Crafting a reaffirming oasis in a cold, dark world.
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Hancock & Moore Novella Sofa (top), Braiding Chair (left) and Brandi Chair.
It’s never too early to start thinking spring—especially when we can conjure it inside, in the cozy warmth. These pieces from the semi-bespoke designers Hancock & Moore and Jessica Charles riff on the Pantone Color Institute’s color of the year, Greenery, a “zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring.” Or money. We’re all thinking it, given the climate. But the dollah-dollah bill’s closer to Pantone’s Treetop shade, y’all. That doesn’t mean, however, that the air of contention that shrouds everything anymore wasn’t part of the consideration. “We know what kind of world we are living in: one that is very stressful and very tense,” Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, told The New York Times. “This is the color of hopefulness, and of our connection to nature. It speaks to what we call the ‘re’ words: regenerate, refresh, revitalize, renew. Every spring we enter a new cycle and new shoots come up from the ground. It is something life affirming to look forward to.” Manifested in furniture like this that would skew edgy even if it was upholstered in a penny loafer shade of leather, yeah, it’s a deep breath of fresh air, but it’s also a little rock ‘n’ roll, which is an attitude that could serve us all well long beyond this interminable winter. —Scott Edwards
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From left: Jessica Charles Hug Chaise, Ronnie Chair and Lucy Ottoman.
Photos courtesy Hancock & Moore and Jessica Charles
A new twist on low-impact modern living is assuming a familiar but substantially upgraded form.
By Scott Edwards
The nature of the work was very different 14 years ago, when Blue Forest Tree House Design and Construction opened up shop in the Sussex countryside. Gradually, though, the elaborate jungle gyms became modest treehouses and then elaborate treehouses, the kind that kids not so much escaped to as adults, with sprawling entertainment centers, wet bars, fire pits and decks with unfamiliar views, all of it fueling a genuine sense of detachment even as it resided literally feet from home.
Remember those basic, precarious treehouses you built as a kid? These are very distant relatives.
The more indulgent the requests became, the more mindful Simon Payne and his brother, Andy, who founded Blue Forest, seemed to be of maintaining the treehouses’ essence, of integrating them into their backyard settings rather than supplanting them. And in doing so, they became a model for a larger trend that began to emerge: low-impact modern living.
Tree Houses Reimagined: Luxurious Retreats for Tranquility and Play, released last fall by the Chester County-based Schiffer Publishing, features nearly 30 such creations, some of which describe an even bolder future: modular, pod-like, even temporary treehouses intended for camping or rental properties. In including site plans and drawings, they’re empowering a new generation with accessibility. The sorts of treehouses that the Brothers Payne are going to build across the United Kingdom over the years to come are only going to look and feel more like actual living spaces. But even without that kind of disposable income, a treetop escape’s increasingly inching within reach of the rest of us.
Are the majority of your clients adults interested, primarily, in building a treehouse for themselves or their kids? I’m guessing the former.
Simon: I would say almost all the treehouses have something for the younger kids. But, we don’t often build for the kids, if we’re honest. And, regularly, the stuff that’s for the kids is probably slides and swings and things like that. And then the treehouse, the actual room itself, could be anything from somewhere for people to have a party to an office to just a place to hide away and read a book. But, yeah, I think you’re right. Probably 95 percent of them are built for grownups.
We’ll just continue to play it, then, like we’re doing something worthwhile for the kids.
Just making a good excuse for it. I think it’s part of the fun. People want to spend time with their families and that type of thing. But, yeah, I think it’s also a grownup indulgence.
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You credit growing up in Kenya with helping to send you down this path. What did your childhood treehouse look like?
Well, there were quite a number of childhood treehouses. They were often like other kids’, sort of two old pallets wedged up in the branches. Generally, you had to climb up through the tree to get in there. They got more elaborate as we grew up and we started to add walls and windows. And then when we were teenagers, we moved to the UK and lived on a farm. We’d set up all sorts of crazy additions, like zip wires, jungle swings, anything that could be deemed as slightly dangerous.
Your childhood sounds pretty typical. I don’t want to say I grew out of treehouses, but at some point I did stop making them. Why do you think you didn’t?
I think there’s an element of, if you enjoy that part of your life, it seems a shame to stop it. I’d been away to university, looked at quite a different career. I worked in Latin America with [a nonprofit] called World Relief for some time and then moved back to the UK. Andy started Blue Forest a couple of years before that. We started working together on a kind of temporary basis, really. And it became a much more permanent thing. We didn’t kill each other. Actually, in truth, we really enjoy working together. It just seemed like a natural thing to do.
I’m sure there’s a part of it that that challenge of constantly coming up with something new that we may not necessarily know how to build right in the beginning, but you have to figure it out, that’s part of what drives both of us. If the structures haven’t evolved with us, I suspect we may have lost the interest. But because the challenge is always there to come up with something different, and bigger and better, it’s kind of kept us hooked, really.
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Do you have your own treehouses now?
Yeah, we do. We built one as an office when we started the business. Actually, we’ve outgrown it, so we’ve turned it into a holiday accommodation, so people can come and stay there. It’s called the Bensfield Treehouse. So, although we do have one, it’s not for the kids. [Simon and Andy each have three, ranging in age from just under two to 11.] The kids are harassing us daily to build them one. But, up until now, theirs have been much more like the ones that we used to build when we were younger. And I think there’s a lot of fun in building it yourself and doing it with the kids in a lower key way. But they are getting more and more dissatisfied every time they see another cool treehouse.
Was there much of a market there before you guys came along?
I think over the 14 years that we’ve been going, it’s become something that people are a bit more aware of. The idea that you could create a fairly elaborate lodge or treehouse, back in the day, it was definitely a very unusual idea. But it was popular.
When people say it goes back to the treehouse you built when you were younger, I think, although the structure’s quite different, the desire people have to do it is the same thing. They want to be outside. They want to be spending time with their kids. Do something that everyone will enjoy. It’s just that it gets done in a more grownup way because you can. When you start seeing the ideas, it’s tempting to want to do something similar.
Tell me about your most elaborate build to date.
It was primarily a family hideaway. They had a large, large garden. And it was just a space to get away, have parties with friends, sleepovers for the kids. And it was all made to a 75-year design life—stainless steel fixings, hardwood oak structure. The whole thing was over about [1,600 square feet] of floor space, and there was a kitchen and wet room. And then upstairs, a kind of domed ceiling for sleepovers. But through the glass roof, you could see up into the canopy. It was just amazing.
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The most eccentric request you’ve fielded, accommodated or not?
You know, one that comes to mind is quite a simple one. We did a project once for a woman who asked for a door for the fairies. I thought she was joking, so I laughed. And then when she wasn’t laughing, I realized she was being serious. I said, “Well, how big is the fairy?” She thought for a second and said, “About a foot high.” So we made an actual little door next to the main door for the fairies. And then recently, we had a request for an inflatable waterslide, a 20-meter-high waterslide to come off the top of the treehouse. That was quite a challenge. In the end, we found someone in the luxury yacht design business that invented this kind of escape chute, a little like the slides that come off airplanes when they have a fire. So we had one made for the treehouse. It can be completely put away or it can be inflated instantly and turn into a waterslide that comes off the treehouse deck.
You do sometimes get to be a kid again and think what you would most like to have if you were building yourself a treehouse. Really, you don’t need to be a kid again, do you? You just need to think, What would you most like to do? And we’re fortunate, occasionally, to have the odd client that can just do it.
You’re equal parts eternal kid and groundbreaking architect.
Yeah, it’s true. Maybe a mainstream architect would think first about all of the practical implications of their design. Sometimes, we’re just thinking about adventure and fun. And then we’re trying to figure out how to deliver it afterwards, which means you may push the boundaries a little bit more. And that’s why people come to us. They don’t want something normal; they want something unusual.
Photos courtesy Schiffer Publishing (top) and Blue Forest Tree House Design and Construction (7)
We may be forever fixated on NYC and LA, but some of the freshest clothes and accessories around are coming out of our own backyard.
By Jenna Knouse
Kendall Jenner? Nope. Gigi Hadid? Nah. New York City’s the only name making fashionistas fangirl. Run by pink-haired style bloggers, celeb culture and megabrand HQs, the Big Apple is American fashion’s Big Cheese. But, cheese is better on a soft pretzel, and soft pretzels are best in Philadelphia.
So look to your backyard—past the sandbox and Steven Starr restaurants—you’ll spot fashion talent bringing cool to a lukewarm industry. Sure, big brands meet a need: They’re the whitespace, the canvas. But, small brands fill a void: They’re the paint, the personality. Forget the sweater everyone’s wearing. Shop homegrown one-of-a-kinds instead. To get you started, here are five labels that are pushing to become nationwide names before the year’s out.
Concrete Polish Jewels
Angela Monaco overhauled granny’s heirlooms. The result? Concrete Polish Jewels. Working out of Northern Liberties, Monaco fuses metal to mineral in timeless but edgy design. And, she’s good at it—her brick-and-mortar, Ritual Ritual, won Best Jewelry for Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly 2016. Why? Concrete Polish is wow, and so are its other offbeat brands. Peers helping peers. Can I get an amen?
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Lobo Mau
Mod is the mood, and Nicole Haddad brings it. Born from a South Philly studio, Lobo Mau is bold and sophisticated, a combo reflecting its Portuguese translation: Big. Bad. Wolf. Nothing’s bigger or badder (in a good way) than a well-dressed woman. Especially if she’s comfy. Win. Oh, and Haddad’s all about collab—fine artist Ryan Parker creates her prints. Share that brotherly love.
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Rebeca Imperiano
Structural, moody, lustrous. Rebeca Imperiano’s eponymous label’s the lovechild of architecture and fashion. Fitting because the designer holds a bachelor’s in architecture and a master’s in fashion. (Shout-out to my alma mater, Drexel University, for the second degree). Out of school only three short years, Imperiano’s aesthetic is impressively mature. Sleekness your weakness? Watch James Bond, buy Rebeca Imperiano.
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West Oak Design
Christie Sommers makes fashion by making an eco-friendly statement. Dress scraps become a shirt, and shirt scraps, a clutch. Her process wastes zilch, and her products are top-notch. Think air-dried, hand-dyed fabrics and easy shapes. Handcrafted locally in Wyndmoor, West Oak Design is earthy, crunchy cool. Look good, feel good and save Mother Nature in the process.
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jenna k.
After graduating in June, I founded jenna k. I’d write a blurb, but I’m too biased to not gush. Check me out online instead or follow me on Instagram.
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Photos courtesy (from the top): jenna k., Concrete Polish Jewels, Lobo Mau, Rebecca Imperiano, West Oak Design, jenna k.
A retrofitted bank barn in Solebury illustrates that intimacy and wide-open spaces can coexist quite well, thank you.
By Scott Edwards · Photography by Josh DeHonney
Kristin Duthie and Scott Minnucci moved into their spanking-new home in January 2015. And then again, this time for real, a few months later. Such is the real-life experience of filming an unscripted home design show.
The construction of their retrofitted barn home was featured on “Barn Hunters,” the host of which, Sean Tracy, is the owner of the Bedminster-based Bucks County TimberCraft and an old friend of Minnucci’s. They worked together on a few prior occasions, Minnucci drafting renderings for Tracy’s clients, but the familiarity of their relationship couldn’t smooth over every awkward bend in what verged, constantly, on becoming an unsustainable pace.
On one occasion, the producers suggested they build a man cave, because it’s what their audience wanted to see. “So I was like, ‘I’m going to do it, but not right now,’ ” Minnucci says. But they pressed, so he, perhaps as much out of fatigue as accommodation, relented. What they ended up with, Minnucci is telling me as we descend a spiral staircase into the basement—and suddenly we’re upon it. “We call it The Implement Wall,” he says.
The custom-crafted, first-floor bar and living room, highlighted by the impossible-to-miss “Implement Wall” (below)
Duthie and Minnucci have adorned their home with tasteful, relatively conservative elements. That said, they’re not beyond making a statement. The Implement Wall, however, is more of a threat, or at least it would be in almost any other home. A floor-to-ceiling installation of rusted (and some free-swinging) tools, it borders one side of their bar, which also fits within the unique context: once mighty barn-turned artifact-turned modern home.
They didn’t have to make it themselves, at least. When Duthie and Minnucci think back now on the filming, the moments that still sit within reach are the late nights—midnight, 1 a.m.— when they were staining and painting, staining and painting. For much of it, it was just the two of them. They managed to lure their most compassionate (and thirsty) family and friends over on the weekends. Toward the end, they started to wonder, How much beer does it take to build a house?
Come January, the home was hardly finished, but the producers needed their gratifying conclusion. So they filled it with furniture, filmed, emptied it just as quickly and finally left Duthie and Minnucci in peace.
A most impressive hay loft Old Bunker Hill, as Duthie and Minnucci named their home after the Revolutionary War holdout in Solebury Township atop which it sits, is constantly shifting shapes before your eyes. Turning off of Phillips Mill Road, just north of New Hope, onto a gravel driveway that meanders through dense woods, the home presents itself as a majestic estate embedded in a cliff, only to shrink down to a modest suburban home once you land at its entrance. A few steps inside the front door, the tongue-and-groove ceiling vaults 24 feet up, and the walls—hand-plastered and tinted to jibe with the dark beams—reach for it, like outstretched arms. Yet we settle into a corner that’s been cordoned off as a living room and it immediately feels intimate. And that experience repeats itself all over the home.
Occasionally, you find yourself in a position where it’s impossible to not appreciate the largeness of the perspective—the second-floor landing, the back porch that stretches across most of the rear of the home and looks down on a steep, grassy slope—but far more often, you’re wrapped in a warmth that’s missing from homes with 10 times as many walls and accessories. Duthie and Minnucci moved here from Village 2, a former resort colony in New Hope where the townhomes are notoriously cramped. Still, they barely added any furniture in the transition.
The iron-and-cable staircase at the center of the home is the lone modern accent in an otherwise rustic design scheme.
They spent a year shopping for fixer-uppers or property when they came upon this lot, just separated from the home at the base of the hill. They’re prolific DIY-ers, so they were open to starting from scratch. Minnucci already designed and built a timber-frame home in Bedminster. They had a friend who bought three-bay hay barn back then but never did anything with it. The natural slope of the land suited the barn’s bank style. Mason John Lanzetta recreated an aged stone wall that mimics a portion of the livestock pen that resided behind the barn’s original iteration and a walk-out basement was built in the area where the animals were once fed.
Tracy and his crew erected the 900-square foot barn—atypical because they generally run rectangular, not square—in a few days. The rest of the house, which Minnucci designed himself, took about a year to complete. He added extensions to the north and south sides, so the barn comprises the home’s core, which makes the large cupola its literal center. The kitchen, a dining area and a living room fill the main floor, along with an iron-and-cable spiral staircase, the home’s only real modern fixture, which winds up to a landing that provides access to a guest bedroom and bathroom and an office. Beyond the kitchen, on the other side of the barn, there’s a walk-in pantry, a powder room, a mudroom and the home’s only hallway.
“I like a lot of flow in a house,” Minnucci says. “I don’t like to interrupt it with a lot of hallways and stairways.”
Any idea how many pieces there are to the barn, I ask. “We didn’t even put them all in,” Minnucci says. “You’ll see a lot of open holes where there were probably a lot more cross-braces.” I visually measure the vertical beam right in front of me and then peer into one of those holes, and just like that, the barn expands and contracts.
Blooming Glen designer Roger S. Wright is responsible for the kitchen cabinetry and much of the home’s furniture.
Simple luxuries
Strangely, the space that feels the most expansive in the home is one of the few rooms with four walls. A dressing room segues from the main-floor master bedroom to the en suite bathroom, where a massive soaking tub anchors a far corner. There’s also a sizable shower with a stream-bed floor, which Duthie and Minnucci installed themselves. Actually, they laid all of the tile in here. The dual-sink vanity was custom-crafted by Blooming Glen furniture designer Roger S. Wright, as was the kitchen cabinetry and much of the furniture throughout the home. For now, a framed, rectangular opening stretches the length of the vanity near the ceiling. I think it’s by design—maintaining the flow—until Minnucci says that it’ll eventually be filled with a hand-blown stained glass window that’s being made by David Duthie, who operates a nearby studio called Bucks County Hot Glass.
They installed a window in the shower because Minnucci really wanted an outdoor shower, and they’re still going to add one, but the window’s a satisfying compromise for the meantime. It is the only compromise, though. The Implement Wall aside, the home’s few obvious indulgences—the spa-like bathroom, the commercial-grade cooking range, the obscenely engineered kitchen faucet—can all be credited as corrections to their former arrangement, which afforded them one full bathroom and a galley kitchen. If they want to soak and cook with room to breathe, it’s understandable.
Duthie and Minnucci laid all of the tile in their master bedroom themselves.
What hooks my attention, however, is a network of old-looking, plantation-style fans that runs across the barn ceiling, connected by belts to an exposed motor on the wall. They were made by Woolen Mill Fan Company, in York County. They seem like such a seamless fit, as do so many of the other details that almost go unnoticed. The flooring is quarter-sawed, reclaimed, re-milled pine, the grain of which is noticeably tighter than what you’ll find in today’s pine boards. And in the kitchen, they’ve hung an old wooden ladder over the island and strung a few pendant lights from it. Turns out, their electrician, Fred Vocke, gave it to them. I expected it to be part of the barn. Nah, Minnucci says. They saw a similar look somewhere else and liked it.
“The neat thing with the barn is you can’t really mess it up,” he says. “You can do just about anything and get away with it, like throw a ladder up like this.”
The heart wants what it wants
Even if they hadn’t endured the onslaught of decisions that come with crafting a home from the foundation on up under the ever-present surveillance of a camera crew, Duthie and Minnucci would be perfectly settled now. A space of their own design, nestled in the woods, all to themselves. Thing is, though, they’re not a couple who ever really wanted it all to themselves.
You must not miss Village 2, I suggest. “Well, we do, because we had such great neighbors,” Duthie says. “And I, particularly, had lived there for a long time. And Maggie [their dog] grew up there, three, four walks a day, barking at all her friends going by. So I miss that part of it. Up here, it’s so nice and private. We have space, and she doesn’t have to be on a leash. But you also miss, when you’re snowed in, I used to bake cookies all day and deliver them. Now I bake cookies and eat them.”
That’s not to imply that they have any regrets or don’t fully appreciate every grain of wood. It’s just to say that there are only so many things you can account for, the home being more than a simple structure where we seek shelter.
In the hope that we won’t be having this conversation come this time next year, some easy-to-follow advice on how to make those New Year’s Resolutions stick.
By Todd Soura
With all due respect to your desire to improve yourself, a resolution’s only as good as your commitment to it. So my aim here is for us to avoid having this conversation come this time next year. I want to channel all of your enthusiasm toward making this not only a worthwhile experience, but an enjoyable one. After all, if leading a healthier, fitter life doesn’t hook you on some deep personal level, you’re just going through the motions, and we both know where that’ll lead.
Be the tortoise
Whether you’re coming off a long layoff or you’re starting from scratch, begin slowly and you’ll greatly enhance the likelihood that you’ll remain consistent. And consistency is the most important thing here. I know everything you’ve churned up online over the last couple of weeks has harped on intensity—and that is a close runner-up—but until you get your legs beneath you, it’s better to imagine yourself as the tortoise rather than the hare.
A big part of that is being realistic in your initial expectations. Don’t plan to workout six days a week when you hardly know what once or twice feels like. Two to three sessions a week is a safe place to start. And try to schedule them for a time you know you’ll always be available, even if it means getting up a half-hour earlier. When the enthusiasm starts to wane, and it will, the last thing you’ll want is built-in excuses, which is pretty much all of life.
Suffer with pride
Look, this is never going to be easy. And if it is, you’re not doing it right. If you’re expecting to reach a place a month from now where you’ll be able to run for miles and miles and do 100 burpees consecutively without breathing all that hard, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Exercise is hard even for the fittest among us, and that would be pro athletes and Olympians. When it stops being hard, they set a new set of goals and adjust their training regimens accordingly. For the rest of us, exercise is the most unpleasant hour of our days. But, on the flipside, you’ll feel like you can get through anything else the day throws at you once you’re done. So put in the work, breathe hard, sweat profusely and suffer with pride, because you’re going to come out of that hole and meet a far sunnier day.
Subtract by addition
As far as your diet goes, I’m sure you’re already well aware of the ultimate goal: to delete as many of the bad foods on a daily basis as you can manage. Which is probably why you’ve avoided doing so until now. In drawing such a line in the sand, we tend to color our foods in extremes. What isn’t healthy is going to kill us. And that, of course, gives a really sour flavor to all the good stuff and a sweet one to everything we’re forsaking. In other words, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.
Instead, don’t be so intentional in revising your diet. Yes, of course, you’ll want to pass on that bagel smothered in half a pound of cream cheese at breakfast. But you’re only going to end up romanticizing it if you sit down tomorrow morning to a bowl of oatmeal. So try this instead: Make yourself the oatmeal, along with a hard-boiled egg and the bagel. Eat the oatmeal and the egg first and, if you still have room, eat the bagel, too. Give it some time. The better you feel and the more you see the connection between what you eat and how you move through your day, including your performance during your workouts, the less you’ll want the bagel. And when the day comes that you finally eliminate it altogether, you won’t even miss it.
The overriding theme here is patience. Be persistent in your workouts, your recovery and your nutrition, but give yourself a wide berth. Start slowly, accept the missteps with the progress and focus on what’s in front of you. That’s all you can control anyway.
Weeks 1 and 2 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 20 minutes of resistance (weight) training and 10 minutes of interval (cardio) training Intensity: 2 out of 5 (1 = a casual, easy-to-maintain pace; 5 = an all-out effort that you can hold only for short bursts at a time.)
Weeks 3 and 4 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 30 minutes of resistance training and 15 minutes of intervals Intensity: 3 out of 5
Weeks 5 and 6 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 30 minutes of resistance training and 20 minutes of intervals Intensity: 4 out of 5
Weeks 7 and 8 Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday Exercise: 30 to 40 minutes of resistance training and 10 minutes of intervals Intensity: 5 out of 5
Kristin Donnelly is a mom, an author, a photographer, a chef and an entrepreneur. And with her first cookbook just out, a household name-in-the-making.
By Kendra Lee Thatcher · Photography by Josh DeHonney
If you don’t already know Kristin Donnelly, you will shortly. She’s seemingly everywhere at once, the way a small flame suddenly catches the kindling.
A regular contributor to the likes of Food & Wine, epicurious, EveryDay with Rachael Ray, Women’s Health and Prevention magazines, Donnelly dropped her first cookbook this summer, Modern Potluck: Beautiful Food to Share (Clarkson Potter), and already has another one in development. She also writes an online journal, Eat Better Drink Better, that’s gripping in its intimacy. An excerpt from the day after the election:
It’s 3 pm on a Wednesday. I’ve finally showered. I lit a candle and I burned sage. I walked to the mailbox and to the new bakery in town and cried with a new friend and ate the quiche she made. I’ve also received tone-deaf PR emails with titles like “Politics suck. This ladle doesn’t.” and resisted the urge to respond with vitriol.
When she’s not writing, or shooting or developing a recipe, Donnelly’s tending to her organic lip balm line, Stewart & Claire, which she developed with her husband, Philip, and to her daughter, also developed with Philip. It all seems too much to be true, so we visited her at home in New Hope and asked her to walk us through a day in her life.
7 a.m. | She’s up. And making coffee straightaway. One Up One Down Coffee brewed in a Chemex Pour-over. “I love the ritual of it,” Donnelly says. “I also love the fact that it’s delivered every other week, so it’s one less thing I have to think about adding to the grocery list.”
7:20 a.m. | As her husband and daughter, Elsa, begin to stir, she makes Elsa’s lunch. “I like to make a big pot of lentils on Sunday to use for lunches during the week. But that doesn’t always happen.” This is one of those instances, so Elsa’s ending up with her favorite lunch: a cream cheese and jam sandwich, a side of broccoli and a couple of apples they picked over the weekend.
7:50 a.m. | Breakfast varies from day to day, but Donnelly’s recent go-tos are muesli with kefir or whole grain toast slathered with jam.
8:25 a.m. | With Elsa off to school, Donnelly dresses.
8:55 a.m. | “I’m really very systematized,” she says, reaching for a leather-bound notebook that’s filled with pages of neatly written notes. “At the beginning of each month, I write a list of goals. Then on Sundays, I write my weekly to-dos. And at the start of each day, I put together my tasks and schedule.”
The window by her desk is filled with a grid of yellow and green Post-its. More lists? “Those? No. No, that’s my daughter’s ‘artwork,’ leftover from a sick day,” she says, laughing.
9:15 a.m. | “I like to start my day with the most brain-taxing tasks first because I simply have the most energy in the morning.” They range from packing Stewart & Claire orders to pitching new accounts to writing.
10:55 a.m. | Herbal tea break.
11 a.m. | “I need mental time to transition from one task to the other,” Donnelly says. Right now, that means scanning her inbox and updating social media.
11:20 a.m. | Writing. Her approach is simple, but strict: Don’t wait for the deadline. And don’t stare at a blinking cursor. She sets aside an hour each day to write. No more, no less.
12:25 p.m. | “On my best days, I have lunch planned out—a hearty salad with lentils,” she says. “I love an energizing lunch.” Today, however, leftovers will suffice.
1 p.m. | Donnelly’s afternoons are reserved for testing recipes, photo shoots, producing podcasts and exercising. What that often means is that work and dinner are knocked out in one act.
3:35 p.m. | Coffee break. Donnelly walks over to Factory Girl Bake Shop to meet a friend over an ancient grain scone.
4:15 p.m. | “I sometimes choose between working out and straightening up,” she says. “Working out has been winning.” Yoga is her go-to exercise, but, when the weather was kinder, she also liked to ride the towpath.
5:30 p.m. | Donnelly picks up Elsa from school and heads home to make (or polish off) dinner. Inevitably, a dance party breaks out. Anything by Taylor Swift and Bob Dylan’s kids station are their tracks of choice. All the while, Elsa’s helping to stir, peel and set the table.
6:30 p.m. | “We sit down to dinner as a family every night,” Donnelly says, glancing into the dining room. Here, being present is sacred.
8:30 p.m. | The dishes are done and Elsa’s tucked in, which leaves a small, fleeting window. “I’ll either do something luxurious, like read my favorite food magazines or cookbooks, or something real,” Donnelly says, “like watch ‘Gilmore Girls’ and fold laundry.”
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
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.
