A DIY idea that’ll inspire the reimagining of your backyard patio or deck. And, how to keep your skin supple while you savor the summer. By David J. Witchell
It feels like a lifetime ago that I’d slather myself with baby oil then head outside, armed with my foil reflector, and bake under the summer sun for hours at a time. I don’t know what I was thinking. Even not knowing what we know now, I’m a blonde, fair-skinned guy.
I love the outdoors. That hasn’t changed. But I’m much smarter now about how I spend my time in it. The reflector’s long gone, and the baby oil’s been replaced by sunscreen. That was just common sense coupled with maturity. And a skin-cancer scare. Harder to come by was an outdoor space where my family could enjoy all the best parts of a sun-drenched afternoon without being sapped and baked in the process.
Our backyard patio is especially narrow and long, so finding an appropriately sized dinner table wasn’t any trouble. Finding one, however, with an accompanying umbrella that safely reached everyone around the table was impossible. An umbrella that size would have been too large anyway. And then it hit me. I ordered a few small sails online, erected some tall cedar trees that had toppled over in the yard and strung up the sails between the trunks and the rear of the house to create a taut, overlapping canvas roof. Total coverage, and it’s a conversation piece.
David J. Witchell is the co-owner of David J. Witchell Salon & Spa, in Newtown and Lahaska,and The Boutiques at 25 South, in Newtown.
Photos by David J. Witchell
[divider]Radiant, Not Radioactive[/divider]
These days, I suppress the pale and pasty with Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare Alpha Beta Glow Pads, applied weekly. For more comprehensive coverage at the salon, we turn to Jane Iredale, who created her makeup and skincare collection with the singular aim of nourishing the skin with every application. If she can work that kind of magic with makeup, the sun’s a nonstarter. Here, she offers a routine that’ll enable you to savor and survive the summer. —DJW
Face first
Wear at least SPF 15 on your face, neck and ears every day. I use PurePressed Base Mineral Foundation, which also has concealer, powder and broad-spectrum sun protection (SPF 20). If I’m going to be severely exposed, I’ll apply the Dream Tint Tinted Moisturizer (SPF 15) first and then the foundation. I’ve never burned with that combination.
Hand in hand
Don’t neglect your hands. The HandDrink Hand Cream (SPF 15) protects and hydrates. It’s also gorgeously fragrant. I pop it in my purse and reapply throughout the day.
Head’s up
Be diligent. The sun is responsible for 80 percent of the signs of aging. Reapply your sunscreen every couple of hours, and even more often than that if you’ve been sweating or swimming. And don’t assume that a mineral makeup will protect you. Look for the SPF rating on its label.
We know you’re eyeing up a whole lot of nothing, whether it be by the pool or the ocean, but there’s a lot that’s about to go down. We’re not saying that you need to be there for all of it (for now), but you should at least get to know the major players so that you can hit the ground running once you return your lounge chair to its upright position. Portfolio by Scott Edwards
Ashley Smalley | Owner | The Selvedge Yard | New Hope
The brimming displays of the N3rd Collective.
The Selvedge Yard is distinctly cooler than I am, but I still felt a kinship with every inch of its 600 square feet from the first time I lingered within its walls—the Conrad Leach iconography prints, the midcentury blueprints doubling as wallpaper, the Silver Piston Indian Head pendant and chain, the red button-down made from shop-rag fabric that Ash pulls down and holds up close so I can appreciate the stitching, which is done by a 1930s Merrow sewing machine—and the $175 price tag.
The shop opened last summer, but it was an illustrated lifestyle before that. Ash’s husband, JP, has worked in all facets of fashion. Seven years back, looking for a creative outlet beyond his work, JP started The Selvedge Yard, the blog, with the intent to become the Internet’s denim aficionado. “And I got bored shitless within like three weeks,” he says. So he grew his scope and latched onto something more intimate—“All the things,” he says, “that have turned me on throughout my life, that make me who I am.” Which, of course, distinguishes him from none of the countless other bloggers. What does: “I grew up in a house with Harleys, and pot and dobermans. And a lot of the icons for me, growing up, were Evil Knievel, and Jungle Pam and Linda Vaughn. Even Fonzie.” Straightaway, there was a connection.
JP and Ash are big on community. They live in New Hope, too, and like to refer their customers to their favorite spots around town. When they opened the shop, they called upon their massive online community, as they refer to it, filled with artisan designers, to help them stock it.
“I look around and I don’t see just product,” JP says. “I see people’s faces, I see relationships.”
And just as JP’s life has grown to encompass Ash, they’ve begun to incorporate women’s clothing into The Selvedge Yard. Now that they’re both getting what they need out of the shop, you and your other half can too.
Michael (pictured) and Dino Kelly-Cataldi | Owners | Dino’s Backstage & The Celebrity Room | Glenside
Beneath the charcoal and chocolate surfaces, the red wallpaper that looks like tufted leather, the shimmering chandeliers and the larger-than-life portraits of Jane Russell and Jean Harlow, beneath the $1.5 million-, yearlong-renovation, Dino’s Backstage & The Celebrity Room comes down to pure devotion.
When Michael and Dino got together 18 years ago, both were scraping bottom. Michael had just closed his shop and Dino lost his restaurant. Slowly, they began to lift each other up. Dino got a corporate job. But Michael was never going to abandon his singing. In time, Dino came to realize that his love of Michael would lead him back to the unthinkable. This won’t be his restaurant, though. It’ll be theirs. “We’re taking a leap of faith here,” Dino says. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t really matter because we still have each other.”
“I love the sentiment of that,” Michael counters. “But I’ve never been so sure of something.”
When it opens in early June, Dino’s will be an entirely unique breed, a midcentury-era supper club, complete with a decadent dining room and a seductive cabaret lounge. “I’m sort of thinking, like, 1948,” Michael says. “Why, in my mind, 1948, I’m not quite sure.” Either way, it’s meant to invoke a day when going out was an indulgent affair, when all involved, right down to the hosts, could exit the grind and slip into a virtual reality where anything felt possible for a few hours. And usually was.
Elizabeth Cassel | Owner | Baby Scout and Scout Salvage & Vintage Rescue
Cassel’s been picking for several years now. She knows where to look and when. And on a typical haul, she figures that 20 percent is exceptional. The rest is passable. She was selling the exceptional stuff before she could unload it from the truck and move it into her Old City shop, Scout Salvage & Vintage Rescue. Granted, it was a good problem to have, but it was still a problem. Sometimes it wouldn’t even make it that far. She’d snap a pic of her find onsite and post it to Instagram, where it was almost always snatched up before she made it back.
So Cassel grew her ranks. She rounded up some friends from The Clover Market, where she also sold, and together, last October, they opened the N3rd Collective in her old storefront. She describes it as “part-boutique co-op, part-small business incubator.” As the collective took off, Cassel, five months pregnant when it launched, had her first child. And she happened upon her next frontier in the process: Baby Scout. We talked in early May, while her son napped. The concept was just taking root then. She’d decorated his nursery, floor to ceiling, in vintage Sesame Street, and a new world exposed itself: kid-friendly vintage. “He has some really funny vintage T-shirts that are waiting for him to grow a little bit bigger,” she says, with a laugh.
Cassel envisions everything from clothing to bedroom furniture, functional as it is fashionable, as has become Scout’s reputation, comprising the collection, which she’ll sell online. That’s likely the direction for Scout too. By the time you read this, Scout will likely be gone from the collective. It’ll live on, fear not. But she’s a mom now, and time is fleeting.
Sarah R. Bloom | Visual Artist | Narberth
The last 18 months have been a rollercoaster for Bloom. On the breakneck descents, she screams to get off. But once she’s safely stowed back in the bay, she steels herself to go again. And again.
“The last year has been a great year for me as far as attention goes with work,” Bloom says. “It’s also been, like, emotionally, the worst year of my life. It’s a very interesting dynamic.”
The onslaught of attention started with a two-minute profile in a documentary series called Wastelands. It posted on a Thursday night in January 2015, and by midday the next day, The Huffington Post and The Daily Mail had requested interviews. Before the year was out, Bloom was named Philadelphia magazine’s favorite visual artist and one of the “28 Badass Women You Should Be Following On Instagram.”
What drew them to her: Self-portraits that are, at turns, vulnerable, dark, funny, combative, gripping. In 2006, she was invited to join a Flickr group called “365 Days,” where its members took and posted self-portraits every day for a year. Bloom figured she’d last a week. But she fed off the support and started to look at herself differently. Midway through Year Two, she began shooting herself amid the ruins of old buildings, as she’s pictured here.
“I was thinking a lot about aging at that point, or starting to, and starting to notice things about my own body that were changing,” she says. “It felt like an apt metaphor to use the abandoned spaces as, like, a reflection of my inner state, and then, eventually, my physical state.”
A couple years back, Bloom, still shooting daily, began framing her years with themes, for added purpose. This year’s: “Feminist Manifesto,” she says with a knowing laugh. She’s pairing black-and-white portraits with quotes from legendary feminists and, conversely, absurd comments made along the campaign trail. Should be no shortage of inspiration this summer.
David Jansen (fifth from left) | Owner/Chef | Jansen | Mt. Airy
Grilled Norwegian salmon, potato and oyster fondue.
When Jansen left The Fountain at The Four Seasons after more than two decades there, his mind was on his three kids, not another restaurant. He spent the next five years being a full-time dad, coaching his youngest daughter’s soccer and softball teams, making them dinner, describing it, in the end, as “the best decision I made.”
But a chef with Jansen’s pedigree—he entered the professional kitchen 35 years ago, at 14—was always going to return cooking. That time came last October, when he toured a rundown, 300-year-old stone building along Germantown Avenue, the latest in a long list of potential restaurant sites. But this one held his attention. It’s close enough to his Chestnut Hill home that his daughter comes around most days to do her homework upstairs, at the charcuterie, cheese and raw bar. And his son works there. (His oldest daughter’s a college sophomore.)
Jansen always claimed ownership of The Fountain, but he was never able to make it truly his own, not like this. But it’s still hard to tell, naturally, where The Fountain ends and Jansen, the restaurant, begins—the perfectionist, French-based cooking techniques, the hyper-attentive service. The white tablecloths are still pronounced, too, but the formality’s been shed. And the menu’s more agile, though hardly cutting-edge. Jansen may have been away for a while, but he hasn’t forgotten who he is. “I don’t do foams,” he says. “I do good sauces, good soups. I cook fish properly.”
Photos: (Ashley Smalley/The Selvedge Yard) Josh Dehonney; (Michael Kelly-Cataldi/Dino’s Backstage & The Celebrity Room; Elizabeth Cassel/N3rd Collective; David Jansen/Jansen) Matthew J. Rhein; (Sarah R. Bloom) courtesy Sarah R. Bloom
Respected as they are for their style and their resourcefulness, Ginger Hall and David Teague are even more particular about what they bring into their Solebury home. The result is a pure extension of them. By Scott Edwards · Photography by Josh DeHonney
For the better part of an hour, the conversation comes easily as we move from room to room. Then we head outside to take advantage of the fading, unseasonable warmth, pull up chairs on the flagstone patio and start to play a game. The house is burning down. What are you saving? Silence. Punctuated by concerned looks.
In a town loaded with vintage, David Teague and his wife, Ginger Hall, are maybe its most widely revered collectors. Their scavenging’s taken them beyond the flea markets and estate sales across the Mid-Atlantic to some off-the-grid corners of Japan and Europe. His Lambertville, New Jersey, store, America Antiques & Design, has been a valuable resource for Ralph Lauren and his ilk for years. Ginger’s eye is just as keen. For a while, she stocked a corner of the store with dresses that were frequently cherry-picked by the bohemian label, Free People. Early last year, she took over the second floor and opened her own women’s boutique called Compromise Lodge.
They live across the river, along a pitched stretch of picturesque road in Solebury Township. “It’s a real farmhouse,” David says. Then he immediately clarifies himself. “It’s a farm worker’s house, as opposed to a plantation.” Relative to their neighbors’, it’s a small home. Relative to any home, it’s small. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. And, really, it’s one bedroom because Ginger’s claimed the other as her boudoir. But the physical limitations have only honed their resourcefulness. Nothing is an afterthought.
“I think because the house is so small, we both have a sensibility in editing,” Ginger says. “We buy things as we find them, not as we need them. We just learned that otherwise, you don’t get the right thing or you pay too much if you’re too eager to find it.”
“We’re afforded the luxury that we can always use the gallery as a way to feed this,” David says. Or purge it. “Someday next month, we may find a really cool pair of lamps and say, ‘Oh, my god. That would be even better in the kitchen. Let’s swap them out.’ We’ll take these lamps out, put them in the shop and make a profit on them.”
“It’s a small footprint-thing,” Ginger says. “I hate all those terms—I’m sorry to interrupt—but it is. When you really make a commitment to live small and kind of stick to it, that dictates everything you bring in and don’t bring in. Like, I sell clothes, but I can’t keep as many as I want. I don’t have the space. It’s a very thoughtful process. It’s nice if it’s made by someone you know or just handmade in general.”
They have a longtime writer friend who, on his last visit, said something that resonated with them: “I love your place. It’s so truthful.”
Quantifying the unquantifiable Back to the fire’s-ravaging-the-home challenge. The trouble, it’s become apparent, is that they play this game all the time.
“It’s kind of our litmus test to bring something into the house,” David says. “It has to be that kind of thing that you would grab on your way, jumping out the window, if there was a fire. We have hundreds and hundreds of things in the store that obviously we’re drawn to, otherwise we wouldn’t have purchased them. Some of them, when you sell them, it’s hard to say goodbye. But the things that are here are the things that we couldn’t say goodbye to. So, that’s a tough question for us.”
“I’m really sentimental about stuff,” Ginger says. “There are so many things that, for different reasons, I feel very attached to.”
To define their criteria, once and for all, David says: “It doesn’t come home with us unless it’s really kind of special, and has a great story and it’s rare.”
Nonetheless, eventually, they come up with answers. Ginger names the steel lamps that David made that sit on their nightstands. He forged four altogether shortly after they bought the house about 15 years ago, reluctantly sold two of them for a huge price and promptly realized he’d never part with the other two, an instinct that’s only solidified since the death of the friend he made them with.
David leaves us and returns a moment later with the smallest shoe I’ve ever seen. “You love that shoe,” Ginger says to him. It’s a girl’s or a very petite woman’s brown leather shoe with a black, stacked-leather heel. David figures it’s about 125-years-old. Again, he reluctantly gave up its mate to a close friend who hounded him for it—and then turned around and sent it to John Galliano to get him to come to his show at New York Fashion Week. (It worked.)
Needless to say, Ginger and David don’t stop—can’t stop—there.
Fashion follows function
The boudoir may sound like an indulgence—and Ginger admits that she feels like it is—but the lone closet in the master bedroom is about a foot deep and a couple feet wide. David lined it with shelving and uses it to store his shoes and accessories. A narrow stairwell arrives at a two-foot by two-foot landing on the second floor. To the left, the bedroom. Straight ahead, the only bathroom. And to the right, the boudoir. Clearly, this is the only functional arrangement.
In lieu of closet space, there’s a massive “breakdown armoire” from Germany (named as such because it breaks down into several pieces) and a curvaceous Brazilian dresser in the bedroom that came in through a window with most of the rest of the furniture up here. In the boudoir, a stack of embossed leather suitcases from the thirties sits against the far wall. “My clothes are in there, yeah,” Ginger says. “It’s a commitment. But it feels normal, I don’t know.”
The mirror hanging over the vanity next to them is 18th-century Italian. The rest of the room is arranged just like a boutique, right down to the tall display case that houses her jewelry and the freestanding clothes rack. An S-shaped loveseat sits in the middle of the room. And a miniature, 19th-century Swedish chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Its partner hangs directly across the landing, over the bed from Buenos Aires.
Most of the dining room—for all intents, the home’s central throughway—is occupied by a dining table that David made from a 200-year-old board that once comprised half of a family bed in Burma. It’s bracketed on its two long sides by industrial-looking steel braces. On top sits a giant clam shell, which happens to store wine bottles nicely within the grooves of its opening. They can seat eight in here, David says, but it’s tight. They do most of their entertaining in the warm weather, when the patio and the studio are at their disposal.
Home away from home
Fond as they are of their home and its contents, Ginger and David are most comfortable in the former sculptor’s studio behind the home and, maybe even more so, in the intimate cove wedged between the two.
They planted pine trees on the one side when they first moved in that now stand 20 feet tall, easily. The ones on the opposite side grew on their own accord. They create the effect, along with the house and the studio on the other sides, of sealing the patio off from the outside world.
The fire pit at the center is a 19th-century Victorian flower urn that David found in Massachusetts. Scattered around it sit several white metal lounge chairs of various sizes and shapes. On top of a few of them are pillows made from stuffed old Japanese mailbags and German hops sacks. There’s a framed five-foot by five-foot white board attached to the backside of the house. Directly across the patio, a projector’s fixed in a studio window. It’s an easy scene to envision: balmy summer night, sparks floating up through the air, quiet conversation, the occasional burst of laughter, David’s arty movies playing in the background.
With its bank of salvaged windows spanning the entire far wall, the studio has the feel of a pavilion. It’s a long, wide-open space. To the right, a large projection screen, in front of which sits a midcentury modern-looking couch. Behind that is a comfy queen-size bed with a pillow-y, white down comforter. And behind that, now all the way on the far left of the room, is a big cast-iron, wood-burning stove. They just installed a heating and air conditioning system, but the lack of it was never much of a deterrent. “I’ll walk through the snow to come out here,” David says. “We don’t have a fireplace in the house, so I love having a fire.”
In the fall, when the apple tree just beyond the bank of windows is dropping apples faster than they can collect them, they’ll lie in that bed at night, the stove radiating a few feet away, and listen to the deer devour the apples littering the ground.
The building, David believes, was erected sometime in the thirties or forties and converted into a sculptor’s studio about 20 years later.
“I loved what this was,” David says, motioning over his right shoulder, to the house. “But this building,” nodding toward the studio, “is what really, really spoke to me. When I came out to Bucks County originally from Philly, I was drawn toward the architecture, toward the barns. I rented probably four or five different barns.”
Just as valuable as the aesthetic appeal was the space to set up a workshop to build his furniture and restore their home.
“This is like a 15-year project for us,” David says. “It’s a pleasure. It’s not a job … trying to improve upon it and respect the life that it had.
“I don’t know that we’ll ever be done, done, done. But I think we’re getting close,” he says. “I want to do a little bathroom [in the studio]. Eventually, in our retirement, [the studio] will be a complete home. And maybe we’ll rent one or the other. And then do some traveling and get away from some of these winters up here.”
“You don’t want any strangers [renting],” Ginger says to him.
“I don’t want any strangers,” David concedes. “It looks good on paper.”
It’s no small concession that my burr grinder and French press reside on the kitchen counter. My wife takes the rather hard line that the counter and the island are for food prep, not storage. She relented only because she realized the longer I go without coffee, the worse the morning goes for both of us. The summer’s another exception. Any day now, our garden (her garden, really) is going to start spewing cucumbers and jalapenos faster than we can pickle them. And the onslaught’s going to remain pretty steady through the last tomato and ear of corn in September. All the while, the fridge and counters are overflowing. The best we could ever hope for was to keep the piles separate. Until this summer. Turns out, we can store our fruits and veg and show them off, too. The handcrafted “garden-to-tableware” collection by Heirloom Home and Studio, in Glenside, is modeled after those familiar paper farmers market containers. Only these are made out of porcelain, so they’re sturdy as hell. And a significant upgrade from the mismatched plates, bowls and Tupperware we’ve been using—and trying to hide. Now we’ll be basking in our bounty, even if it’s still in the way. —Scott Edwards
Heirloom Home and Studio, 2227 Mt. Carmel Avenue, Glenside.
The present has a hard time holding our attention anymore. We live in a click-and-swipe culture. If you don’t like what you see, move on to the next page. There’s a price to pay for that, of course: never truly appreciating what we have. But the challenge to stay on top—and, for the most ambitious among us, ahead—of it all tends to run right over those concerns. Because we’re in the business of stoking that very fire, we asked around to find out what we’ll be pining for next. Here’s what we heard back.
“Ceramics are becoming more accessible. Lauren Mabry, her pieces, for being fine artwork, are not ridiculously expensive. And they’re beautiful. She really thinks of her ceramics as paintings. Roberto Lugo tells the story of his life through his ceramics. They’re functional pieces—teapots, jars—but they’re fine artwork. Edgewood Made is very simplistic, functional, but also high design.” Rachel Zimmerman
“Small spaces that live large. People are obsessed with this concept lately. Everyone wants to streamline, from empty nesters to student loan-burdened millennials, in no small part because efficiency no longer means cramped. More thoughtful designs, like floor-to-ceiling windows and vaulted ceilings painted white, can make a space feel much larger than it is.” Lisa Furey
“We’re seeing a desire to create a sense of place through sustainable landscapes. We’re always considering the existing framework of a site, public or private, so that we can incorporate the natural elements as organically as possible. And we’re collaborating with local fabricators and artisans. It’s just as important to us that the fiber of the community be represented in our designs.” David Fierabend
“We’re selling oil paintings that are painted on reclaimed metal. They range in size from four feet by five feet to six by eight. The more oversized, the faster they go. Same for another collection of simple phrases, like “I Love Us,” painted on five foot-tall canvases. The more white space, the more versatile they are.” Tracey and Rod Berkowitz
“There’s now so much access to the digital world that people are becoming desensitized and the focus is shifting to creating what’s not readily available on the Internet. I’ve been featuring a lot of bespoke furniture in my designs. It’s specific to someone and it’s an instant heirloom.” Michele Plachter
“My weakness is vintage ephemera and really unique collectibles. In such a digitally driven world, I love incorporating maps, globes, antique books, prints, photographs and postcards into my home. They’re so tangible. And they speak of another time completely. I love to imagine the stories behind them. Having these things in my home brings a warmth that you just don’t get from an imported knickknack. My new favorite resource for such things is the N3rd Collective, in Old City, which is comprised of Hoof & Antler, freshvintage and Scout Salvage & Vintage Rescue, all longtime Clover vendors.” Janet Long
“More artists are experimenting with side collections, taking the skills that they have and creating a business. You’re still buying something that’s fine art as long as it’s treated in a way and editioned in a way that it’s still considered fine art, but it may not be at the same price point.” Rachel Zimmerman
“Pinot noir has been popular for a while now—since Sideways, at least—but lately I’ve struggled to keep it in stock. The New York Times featured Oregon pinot back in early January, which seemed to trigger a renewed interest in all regions.” Adam Junkins
“Materials are changing a lot. Lyn Godley, for example, is using fiber optics. They’re photographs that are printed and then hand-colored, and then they’re embedded with fiber optics. So the light is really subtle, and it adds dimensionality to the piece.” Rachel Zimmerman
“The craft beer crowd has been pushing for higher alcohol content-brews for the last few years, but the trend seems to be reversing. Interest is gaining by the week in the more easy-drinking ‘session beers.’ They’re lower in alcohol but every bit as flavorful, if not more so, than the stronger beers.” Adam Junkins
“We’re drawn, right now, to industrial pieces from England, France and Belgium as much for the quality as their look. In particular, we can’t keep ‘crank tables’ in the store. (They’re tables with industrial bases and manually-adjustable table heights.) For good reason; they’re great looking and crazy-versatile. We’ve also been bringing in a lot more unusual upholstered pieces as of late—midcentury with a bit of a twist. We have an amazing wing/egg chair in the store that’s half leather, half quilted linen. And, oversized, dramatic lighting—imagine a huge glass chandelier over a crank table.” Tracey and Rod Berkowitz
“Lately, we’ve been doing all kinds of fermentation and preserving. We’ve been routinely making crème fraîche, kimchi and yogurt for sometime now. But we began playing with those concepts in different ways that fall well outside the norm, like fruit kimchi, which could offer an entirely different way to approach the condiment, potentially as a dessert. We’re also tinkering with using fermentation and yeasts as flavoring components. Curing has become a standard for many things here. Lardo, bacon, venison, egg yolks and various cabbages and fruits are curing at any given time. We’ve always loved making cured egg yolks, which have an amazing, cheese-like consistency. But now we’re looking into how we can safely and usefully ferment them over a longer period of time.” Andrew Kochan
“The ceiling has officially come off the craft cocktail movement. There are so many resources available anymore, between books and sites, that almost anything is possible. Barrel-aged coffee-pecan bitters, you think, would really elevate your go-to whiskey cocktail. Chances are, someone else had the same thought, or one close enough to it. Hop online, and within a few clicks you’ll find a barrel and a recipe.” Adam Junkins
“There’s a blending of the science and art worlds. A lot of jewelry now is 3D-casted, and I think that’s benefitted both the artist and the collector. It allows someone like Doug Bucci to do more pieces at a time because there’s not as much handwork involved, which, in turn, lowers the price.” Rachel Zimmerman
“Moroccan pillows and throws with lots of interesting patterns and textures can create a beautiful juxtaposition with simple accessories.” Tracey and Rod Berkowitz
[divider]Our Experts[/divider]
Rachel Zimmerman is the founder and director of InLiquid Art & Design, a nonprofit hub for close to 300 visual artists in and around Philly. Come June, it’ll host the wildly popular Art for the Cash Poor sale, where budding collectors can stock up on pieces priced under 200 bucks.
David Fierabend is the owner and lead landscape architect with the Hopewell, New Jersey-based Groundswell Design Group, which has been busy (a severe understatement) greening up all corners of the city, between the Spruce Street Harbor Park, beer gardens in Center City and the forthcoming Pearl Street art initiative.
Lisa Furey is the owner and designer of Barefoot Interiors, in Bala Cynwyd. She was featured last year by HGTV as part of its “Fresh Faces of Design” portfolio in recognition of a 690-square foot, farmhouse-style cottage she designed in South Carolina’s Low Country.
Michele Plachter is the owner and designer of Michele Plachter Design, in Center City. She specializes in modernizing residential interiors. Her influence reaches from Washington Square to Villanova, Mount Airy to Newtown Square.
Adam Junkins is our resident mixologist. He’s also a partner and the sommelier at Sovana Bistro in Kennett Square.
Andrew Kochan is a co-owner and -executive chef of University City’s Marigold Kitchen, which consistently proves itself to be one of the most forward-thinking (and secretive) kitchens around. It currently holds down the 14-spot in Philadelphia magazine’s compilation of the 50 best restaurants in the city.
Janet Long is the founder and director of The Clover Market, which has become the launching pad for every indie home goods and accessories label across the region. She’s so beloved that even after the designers establish themselves, they continue to show at Clover.
Tracey and Rod Berkowitz are the owners (and scavengers) of the always-inventive vintage home goods store zinc home + garden, in Lambertville, NJ. They have an uncanny knack for reimagining decades-old industrial fixtures as the touchstones of a modern home.
Photo: Composition of enclosed cylinders,” 2015, by Lauren Mabry. Photo courtesy of Lauren Mabry
Nothing’s ever going to make spring cleaning enjoyable. But it’s a lot less daunting when it doesn’t loom over you like one giant, weekend-sucking chore.
By Laurie Palau
Spring. (Yay!) Cleaning. (Ugh.)
The weather outside is so inviting. Yet, standing at that window, I’m filled with dread, because I know what awaits me when I turn around. The remnants of our months-long hibernation. It’s gotta be dealt with, no way around it. After all, the only thing worse than spring cleaning is summer cleaning.
My game plan is to break the house down into four zones—the kitchen, the closets, the bathrooms and the garage—and to deal with each one a weekend at a time. What?! you’re probably thinking. It’s bad enough losing one weekend to this, and now you want me to turn over a month’s worth? We’re looking at a couple of hours, tops, over each one of those weekends. Isn’t that more digestible than a 48-hour cleaning slog? And let’s be honest; most of that time was going to be spent procrastinating.
What follows is a checklist for each zone. Efficiency, baby!
Weekend No. 1 The Kitchen
Clean out the pantry and fridge. Dispose of the expired food, along with the questionable stuff. Spices, too. They’re only good for a year. Wipe down every surface, and don’t forget the crisper.
Sort through the Tupperware. Winter is prime time for collecting takeout containers. Toss any bottom that doesn’t have a matching top.
Streamline the gadget drawer. Anything that hasn’t been used in the last six months, donate. And pare down multiples (spatulas, wooden spoons, peelers) to no more than three.
And the junk drawer, while you’re at it. Everything that’s broken (dried-out pens) or serves no obvious purpose (random keys, a four-month-old receipt from Whole Foods), toss. Then group the remaining items together by like.
Weekend No. 2The Closets
Ditch the dry cleaning bags and hang those clothes on regular hangers already. Those bags can suffocate a closet. Not to mention, they retain harsh chemicals.
Sort through all your clothing and accessories, including every last pair of shoes. This is no time to get sentimental. If it hasn’t been worn in the last six months, donate or consign it. Unless it’s torn or stained or stanky. Trash that stuff, obviously. Then organize your new pared-down wardrobe by type—casual, athletic, office-wear, formal—and color. It may seem a bit OCD, but it’ll make getting dressed so much easier.
Weekend No. 3The Bathrooms
Streamline your medicine cabinet and under the sink. Toss all the expired medications, along with every piece of makeup and hair and cleaning product that’s over a year old.
Give your sheets and towels the same treatment you did your Tupperware. Whittle your stockpile down to two (complete) sets of cotton sheets and one flannel set and two sets of towels for each full bathroom. Donate all the loose ends and overly worn pieces. (Animal shelters are always in need of towels and blankets.)
Weekend No. 4The Garage
Purge everything that’s expired, damaged or hasn’t been touched in over a year. (Your teenage son’s never gonna ride that scooter again.) The garage can become a dumping ground in the winter. If yours is serving as an extension of the kitchen pantry, move that stuff to your actual pantry. There should be plenty of room now.
Then, organize everything that’s left by like—yard supplies, sports gear, household tools—and arrange it by zones so that it stays organized beyond this weekend.
Consider yourself free to enjoy the great outdoors. And by that, I mean, of course, the lawn needs cutting and the flower beds are begging to be weeded.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
A Hawaiian shirt does not make the tourist. A wrinkled shirt, of any kind, does.
By Laurie Palau
You plunked down a staggering deposit this winter to make sure that you’re exactly where you want to be when the time comes: In a palatial, beachfront house at the very height of summer. Five bedrooms, more than enough to sleep immediate family and your closest friends comfortably. A commercial kitchen, which is overkill, if we’re being honest. And a sprawling deck with an unobstructed view of the sparkling ocean, less-fortunate beachgoers aside. The thought of this week sustained you when your patience with Mother Nature waned in March.
And yet, you’re living like a coddled teen about three hangovers’ deep into senior week. How else do you explain the Fiat-size suitcase in the corner of the master bedroom that looks like it threw up all over itself?
Sure, there’s an art to packing. Anyone who’s spent even a single night away from home is well aware of that. But there’s an art to unpacking too. It may seem like a small thing, but, come Day Three, rooting around for a clean outfit to wear to a restaurant is going to start to grate on you—and even the coddled teen at senior week. So, here are a few moves that’ll keep you square in the lap of luxury.
First in, first out. Whether you keep them in a makeup bag, a dopp kit or even a Ziploc freezer bag, your toiletries should be the first things you stick in your suitcase and the first you pull out upon arrival, because they’re going to get the most use. And once your bathroom’s arranged to your liking, it’ll feel a little more like home. Which you’ll immediately appreciate when you try to brush your teeth after polishing off a couple bottles of wine at dinner.
Plug in, then unplug. The electronics are the next to go. Dig out your phone and tablet—if you brought any more than that, you should be ashamed of yourself—along with their respective charging cables, and plug them into an out-of-the-way outlet. (Read: anywhere you won’t trip over them.) They’ll be there, fully charged, when you need them. But you won’t.
Five minutes, if that. In the grand scheme, hanging our clothes or organizing them in dresser drawers is the blink of an eye. Still, on vacation, we resist it with all the fervor of a five-year-old forced into cleaning his room. I’ve seen people note the impressive capacity of hotel room closets and then never open them again. Unpacking should be that much easier, too, because you packed minimally—a few tops, a couple bottoms and pairs of shoes and a handful of accessories, all of which can be mixed. Once it’s all out, toss the suitcase in the closet as well. Out of sight, out of mind.
All trips must end. Whether I wore something or not, I’m washing everything when I get home. But that’s me. It doesn’t mean, though, that I’m using my empty suitcase as a hamper. I cannot stress this enough: Once sand gets into your suitcase, you will never get it completely out. Pack a garbage bag (or two), stuff it with your dirty laundry and keep it in the closet.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
5 new-ish books you need to make sure to pack this summer.
Now that you’ve got some downtime in front of you—unplugged, ideally—consider catching up on your reading. There won’t be a test at the end of the summer, but you will be better off for it. It was a strong year for literature, especially fiction. Its most popular author returned after five long years, as did his fastest-rising challenger. The uncanny originality of their imagination is on full display. But, exotic as their stories may be, it’s the subtle intimacy of their writing that’ll envelop you and make you forget where you are. Which is the point of vacation, is it not? —Scott Edwards
Sprawling as it is meticulously detailed, Purity is, above all else, a coming-of-age story. Twentysomething Pip Tyler’s burdened with a dead-end job, $130,000 in student loans and a paranoid mother who’s clearly hiding something. When her patience finally begins to strain, Pip heads to South America to work for a sort of WikiLeaks organization in the hopes of learning what her mother won’t tell her. Intricately layered as his last novel, Purity never really comes together in the deeply satisfying ways that Freedom does. But the characters, each so conflicted and vulnerable, are what’ll compel you to keep reading. Their maturations are where the best parts of the story lie anyway.
Johnson’s collection of six short stories won the 2015 National Book Award for fiction. Like Franzen, Johnson’s narratives are character-driven. Also like Franzen, the nuance of their depictions forges instant, authentic compassion. In “Interesting Facts,” Johnson crafts an unflinchingly honest portrait of a cancer patient, made all the more remarkable by the fact that she’s a woman, with breast cancer, and a wife and a mother of three young children. She sizes up every woman she comes across by the size and shape of her breasts. And she tries to isolate herself as she can, all while she fears drifting out of reach of her family, thinking of them growing up and moving on.
Ronson’s made a career out of disarming the most feared among us, the extremists, the pyschopaths, the American military. Here, he turns the mirror on himself and us. He tracks down several infamous figures who misstepped on social media and were swiftly shamed into oblivion. It felt like the democratization of justice, but once Ronson starts revealing their shattered lives, it looks more like an angry mob. From there, he tries to get to the root of our need to shame. It may be manifesting now in the most modern of acts, but its history runs deep. Not surprisingly, the ability to do it immediately and anonymously, seems to only be making us, including Ronson himself, he realizes, less tolerable.
It’s been a long time since I considered breaking it off with a novel, but I considered it often with this one. The characters—all of them; not just the main ones—regress from unaffected to pretentious. But a funny thing happens when they scrape bottom midway through. The wallflower begins her slow, steady ascent. The voice shifts to hers, and the tone follows suit. Everyone is revealed, including her. But the more unflattering the light, the more inspiring she becomes. She’s a survivor, and with each new revelation that comes forth about her life, about their life, we realize the dramatic ways that perspective can distort reality.
Smith’s best-known for her 2000 debut novel, White Teeth. But I got to NW, her most recent book, first, and fell in love with her there. The true measure of an author for me is the dialogue. Does it maintain the narrative’s rhythm? Is it realistic? Some of the most revered books are ruined for me because of their stilted exchanges. No one before or since I came across Smith writes dialogue as well as she does. And in NW, it not only facilitates the story, which unfolds in the London neighborhood it’s named after, it drives it. Personalities and, eventually, motivations come together in short bursts of slang. You know, like life. With her next novel, Swing Time, due to publish in November, NW’s the perfect gateway to get hooked on one of the most human storytellers of our time.
He can be hard to warm up to. And his Lambertville, NJ, shop isn’t that fashionable. But you don’t have to be a furniture geek to appreciate his genius. By Scott Edwards · Photography by Josh DeHonney
The morning after Benjamin Albucker showed me around his Lambertville, New Jersey, shop, he sends me the following text:
scott during my rant I should have been clearer on my taste/merchandise. I primarily sell this: Organic Design EARLY Modern American Design, i.e. Early Herman Miller and Knoll California Modern Some radical Italian design 20th Century French Design Hardly seen industrial: much of which comes from a close friend Leanne Lipston (INDDESIGN)
Albucker, obviously, is as particular about his perception as he is with his tastes. After eight months, he still hasn’t named his shop. And without a name, there can be no Web site, of course. “Well, that’s just because I’m nuts,” he says. “I can’t come up with a name. I want a name. I want a Web site. But I need a name before I can do a Web site. I’m not doing that to be hip. It’s screwing me a little bit. Not being on the Internet, I’m doing a lot less business.”
What to make of a shop that’s such a pure reflection of its owner, and that guy, he readily admits, can be difficult to embrace.
“I don’t think it’s something you want to write about,” Albucker says, “but I think I alienate people because, not just the prices being expensive, but it’s so specific, from my point of view, that certain people, not so many of them around here, understand it.”
His demeanor, during the afternoon I spent with him at his North Union Street shop, is straightforward, unsentimental, almost challenging at times. I felt like he was observing and gauging me as much as I was him. It can come across as youthful arrogance—Albucker’s not yet 30—but I think it’s more the default stance of someone who’s accustomed to proving himself in a world where knowledge and savvy are all you have. Even stripped of that context, this is a space filled with Albucker’s most prized possessions. Reject them and you reject him.
Albucker claims to me that the only reading he does is in relation to furniture and designers. He’s being self-deprecating. He may present a little rough around the edges—on this day, he’s wearing a thick beard, a charcoal Baja pullover and a baseball hat that’s been on his head every day for the last couple of years—but an email exchange over the weeks leading up to the interview impressed me with his intelligence, maturity and articulation.
“I’ve amassed a good amount of knowledge over the last eight or nine years, since I started buying stuff for my father’s store,” Albucker says. His father is Stewart Ross, who owns Bucks County Dry Goods. His shop is a couple blocks across town, and there are others in Princeton, NJ, and Old City. It’s through his father that Albucker learned how to forage flea markets and developed his taste in art. And it was while working for him that he honed the concept for his own shop. “I might do two or three sales in a week. I might do no sales,” Albucker says. “Like, if I sold this desk, it would pay my rent. I want to see if I can do this and make a living and build a brand with only what I like. I guess I’m stubborn that way.”
We’re standing over Milo Baughman’s iconic scoop chair, crafted in salmon-colored naugahyde. There were several iterations made across a few decades in the middle part of the 20th century, but Albucker will only buy and sell the original design, with an iron leg, in this one color.
“People bring me stuff all the time, and nine out of 10 times, I don’t like it,” he says. “It’s not like I like midcentury modern. I just like certain pieces. It gets a little too fancy after a certain point. Like the Eames Fiberglass shells. I really only like them in gray and two or three other colors. I don’t like bright colors, usually. I like interesting objects. And I like humor.”
You wrote me, I say, “A little humor is important to me when done in a beautiful way.” The comment was made in reference to an antique porcelain bedpan and urinal that he had on display in the shop. In the bedpan, he arranged some fake apples. And he stuck some flowers in the urinal.
“I sold them to some architect for a lot of money. I guess he agreed with the humor in it,” he says. “And it looked good. I don’t just like funny, gross shit. I’m not sure whether I’ll buy any more of those, but I did it once and proved that I could sell it as something pretty.”
Albucker restores most of the things he sells himself. But only to an extent. Again straying from the majority rule, he prefers his midcentury modern with some patina. He devoted two years to restoring a dilapidated barn on his family’s property, across the river in Solebury, and converting it into his home. He has yet to move in. The project was put on hold when he moved into a co-op next to the Golden Nugget Antique & Flea Market, just south of town. Four months later, this store became available. For about a month, he was there renovating it until four in the morning, even installing the reclaimed, wide-plank floors himself.
We’re finishing up. A couple’s walked in and they need his attention. But first he turns and says, “This, I wanted to show you so you know.” It’s an Eames shell chair, which will always remind me of elementary school. Albucker flips it over and draws my attention to the rope that’s embedded in the Fiberglass along the edge. “They only did that for the first year.” Which means that the shells without the rope sells for a couple hundred bucks while the ones with it can fetch up to $1,500. Treasure hunting’s not my thing. I have a hard enough time picking up on the obvious, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this knowledge. Nor does it really matter. More importantly, I feel like I’ve passed some kind of test.
[divider]The Sum of His Parts[/divider]
A portrait of Albucker, as depicted by a few of his most coveted things.
Bottle opener by the Werkstätte Carl Auböck (circa 1960s) | $325 Run by four generations of Carl Aubocks, the Vienna-based Aubock Workshop turns out some of the world’s most beautiful, handcrafted, small objects, mainly in horn, brass, leather, cane and wood. And they usually serve the most esoteric of uses.
Collection of 11 German monkey hand puppets | $2,200 Each is made from mohair and erected on a purpose-built stand. It’s the world’s only “chorus” of German monkey puppets.
Klockner roll-front, fire-safe cabinet (circa 1940s-1950s) | $3,500 Built in Buenos Aires, features 39 drawers, many tilting, and it’s crazy-heavy.
Wastepaper basket by Grethe Bang & Finn Juhl | $700 Simply a great design by the Danish master.
Sonambient tonal sculpture by Val Bertoia$5,000 A kinetic, musical and elegant sculpture by the son of the late sculptor and chair designer, Harry Bertoia.
Zenith Rope-edge Shell Chair by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller (circa 1950 to 1953) | $3,200 An obscenely low shell chair in my favorite shade of Fiberglass. This is one of the rarest and earliest Eames shell chair configurations in existence. It could easily be argued that it belongs in a permanent collection somewhere.
Belt-driven aluminum bicycle (manufacturer unknown) | $2,200 I bought this from Leanne Lipston of INDDESIGN, the best picker/dealer of industrial artifacts and exquisite metal in the world. The form and material of this small bicycle make me smile. If I don’t sell it by July, it’ll be hanging above my bed.
Aluminum Coat Tree by Warren McArthur | $900 Collectors of McArthur’s furniture are few and far between. You have to be a bit of a metal-head to collect his stuff in great quantities. But I think it contrasts beautifully with almost any piece of good furniture. His use of aluminum tubing and ingenious hardware resulted in some of the most elegant, modern designs.
Bouloum Chaise by Olivier Mourgue for Airborne | $1,800 Everyone needs a little radical-1970s-French design in his or her home. As wild as the Bouloum Chaise looks, the ergonomics are inherent. It’s the most comfortable lounge chair you’ll ever sit in. This thing is wrong in all the right ways.
Modernist log holder by Smith/Temper/Sunberg of San Francisco (circa 1950s) $750 This useful thing does a lot for me. It’s early California modern design, which is hard to come by in the east. It’s constructed of perforated metal, a material I’m addicted to. And it retains a warm patina that only enhances its great looks.
My hat | Not for sale A fixture on my head for two years running.
An exhibit at the Michener exposes a bit more of Drexel’s legendary fashion collection. But even its curator doesn’t know exactly what she’s sitting on.
By Scott Edwards
In spite of the elite names featured among its ranks—Chanel, Dior, Givenchy—what is now known as the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection spent almost all of its 125 years locked away from the public eye. It was used as a teaching tool at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, where the collection is housed.
“It wasn’t until the late nineties that some of my colleagues here started nosing around what we had,” says Clare Sauro, who joined Drexel in 2008 and serves as the collection’s curator. “It really kind of dawned on Drexel that they had an amazing asset here, and maybe something more could be done with it.”
A.J. Drexel invested $1 million shortly after he founded the school in 1891 to start an art collection that would include textiles. His expectation was that it would eventually evolve into the school’s own museum. Aside from his seed money, Drexel also rallied his friends and family to donate. “So, we were getting donations from prominent Philadelphia area families, but really and truly, most of them lived out on the Main Line,” Sauro says.
In 2013, another million-dollar investment changed the collection’s purpose. This one came from the Meadowbrook couple after which the collection is now named, and it enabled Sauro and the university to begin thinking on a grander scale. That movement began to come to fruition last October when the collection made its public debut. “Immortal Beauty: Highlights from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection” put 75 pieces focused largely on international high fashion from the 20th century on display at Drexel’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.
And in March, another exhibition, “Philadelphia in Style: A Century of Fashion,” featuring an entirely new selection, opened at theJames A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown. (It will remain on view through June 26.)
“You’re speaking to me at a very interesting point in our history,” Sauro says during a phone interview in the midst of preparing the Michener exhibit. “Also thanks to Robert and Penny Fox, we have started planning our own dedicated galleries. I mean, we won’t be able to do grand, gorgeous exhibitions like what you’re going to see at the Michener. But small, lovely exhibitions on the regular from us would be a dream come true.”
As will actually knowing what she’s preserving. Sauro and her staff recently began cataloguing the collection—the first time its been done in its history. But that was put on hold when the funding for last year’s exhibit came through. At this point, everything from the Drexel and Michener shows has been accounted for. Which only leaves an estimated 13,900 pieces to go.
“It’s going to take a long time,” Sauro says. And there’s no way around it. “In this digital world, if you don’t have a searchable database online, you might as well just not exist.”
Maybe the Foxes’ donation wasn’t such a blessing after all.
I read that Greta Garbo is among the collection’s donors. Are there any others of her caliber? Sauro Actually, that’s not exactly correct. We have a dress that was worn by her. We also have a dress that was worn by Joan Crawford from the same period, but it was donated by a local family. We do have some pretty big names, though. We have a fantastic coral-encrusted gown that was donated by Princess Grace of Monaco. That’s probably the biggest get that we have.
So if I made you name a single crown jewel for the collection—and I am—you’re going with Princess Grace’s gown? I would say that’s probably the most beloved piece in the collection. Princess Grace gave it to us in 1969. There are really only two things that people ask for. They want to see Garbo and they want to see Princess Grace.
Are there any local ties to any of the pieces featured in the Michener exhibit? Yes. It’s a very local exhibition. The idea was, tell the story of fashion here in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia region for a hundred years. We’re covering a period from 1895 to about 1995. And it is focused on shopping and—basically, everything in the exhibition was either worn here in Philadelphia by somebody that we can document was wearing it in this area or purchased here. We have a handful of pieces that were made here as well.
Anything with an especially exotic lineage? I am particularly fond of a pink tulle evening gown from 1916. It is almost certainly a French design. It is from the couture house of Callot Soeurs. I think it was purchased in Paris because it required multiple fittings and things like that, although they were sometimes imported. I know it’s a very expensive dress. It’s kind of this crazy fairy-princess dress. So I feel like that may be one of the things that people are really taken with because it’s so unexpected. It’s not really an exotic show. It’s a happy show—a spring-timey, optimistic, colorful show.
Why? The color palette, the general mood. I have a little psychological quirk that I like to do springtime items on display in the springtime. [Laughs.] No heavy furs or velvet or anything like that. Lighter materials, lighter colors, lots of flowers—yellow, and navy blue and pink.
In the context of all that you’ve come across in your career, where does this collection fall? It’s a difficult question to answer in that we’re currently operating without a true inventory, so my sense of what we have is based on what I’ve seen and what I know. I’ve been in this field for a long time. I was at the Museum at the [Fashion Institute of Technology] before I came to Drexel, which is a fabulous collection. And while we’re not as big as that, and they certainly have us beat in the realm of modern fashion, we have exceptional examples of early-20th century high fashion. We have some really unusual designers. We have really exceptional high-quality items. We have a museum-caliber collection in a university research setting, which is an interesting thing to be the caretaker of.
Did the Drexel exhibition draw any new pieces out of the woodwork? How frequently are you receiving donations at this point? It kind of ebbs and flows with the tax year. [Laughs.] But we have had a steady increase of donations in the last three years. We moved to a wonderful new storage space here in the URBN Center. And once people could see what we had in that space, they got excited. We started getting amazing donations. I don’t know exactly how many we’re getting a year, a couple of hundred, certainly. So we are growing at a quick pace.
Do you ever turn anything away? Sure, sure. That is probably the worst part of my job because people hold onto things for a reason. They mean something to them—their mother’s hat, their wedding dress. But there are just certain categories we have a whole lot of. We have a lot of children’s wear and we have a lot of wedding dresses. And women’s fashion from the 1960s on, we’re fairly plentiful. So I have to be very particular because we are in an urban environment and space is not unlimited.
Is there an elusive piece that you’re holding your breath for? Oh, there’s a whole bunch of them. I have a running list in my head of gaps that I’d like to fill. After the inventory is done, I’ll have a better sense of what we need. I know we need more of the Japanese avant-garde designers from the late seventies on. They’re just not coming to us. If someone out there is a Yohji Yamamoto collector and wants to clear out his closet, that would be great. [Laughs.] But there are holes that I have identified. Another one, and I really hope you put this is in because they might be out there, for whatever reason, we don’t have Claire McCardell in our collection, and she was a fantastic and important American designer. She wasn’t fine couture, but her cuts, her construction methods, she was very innovative and very clever.
[divider]The Fox Costume Collection by the Numbers[/divider]
14,000+ Total number of garments, accessories and textiles (estimated)
5 Gap in centuries between the collection’s oldest piece, a fragment of 16th-century Italian velvet, and its newest, a 2012 evening dress designed by Alexander Wang
125 Age (approximate) of the collection
26 million Today’s equivalent of what A.J. Drexel invested in starting the collection
84 Total number of pieces featured in the Michener exhibit—34 full garments and 50 accessories
