, you need new friends. Also: Buy the cheap stuff. They’ll object at first, but by the second or third beer, they’re not going to notice. If it’s a slower drinking crowd (read: adults who act their age), invest in a quarter-barrel keg of something craft-y—it’s the equivalent of 82 12-ounce cans, so it should be more than enough—along with a few bottles each of red and white wine. (Nothing over 20 bucks.) You’re never going to satisfy a liquor drinker, so don’t even try. Put word out beforehand that if anyone feels compelled to drink anything other than beer or wine, they’re on their own.
Ice: Buy a few 20-pound bags, two or three for the quarter-keg and one for a cooler stocked with the white wine. Keep both just outside the deck door. You’ll be set for the night.
Plates, Utensils, Cups
Disposable all the way around. End of discussion.
Seating
Your Super Bowl Party is not a sixth-grade recital. In other words, you don’t need a seat for every ass in the room. There’s going to be the handful of diehards who claim their posts a half-hour before kickoff and never leave them, save for beer runs and, hopefully, bathroom breaks. But everyone else is going to move around a lot and sit and stand at equal turns. So don’t fill your living room with folding chairs. They’re only going to impede that process. And, really, who wants to sit on a folding chair? Instead, toss a few large pillows around the room. It’s a much savvier use of that valuable floor space.
The TV
I never got the multiple TVs in multiple rooms. You’re inviting everyone over to watch the game together. Or, at least, hangout while it’s on. If you’re going to feed them to separate rooms, you may as well save yourself a whole lot of trouble. You wouldn’t throw a dinner party and divide the guests between the dining room and the kitchen. If there’s not enough room, cut your guest list.
The lone exception to the rule: a playroom. If there are going to be kids under the age of 12 at this thing, dedicate a separate space. That’s not to say they can’t watch the game with everyone else. It’s to say they’re not going to want to. There can be another TV turned on in this room. But if you (and their parents) have any expectation of keeping them there, something other than the game should be on.
Games
The Super Bowl brings out the gambler in all of us. Encourage it. It’ll keep everyone at least minimally interested in the game. The easiest avenue: Set up a football squares sheet and have your guests place their bets as they arrive. Winnings are doled out at the end of each quarter. (In the evite, include a reminder to bring cash. There will be no IOUs.)
If you’re feeling ambitious, or you have a friend or family member who’s OCD- organized and dependable, open up the action to a handful or two of prop bets, and don’t limit them to the game—How many commercials will Peyton Manning appear in? Will Lady Gaga reference Trump during her halftime performance? Zero skill, infinite fun.
A few low-maintenance, high-reward Super Bowl Party recipes
6 free-range eggs, hard-boiled and peeled
Juice from a jar of pickled beets
¼ cup mayo
2 tsps. Dijon mustard
Cilantro, minced (reserve some)
Paprika to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Soak the eggs in the beet juice anywhere from a half-hour to overnight. If you like pickled foods, longer is better. After their bath, remove the eggs and cut them in half lengthwise, then gently remove the yolks and set them off to the side.
In a small bowl, combine the yolks, mayo, mustard and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Stir until the mixture achieves a smooth consistency, then transfer it to a Ziploc bag.
Cut off a bottom corner and pipe a bit of the yolk mixture into the hollow of each egg half. Sprinkle with paprika and garnish with cilantro or a small beet slice.
Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
(Vegetarian, gluten- and dairy-free) Makes 12.
1 large cabbage
1 onion, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and shredded
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 cups cooked quinoa
2 tsps. fresh parsley (or dill), finely chopped
¼ tsp. paprika
1 cup crushed tomatoes
½ cup white wine
½ cup water
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Carefully separate the leaves from the cabbage head and set aside the 12 largest ones. Cut the stems from each, then blanch the leaves for a few minutes. From there, arrange the leaves on towels to dry.
Add the vegetable oil to a frying pan and sauté the onion and the carrot just long enough to retain a little bit of crunch. Then, in a large bowl, mix them thoroughly with the quinoa, the parsley (or dill) and the paprika. Spoon the mixture evenly onto each leaf, then roll it up and tuck in the ends. Stick a toothpick through the center to hold them in place, if they need it.
Mix together the tomato, the wine and the water. Place the rolls in a baking dish, then pour the tomato mixture over them. Bake for a half-hour. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Pistachio Cookies Makes about 24.
8 tbsps. (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsps. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
¾ cup white chocolate chips
1 cup and 2 tbsps. coarsely chopped unsalted pistachios, 2 tbsps. reserved
¾ cup dried apricots, chopped
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line with a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner.
In a bowl, combine the butter and brown sugar and mix them, either with a stand mixer or a handheld, at a medium speed until the consistency is smooth. Stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Incorporate the eggs one at a time at a low speed, then the vanilla extract.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Add it to the other bowl, mixing at a low speed. Stir in the chocolate chips and then a cup of the pistachios and the apricot.
Place heaping tablespoons of the cookie dough about an inch-and-a-half apart on the baking sheet. Sprinkle the remaining pistachios over top. Bake until the cookies set but still soft to the touch, about 10 minutes. Repeat the process until all of the dough is used.
NAVIGATOR
There’s nothing subtle about City Works, a sprawling gastro pub that opened earlier this month in the King of Prussia Town Center with no less than 90—nine zero—beers on tap.
By April Lisante
Remember when ordering a brew was as simple as, “Gimme a Bud, please”?
The past decade has seen a national explosion of microbreweries, craft beer houses and specialty gastro pubs, but City Works Eatery and Pour House, which opened earlier this month at the King of Prussia Town Center, is over-the-top by even the aficionado’s standard.
We may never really replicate the intimacy of the Euro pub experience in this country, but good luck bellying up to any bar over there and finding 90 beers on tap, each poured at its optimum temperature into the proper vessel, because that’s what you’re getting at the 9,000-square foot City Works. Ninety. Nine. Zero. A third of which is set aside for local breweries. The remainder comes from far and wide.
Sidle up to the 50-foot bar and take your pick from a 40-foot see-through “cooler.” A fine Scottish ale in a tulip glass. A Belgian dark ale in a pub glass. A flight of brews from a half-dozen countries. Eighty-two to go.
A third of the taps is reserved for local breweries. The remainder comes from far and wide.
City Works joins nearly a dozen other restaurants in the King of Prussia Town Center, which has been billed as a “lifestyle center” that recreates an aesthetically pleasing downtown in an area that’s notoriously lacking one. Designed by the Washington, DC-based The J.B.G. Companies, the Town Center features hundreds of residential apartments that encircle a landscaped retail and restaurant cosmos behind Wegmans and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia inside the Village at Valley Forge. At completion in July, the Town Center will include an LA Fitness, 10 restaurants, and Starbucks, Ulta and XFINITY stores, among others.
The concept behind City Works originated in 2001 as a tavern called Trace in Chicago. It was the brainchild of three Wesleyan University friends who wanted to create an architectural ode to ale on the grandest scale. After opening several gastro pubs in the Chicago area, they debuted their first City Works last year in Minneapolis at—true to their word—a massive 10,000 square feet. (Keep in mind, Minnesota is also home to the Mall of America. So it’s go big or go home there.) The King of Prussia location is part of an unfolding (and ambitious) national expansion that will see other City Works open in the coming months in suburban Miami and Pittsburgh.
“We certainly loved our beer (in college),” says Chris Bisaillon, the CEO of Bottleneck Management Company and a self-professed “beer geek” who joined friends Nathan Hilding and Jason Akemann for the venture. “But it was after college that we saw the growth for the craft beer segment.”
The concept behind City Works is simple: create a beer nirvana that also serves comfort food staples in a classic pub environment. Or, at least, the American-ized, grandiose version of one.
The restaurant seats 279, including 85 on a patio flanked with 25 removable windows to mesh the lively atmosphere inside and out. And there are, of course, TVs. Ten 65-inch flatscreens, plus four 110-inch HD video walls. If you start to find yourself over-stimulated, ground yourself with the bar. The copper shingles were brought in from Utah, the stone, from El Dorado.
Carmen Cappello, an Ambler native who’s traveled the world cooking at high-end, high-volume restaurants, pubs and hotels, including Atlanta’s Ritz Carlton, is charged with ensuring there’s something in your stomach to sop up all that all that alcohol. The grazing ranges from pretzel bites served with an IPA-gouda sauce to filet mignon sliders to an Angus meatloaf with red eye gravy and mashed potatoes. (It’s a menu after a Midwesterner’s heart.)
The menu runs about as deep as the beer list, which means that City Works is destined to become many things to many different people. Much as you may be inclined to settle into a routine, resist the urge and play the field. The longer you can maintain an open mind, the more likely you are to stumble across flavors you wouldn’t otherwise. Not without traveling much further afield than King of Prussia, anyway.
Is there such a thing as giving too much thought and value to what your guests will be glancing at while they overindulge? For The Life Stylist, that answer is a pretty firm no.
Text and photography by David J. Witchell
The holidays begin for me well before even the first Black Friday ad. At that first breath of cool air, my mind starts racing with thoughts of entertaining. Elaborate table settings at holiday dinners are kind of my thing. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve gone around the table and sat in each chair to make sure everything looked right from every guest’s perspective.
These days, the settings are dedicated as much to the family and friends who gather around my dinner table as those who can’t, including my late brother James.
When I began plotting for this year’s round of dinners, my mind turned to a pair of artist-friends who share some of my obsession. Chuck Fischer is an established artist and author who recently launched a home collection comprised, in part, of fabrics, wallpaper and china. He’s also created the White House Historical Association’s Christmas card for four years running. Sherry Michelle is a fast-emerging visual artist who’s becoming best-known for her series of pop-surrealist paintings.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much promise a brainstorming session with them held. So I convened a roundtable—in September.
How early do you start planning your Thanksgiving dinner table?
Sherry It’s an ongoing process throughout the entire year. I always keep my eye open for little things that’d be cute. Once fall begins, I settle on a “color story” for the table and go from there.
What’s the most critical detail for you?
ChuckThe china collection I designed for Lenox, Mosaico D’Italia. With its terracotta, warm browns and soft greens, it’s a perfect fit. I’m also partial to low-cut flowers and candles of varying heights for the centerpiece.
SherryWe have a long table, and the centerpieces always consist of multiple things in a row. I’m a stickler for symmetry. My mom’s special twist is to slip a scratch-off lottery ticket under everyone’s plates.
As much as I try to make these dinners new and unique from year to year, so much of the excitement that surrounds them stems from the nostalgia they evoke.
ChuckI’m still motivated by the happy memories of my grandmother’s kitchen and the wonderful scents of the turkey roasting and the apples sautéing on the stove.
Do you leave your Thanksgiving setting in place and adapt it for Christmas?
ChuckThe day after, I put everything away except the flowers because I’m so eager to start decorating for Christmas. My tree’s usually up by that Saturday.
SherryThat table serves too many functions to keep the setting in place. It’s where I work on my smaller commissions. And my son does his homework there. So nothing lasts past Thanksgiving night.
I find that picking a single color that lends itself to Thanksgiving and Christmas makes the transition from setting to setting a little easier. For Thanksgiving, I’ll play the bright oranges, yellows and coppers off of different-sized, red, hand-blown, glass-ball tea lights. Come Christmas, the tea lights will stay while the rest of the palette shifts to greens and white. Then for New Year’s Eve, I’ll start fresh and pair clear glass with silver and a hint of gold.
Easy as it is to lose myself in this stuff, it’s worth remembering that it’s the people at the table who create the memories, not the settings—even though they’re arranged really artfully.
Tracey and Rod Berkowitz specialize in marrying centuries-old features with the vestiges of modern industry, creating a niche of the contemporary-farmhouse aesthetic that’s all their own. In their own home, it carries the added benefit of holding up to their young family.
By Scott Edwards Photography by Josh DeHonney
Just inside the front door sits a small, square room—10 feet by 10 feet, maybe a bit more. It’s part of the home’s original, 1,200-square foot footprint, which dates back to 1794. To the left, there’s a considerable fireplace. The rear opens to the wide-open addition Tracey and Rod Berkowitz added seven years ago. But the eye settles on the circle of four low-slung lounge chairs in the center of the room. It’s here where Tracey and Rod will settle in at the end of another relentless day, the kids in bed, the only light coming from the crackling fire in front of them. It’s also where their guests, during parties, will play a discreet game of musical chairs.
In a home filled with interesting nooks and features, this little room is Tracey’s favorite place to be, as much for its intimate nature as its unexpected presence. This is what they do. They reimagine the home. They source unusual furniture and accessories from all over the world—crank tables from England, large Moroccan pillows, a quilted-linen wing chair, huge oil paintings on reclaimed metal—that make little sense until they’re seen through the filter of their Lambertville, New Jersey, shop, Zinc Home. There, a raw, urban energy amplifies the familiar modern-farmhouse aesthetic, sharpening splintered, worn-down corners to a precise edge. And they approach their home with the same audacity.
It still needs to be practical
Over the course of a single month late in the summer of 2002, Tracey and Rod moved into their home in Sergeantsville, NJ, a few miles north of Lambertville, got married and opened their store (in New Hope, originally). It was owned by a realtor who, at least, restored the original, wide-plank pine floors that were painted blue by the previous owner.
“We loved the charm of it, but it was a beater,” Tracey says. “The outside needed so much work. It was a hideous mint green. It was peeling. But, I don’t know, as soon as we walked in, we knew this was the house that we had to live in.”
Tracey became pregnant with their first child, Noah, the following summer, and once he grew into a toddler, they finally started to feel the pinch of their precious little house on the prairie. When Tracey became pregnant with their second, Piper, in 2007, it was either move or grow the house. Piper was born in June 2008. They broke ground on an 1,800-square foot addition—about a third larger than the home itself—that November. And it was completed by her first birthday.
The two-story addition extends from the rear of the original home. On the outside, a porch wraps around the front of the home and its south side, erasing any noticeable division between old and new. Inside, two large, open rooms comprise the new space, the living room downstairs and the master bedroom upstairs, which is separated from the en suite bathroom by a partial wall, the only interior wall, really, in the entire addition.
Tracey and Rod knew exactly what they wanted it to look like before a blueprint was even rendered. “And then we worked with our contractor to tweak some things that we thought would be one way and ended up being another,” Tracey says. “But, overall, it’s pretty much like a rectangle.”
They needed the space. But they also seized the opportunity to mold the home into their own shape. The reclaimed wood beams and exposed, raw-side pine that form the ceiling grid (and tie the old in with the new) juxtapose the concrete floor in the living room. The rear walls of the entry and dining rooms in the original home were removed, turning those spaces into extensions of the addition and, in turn, creating the illusion that they’re a bit larger than they actually are. Basically, all of the old was preserved and made practical again, while the addition afforded them new leeway, physically and aesthetically.
“We love industrial,” Tracey says. “But, we wanted to make sure that we could keep that [farmhouse] vibe and not have it look too country—even though we do live in that kind of house.”
With the store as a fallback and a couple whose tastes are constantly evolving, it’s easy to envision a high turnover rate for the furnishings, but the opposite is closer to the truth. Relatively little has changed from the initial installation.
“We spent more money and more time to find just the right pieces, instead of just trying to decorate because we had the space to decorate,” Tracey says. “I get bored with how things are merchandized,” so the accessories are shuffled often. But the furniture—“actually, we’ve had three couches so far,” she says and then laughs at the realization.
“I just love it. But the cushions are all down and it’s super-uncomfortable,” Tracey says. “But I love the couch so much that I’m willing to suffer.”
She is not willing to suffer for it, or any other piece of furniture, for that matter.
“It’s on my to-do list, to make sure I get those stuffed, because then it’ll be super-comfortable and we can go back to where I sit here and Rod sits over there,” on the other sofa, which faces the French one from the other side of the coffee table. “I’m infringing on Rod’s sofa. He’s like, ‘This is my space. But because you had to have this uncomfortable sofa, you have to watch TV with me over here.’ And the kids don’t care. They love it over here,” on the French sofa.
How much, I ask, do two young kids, now 12 and 8, influence what you bring into the house?
“They don’t influence it at all. Like, I don’t care what they think,” Tracey says, laughing with me at her bluntness. Sarcasm tends to not be read as well as it’s heard, so I feel obligated to note that she’s kidding. “Our house is not a museum. The kids are allowed to lay all over everything. The dogs”—there are two of them, both around 85 pounds each—“lay all over the sofas. It’s a totally livable space, which is why I think the kids like it. We don’t put restrictions on them at all.
“However,” she adds, “they do know that, I don’t know if it’s because we’re in the business, they do know that they have to be respectful of the stuff that we have, that stuff costs money, that we look for stuff that’s really special that we may never be able to replace if it was ruined. As with anything, I don’t let them sit on the back of the sofa because they shouldn’t be doing that with anybody’s sofa.”
Later, Noah comes downstairs to alert Tracey that he’s due at soccer practice soon. He’s polite and personable. He stays with us for the next half-hour or so, while we finish talking and Tracey shows me around upstairs. Throughout, he’s wearing his neon-green Nike soccer spikes. Tracey never flinches.
The thrill of the hunt
When you work long hours, six days a week, in an industry as finicky and aloof as theirs, inspiration dries up fast. So it’s not unremarkable that Tracey and Rod’s home remains a wellspring of it for them. There are two reasons for that, Tracey says. One, it took them a long time to arrive here. And two, the home, in her eyes, is still very much a work in progress. The kitchen, an addition somewhere around the middle of the last century, appears next in line. They recently covered the north wall, floor to ceiling, in white subway tile with dark gray grout. Changed the complexion of the room entirely, Tracey says. She fantasizes openly now about replacing the cabinets with a sleek, modern kind.
This is not a couple, though, that loses itself every weekend in renovation projects. The home, after all, isn’t going anywhere. And Tracey feels that in order for them to remain relevant (and feed their insatiable addiction to design), they need to be closer to the action. So, they make regular trips to New York for two, three days at a time—kids in tow.
“I just want them to appreciate what we do,” she says. “A lot of people, their parents leave for work, they don’t know what they do. But my kids have to live with what we do. At times, it stinks for them. I want them to understand that it’s hard. Like, the things that we bring into the store and the things that we bring into the house, we don’t just go to a store, normally, and buy them. We found it somewhere. It has a story.”
Sitting in one of those low-slung lounge chairs in the entry room, Tracey smiles at the memory of the late-night bidding war on eBay that played out before they finally secured them.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” she says. “Then we were like, ‘Oh, shit. I hope they’re nice.’ ”
Tracey insists that of their two kids, their daughter, Piper, is the clear favorite to follow in their footsteps, or at least, walk nearby. She’s creative and she’s already helping with the merchandizing in the store. But, “Noah won’t, for sure,” she says. “He wants nothing to do with it. He wants a nice house. He wants us to do it.”
My tour of the upstairs finishes in his bedroom. It’s the largest upstairs room in the original part of the house, but it’s modest by modern expectations. Still there’s room for a queen-size bed and a leather loveseat and a small table. The walls, up to about waist-high, are covered in square metal diamond plates, the kind you’d find on the floor of an exotic mechanic’s garage. But Noah’s grown out of them, and much of the rest of the motif—he’s 12, remember—so they’ll be coming down soon, likely with a lot of aggravation and cursing from Rod, who’ll be doing the prying. The bed was the first part of the makeover. Noah is filled with ideas for the rest of it.
“We’re gonna do a butcher-block desk. And we’re gonna mount my TV to the wall,” he says. “And we’re thinking of getting a—what’s that called?”
“An end table?” Tracey answers. “We’ll talk about that.”
“I could definitely design, like, boys’ rooms my age,” he says.
“Oh, really?” Tracey says with mock surprise. This is hardly the first time she’s heard this.
“Yeah. I’ll pay people. I’ll have people pay me. And I’ll design their rooms.”
In finally shaking loose from the cold, hard grip of the blue-hair crowd, this winter’s fur is releasing decades of stifled aggression.
By Jenna Knouse
Editor’s Note:This is the first installment from our new contributing fashion editor, Jenna Knouse. Jenna is a graduate of Drexel’s Antointette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, where she earned a bachelor’s in fashion design. “As an eighth grader obsessed with ‘What Not to Wear,’ nothing topped the satisfaction of discovering a new trend,” she says. “In my 22-year-old mind, the same thinking prevails.” Aside from writing for us, Jenna’s in the process of creating her own fashion line. Look for her next in our winter issue, where she’ll be curating a collection of accessories to brighten up the year’s monotone phase.
3.1 Phillip Lim sculpted velvet mini skirt
The runway is fashion calculus—not easy to grasp and often absurd. Fashion design’s been my life for the last few years, and the runway still trips me up. Pun intended.
Just because Gucci shows head-to-toe fur doesn’t mean you should wear a mink stole over a chinchilla onesie. You can, but it’s not encouraged.
So if you and Trish won’t wear it, why do designers show it? Because runway favors the avant-garde, and avant-garde doesn’t mean over-the-top artsy. The French term translates to advanced guard, and the advanced guard was combat’s frontline. In other words, the avant-garde runway pushes culture forward while sacrificing itself. So next time McQueen shows a snakeskin leotard, dodge the bullet and just buy the clutch.
But snakeskin isn’t in this winter, so forget the clutch and skim the trends. Think texture … tactile and visual: graphic furs, velvet, plaids and stripes, metallic. Smash ‘em onto a maxi coat or pair with lacquered denim. Welcome to Winter 2017.
Not your fur-te? Put down the coat and buy velvet. It’s date-night approved, holiday-ready and sold at Knit Wit, in Bryn Mawr. Buy the 3.1 Phillip Lim mini or opt for the joggers. Both come in sapphire and will trigger green envy. Want more? See Stuart Weitzman’s Calare velvet booties. Make sure to pair them with plaids and stripes.
Carven tartan bouclette oversize coat
Plaids and stripes are to fashion as burgers are to food—classic. And this winter, crossing the lines is the equivalent of adding bacon. Stripes are big and plaids are bold, so wear the two together. Splurge for van Noten’s neutral plaid pantsuit and top it off with drama; try the Carven tartan coat, now available at Latrice, in Bryn Mawr.
Right about now, you’re bracing for the onslaught—of food, of booze, of family. There’s no getting around it. But there are a few things you can do to preserve (most of) your sanity.
By Laurie Palau
In theory, the holidays are a good idea. Unplug for a week or so, surround yourself with family and friends, give and get a few gifts, overeat, overdrink. In practice, they get a little murkier. The constant entertaining, the constant indigestion and hangovers, the constant presence of out-of-town family. The first week of January should really be declared a national holiday so that we can recuperate in our own ways from the supposed vacation we just endured.
Until Bose develops barely noticeable, noise-cancelling ear buds, you’re going to have to suffer through your mom’s scrutiny. And you should probably accept by now that those gifts are really just returns-in-waiting. On the bright side, your disappointment’s been so obvious that everyone’s at least including gift receipts now.
In other words, the holidays are what they are. You need to lay claim to those fleeting moments of happiness and let the rest of it go. Easier said than done, I know. But these are a few practices I’ve managed to find great solace in. Feel free to copy and paste into your life as needed.
Know your audience
Forget Martha Stewart. And screw the Barefoot Contessa. One year, I spent months poring over gourmet recipes and settled on a set that required me to hunt down tens of obscure ingredients and prep for hours. No one was especially impressed. They gorged, they drank, they got up from the table and they moved on with their lives. With so many people to feed, it’s OK to aim for the lowest common denominator. That’s your most finicky eater, anyway, not the locavore.
Stick with tradition
In that vein, lean on the dishes you can make in your sleep. For me, it’s bacon-wrapped scallops and crab cakes. I get bored easily, but having two dishes that I barely have to think about goes a long way toward lessening my burden. Plus, you make them year in and year out for a reason.
Give them a drawer
The less your overnight guests feel like an imposition, the less they’ll actually be one. It’s a funny thing; when guests feel like they’re in the way, the more they seem to hover, always wanting to ask for something, but never quite getting there. So head them off. Ask beforehand what they like to eat and drink and stock up. And carve out some space in the closet, along with a drawer or two, in their room. Everyone feels a little more at home when they’re not living out of a suitcase.
Take photos—often
Even when your kids are feuding. Even when you’re otherwise tuning out most of the room. Before you know it, the moment will be gone, for better and for worse, and, either way, you’ll regret not preserving it. Gone are the days when Hallmark moments were the only photogenic ones. In fact, you’ll appreciate the honest depictions a whole lot more—after the fact. Well after the fact.
Breathe deep—often
I’m the furthest thing from a Namaste chick, but when I feel my blood pressure spiking, the surest way to calm myself down is to pause right where I am and take a few deep breaths. You’ll know the moment.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
THE LIFE STYLIST
If you’re exhausted by the thought of digging out the formalwear and trudging to some nondescript, overly expensive party, take a cue for the Life Stylist and ditch convention.
Text + photography by David J. Witchell
Being the eternal optimist that I am, I’ve always held that how you usher in the new year will go a long way toward dictating how you’ll live with it. Which is why my New Year’s Eve is an Event—but far from the conventional sense. I shed the tuxedo and the artificial glamour a while back in favor of a simpler night, one where I’m decked out in pajamas and surrounded by my closest friends and family, all of us savoring each other’s company and a home-cooked meal.
The hosting duties rotate among us. They’re falling to me this year, and, naturally, I started planning months ago. My father was born on New Year’s Eve, and every New Year’s Day, we staged a birthday feast, so the occasion was already a big deal for me. I keep the décor simple. I’ll pare down the Christmas decorations—so last year—and trim the remaining stuff in white, silver and a touch of gold. The dinner table follows the same aesthetic. If I can find them, a few bunches of white tulips are my go-to for the centerpiece; white roses, if not. And pajamas are the extent of the required attire. (It’s proven to be a good excuse to buy a new pair for myself and few more for the guests who “forget” to don theirs.) For the cynical among us, it’s only odd to be sitting around a candlelit dinner table in pajamas if you’re the only one wearing them.
Where Christmas is meant to exude a deep-seated sense of tradition, New Year’s Eve/Day should be pure and fresh and free of such a heavy burden. I’d like to enter the new year the way I’m sure most of us would: with a blank canvas. Easier said than done, but framing it as such can’t hurt. It’s certainly better than waking up to a mess of glitter, half-filled champagne flutes and cigarette butts. Come midnight, I’ll be toasting Janus, the Roman god after whom our first month is named.
Janus presided over both the beginning and the conclusion of conflict, which is why he’s often described as a two-faced god. To Janus. May you reflect upon our year that was and gather insight to help us find our way in the year ahead.
What was your best New Year’s Eve like? Only remember bits and pieces of it?
Sounds about right. That’s the thing: Even if your New Year’s Eve plans meet your every outlandish expectation, you’re still waking up the next morning with a debilitating hangover and a spotty memory of what just transpired. All you do know for sure is that you’re a few hundred bucks lighter in the pocket for it.
This pressure, internal and/or external, to do something on New Year’s Eve is totally unfounded. It’s a holiday celebrated by twentysomethings and eccentrics who need to be penned into Times Square for hours on end. The rest of us are just trying to reenact, what, some overly glorified memory from our youth, a rom-com that led us to believe there’s magic in the air, and we just need to open ourselves up to it?
Instead of fixating on these few precious hours, let’s envision another scenario: You go to bed at a decent hour, the clock ticks past midnight like it always does. You sleep in late and wake up bright-eyed and increasingly energized as you realize you haven’t dry-heaved the day away. In the afternoon, a small group of handpicked friends and family collects in your living room and kitchen and talk and laugh, talk and laugh, over a few simple snacks and a round or two of drinks. No formalwear required. No insatiable urge to over-drink in an effort to justify your outlandish reservation. No expecting the earth to shift on its axis at midnight.
When the sun goes down, they go home and you drift off on the couch, warmed by a bit of bourbon and the satisfaction of a once-lost day well spent.
