WASP Heaven

[Originally posted August 2007)


I just returned from a (very) long weekend with family in Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula. The highlight of the trip was the Leland Yacht Club's annual Bar-B-Cruise. The day started with a parade of boats. My little cousins decorated theirs with the theme of "Cherry Potter and the Petoskey Stone," but alas, won no prize. Then in the evening the club hosted a barbecue in a local park. It was the picnic that time forgot--little towheaded children running around serving cubes of cheddar cheese with Keebler Club crackers to the adults, who were decked out in loud pink and green, with lots of whale and anchor motifs. (And those were just the men.)

The whole event was wonderfully wholesome and corny, and reminded me of Alexandra Wentworth's The WASP Cookbook, which delicately pokes fun at the way preppies eat and socialize. Wentworth is the comedienne married to political pundit George Stephanopoulos. She was Jerry's annoying "Shmoopie" girlfriend on Seinfeld and now stars in Head Case.  Anyway, the cookbook is very amusing. My favorite recipe is for Chicken Walnut Salad. Wentworth writes, "The curry powder is so exotic--it's for the daring and well-traveled WASP."

Wentworth's book was published in 1997 and proved to be a bit ahead of its time. A recent Wall Street Journal article addressed the return this summer of preppy fashion, albeit with a hip-hop twist. But here's the thing--the charm of true Wasp style is that it is immune to trends. Just ask anyone at the Leland Yacht Club.

Design on a Dime

[Originally published February 2007]

Staying at Louisville's Seelbach Hotel last weekend put mom and me in the mood for antiquing. We took a day trip about 30 miles out of town to Shelbyville, known for the spectacular Wakefield-Scearce antique gallery, which features Georgian and Victorian treasures displayed in beautifully decorated rooms. Afterwards, we had lunch at the adjoining Science Hill Inn. I ordered a scrumptious salad of Bibb lettuce, old Kentucky ham, turkey, Swiss cheese, and a killer house dressing with blue cheese. It was all very “ladies who lunch,” and, combined with the Wakefield-Scearce displays, put me in a domestic mood.

When I returned home I was inspired to leaf through a couple of my favorite decorating books. An out-of-print one I love is Diana Phipps’s Affordable Splendor. Phipps was born a Czech countess, but her family, the Sternbergs, lost their castles and all of their possessions in 1948. Phipps then made her living in Britain and the US as a decorator, and the book outlines her creative approach to transforming spaces using inexpensive materials. Some of it is dated—the pink gingham bedroom is terribly early Laura Ashley–but the London living room detailed in the first chapter is still stunning. Reading the book is even more fun now since Phipps’s story has a fairy tale ending that she could not have guessed while writing it; in 1992 she regained ownership of the main family castle, which is now redecorated by the countess herself and open to the public.

In a previous post I mentioned The Paris Apartment: Romantic Decor on a Flea Market Budget. Aside from being very pretty, the book is quite inspiring: Claudia Strasser uses a series of examples to illustrate how flea market finds can be combined to create elegant interiors. She advocates many of Diana Phipps’s shortcuts: using hot glue guns, draping walls with fabric, and renewing old materials by dying or painting them. Be sure to check out the Paris Apartment website and blog to see more of Claudia's magic.

A new publication that caught my eye is Creole Thrift, which celebrates sumptuous New Orleans decor. This style is a bit rich for my blood, and I’m not certain the emphasis here is truly on thrift, though the book did give me some ideas for how to recover and modernize a neglected antique divan. But the best part for me is just curling up with one of these books and dreaming of the perfect home, had I but world enough and time.

E.C Denton Stores

My late grandmother was a notorious packrat, but I’m glad she saved this envelope from 1930, as it ties two sides of my family together.

The envelope is from the E.C. Denton Stores, owned by my paternal great-grandfather, and is addressed to my maternal great-grandmother, Mary Vail Collier. Prior to establishing the Tailored Woman in New York, my great-grandfather’s brother, Eugene K. Denton, worked for the Denton stores in Cincinnati.

The envelope, which presumably contained a bill that through some unfathomable logic wasn't saved, was forwarded to Orlando, Florida care of Mrs. John D. Vail, my great-great-grandmother. As for the other writing, which reads "Steele & Haley, back of Trinity Church," I think this refers to the venerable Haley & Steele art gallery in Boston. My great-grandmother presumably reached for the nearest piece of paper to jot down a note.

At any rate, though it's at times a burden to sift through the piles and piles of random paper accumulated by my ancestors, it's great fun to find a little gem such as this.