Sitting Pretty: The Agony of Finding The Perfect Sofa

Ever since we moved into our house, two months ago, we've been searching for some new sofas. We sold our old sofas to the buyers of our house, you see, and since then we've been using (in order of comfort) a bean bag, a chaise longue, a cheap two-seater sofa and a dining chair to watch TV at night. It gets rather awkward when more than two people come to visit. We've had to pull out the folding camp chair on occasion.

A few weekends ago, I became fed up with the lack of class in our house and trawled the stores in search of a stylish couch. Has anyone done this lately? It was agonising. All the sofas I love were either insanely expensive, or too exorbitant to contemplate. I don't know about you lovely library readers but we have a huge mortgage. We simply can't afford $3000 for a couch. Let alone $6000 for two.

There's an old saying that I love: desperation breeds determination. Or is it: When the going gets tough, the tough resort to creative measures? Anyway, I was so disillusioned by the over-priced sofas I decided to go on a sofa mission. Two sofas for under $1000.

I targeted the auction houses, the second-hand stores and even ye olde eBay looking for classic styles. Finally, I unearthed two beautiful old wingback sofas at a cute little second-hand store in the countryside. They were $100 each. I only wanted one. "You might as well take them both," said the lovely owner. Then I found two bolts of stunning cobalt-blue herringbone tweed marked down to $5/metre. I took 15 metres – $80. An hour later, I found a delightful 70-year-old-upholsterer willing to do the job for $400/sofa. He was also happy to collect the sofas up from the shop. But he said he couldn't do the job for another month because he was "going on a caravan holiday with his wife: their first in three years".  I told him we could certainly wait, and I hoped they had a romantic break. It took me two days of driving around the countryside, so the fuel was probably another $40. Total price for two gorgeous wingback sofas in navy herringbone? I don't care, because I'm just so THRILLED we finally have something to sit on! 

But the moral of this story is: Look before you leap, or you sit, because now that we've decided on cobalt herringbone I've discovered that everyone else in the world is choosing PINK! Yes, that's right, a pink sofa is still the seat du jour, apparently, even after all the saturation we've seen of this pretty shade. Orange, green and grey are also fairly fashionable, but pink is the top choice, it seems. This cute one, above, is Diane von Furstenberg's. 

Pink sofas. Who would have thought they were the height of sitting room chic?

The sitting room of Number Sixteen Hotel in London, designed by the always stylish Kit Kemp.

A room by one of my favourite designers, Mary McDonald. Too much pink, do you think? I like it. I think it looks very English.

Here's another beautiful English home, this time by Harriet Anstruther, in London.

And yet another space designed by an Englishwoman with an eye for a good design, India Hicks. Her mother, Pamela Hicks, also has a pink sofa, I noticed in one of her posts.

Even India's daughter, Domino, has her own version.

Lilly Pulitzer's also doing a few pink numbers. I love the ottoman. The flip side is actually a different colour. Aqua, from memory?

Anna Spiro's famous pink sofas, as featured in Vogue and Canadian House & Home. I always adored the hot pink cane couch. So whimsical and unexpected.

Here's another sofa that Anna recovered for her home. Slip covers. Don't you just love them?

Another English version of a pink sofa, this time by Ros Byam.

Which reminds me of this pretty number, from the lovely Chinoiserie Chic blog...

Even Miles Redd is taking to pink sofas now...

So is John Stefanidis...

But this little cutie was my favourite of all of them... 

(Source of this image and image at very top unknown. Please feel free to notify me if you know, so I can credit accordingly.)

Downton: The Floorplan, The Fashions & The Flappers

Downton Abbey, whose third season premiered in the UK on Sunday, may be about class, and about money (or, in this season, the lack of it). It may be about marrying above your class (for the money), or marrying beneath it (for the love of a good man), or simply marrying for the sake of it. (Known today as 'settling'.) It may be about grand Gothic piles, and sumptuous libraries, and even more sumptuous guest quarters where dashing Indian men gasp their last dashing breath in sumptuous beds. But for many of us, it is really about one thing.

The fashion.

{Spoiler Alert!} Downton Abbey's third season hit the UK screens last Sunday night and, as you would expect with a series set in the Roaring Twenties, the fashion was off and running. Or should that be, walking slowly – up the aisle.

The show's highlight is a beautiful morning wedding in the village church in 1920, where Lady Mary (who starts reading Vogue in this series – told you it was more about fashion this time around), meets Matthew at the alter in a dress inspired by Lavin. The show's new costume designer found back catalogs of Lanvin from the 1920s to help with accuracy, but the dress, which features diaphanous fabric in long, straight lines embroidered with tiny seed pearls at the hip, has polarised many viewers. Some have hailed it as the ultimate in sophistication. Other have called it 
"a tad like a drip-dry nightie".

Then there's Cincinnati millionairess Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham, who is played by the inimitable Shirley MacLaine. Martha, who becomes the grit in the oyster for the Crawley family, steps out in some truly splendid numbers (even her car is an eye-opener), but whatever she wears pales in comparison beside her jewels. The woman is a walking Sotheby's catalogue.

Oh – And I loved this recent exchange between Shirley MacLaine and Dame Maggie Smith in front of a journalist from the UK's Daily Mail.

Shirley MacLaine: "We met 40 years ago backstage at the Oscars, next to the catering table. Whatever I was up for, I lost…"

Maggie Smith: "You know what you did, dear? You tucked right into that chocolate cake and said, 'f*** it, I don't care if I'm never thin again'."

But back to the fashion... Sybil is back at Downton, and it's a good thing. I missed her gorgeous face and independent nature. She's in a bob, too. And pregnant.

And even little Edith (who has classic Middle Child Syndrome) has tarted up her act in order to snare a husband. Edith is growing on me. I hope she pulls in a big one.

Downton's fashion has received so much attention that its fashion designer, Susannah Buxton, was nominated for an Emmy Award this year. Even Anna Wintour has given the show her seal of approval.

And Ralph Lauren was so inspired by it, he based his 2012 Fall RTW collections on DA's period glamour. {Photos: Marcio Madeira/firstVIEW}

If you're interested in the fashion and costume side of Downtown, which includes frocks by Vionnet (but not Chanel, I've noticed, which is odd for the era), there's a good article  here. The show’s fashion is reflected most in the three young daughters of the house—Mary (Michelle Dockery), with her passion for sophisticated style, Edith (Laura Carmichael), who tarts up to snare a husband, and Sybil (Jessica Findlay Brown), with her love of bohemia.

And if you want a sneak peek, the full-length trailer for the third season is here.

However, one of the loveliest things I've discovered that pertains to this gorgeous, glorious production is the floorplan of Downton Abbey, or Highclere Castle. I've found two of them but they're a little fuzzy, so forgive me for the quality. They will, however, allow you to follow the characters as they go from room to room, and although they appear to be slightly different (one is perhaps the lower ground floor and the other is perhaps the second floor?) they will offer a little more of an idea of the configuration of this beautiful castle.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Prieure d'Orsan: A Garden Inspired By Horticultural Gods

“The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.”

George Bernard Shaw

Of all the gardens in the world, there are a handful that come up in conversation, blogs, media mentions and magazines year after year. These are the gardens that stand out from the horticultural crowd; the gardens that offer a point of difference so distinct they become destinations in their own right. They are the gardens every gardener should see at least once in their life. The grand potager at Villandry is one of them. The Garden of Ninfa, near Rome is another. But it's the garden of Prieuré de Notre-Dame D'Orsan in France that really wins over the green-thumbed crowd.

Tucked away in Berry, in the very southern part of France's Loire Valley, the Prieuré de Notre-Dame D'Orsan (the former Priory of Our Lady of Orsan) is so hidden that it is difficult to find, but keep trying because it is worth the meandering drive through the French countryside. This remarkable sixty-acre garden is unlike anything in the world. It is gardening in its most magical, and perhaps also its most spiritual, form.

The creation of Parisian architect Patrice Taravella and his former partner, designer Sonia Lesot, the garden is set on the ruins of a former medieval cloister that dates from the 12th century, and is based on the art of gardening during pre-Renaissance times. Consequently, everything here is monastically simple and delightfully restrained, leading to an unexpected sense of serenity. 

Seats, arches and trellises, even the structures in the herb garden are all made in the medieval way using long, slender twigs woven into place. The raised vegetable beds are fashioned out of a similar kind of basketwork, and even the rhuburb is grown in beautiful natural ‘tubs’ made from woven vine. Elsewhere, plants, bushes and fruit trees are pruned (with obvious painstaking care) into enchanting shapes, while walls of hedge form buttressed elliptical arches over paths.

It is a garden designed to evoke the spirit – and spirituality – of a medieval garden, and it does so with grace and elegance. Indeed, it is so peaceful that walking through it is like walking through a meditation path.

“The dream was to recreate the spirit of the medieval priory,” explains Patrice Taravella, who purchased the garden in 1991 when it was almost on the verge of being derelict. Using function, symbolism and aesthetic appearance as the three key elements, he meticulously researched the designs of medieval gardens, including the way they were divided and the ways in which frames, raised beds, hedges and other structures were created and used. It was a case of employing function and form, rather than form over function, or function over form. 

However, there also seems to be a further, fourth, element that has been integrated into the design: humour. The garden is full of cheeky and light-hearted touches, from ivy that’s been shaped into heart forms to charming ‘peep-holes’ that have been carved out of hedges to offer lovely lines of sight through to the garden rooms beyond.

As was the case with medieval gardens tended by monks, the majority of plants grown in this garden are for consumption, and the ways in which the gardeners have integrated the fruit and vegetables into the design is pure genius. Instead of filling the parterres with flowers, for example, the gardeners will often plant wheat, broan beans, leeks or cabbages. The Maze Vegetable Garden, meanwhile, is a labyrinth of hedges of pleached plums and gages, interspersed with beds of herbs and vegetables.

And then there's the Berry Path, one of my favourite spaces in this enthralling place. It's a truly enchanting long walk festooned with myriad varieties of berries on either side, including raspberries trained on V-shaped poles for ease of picking. 

And while there are more than 20 varieties of apples are grown in the orchard, including Querine Florina, Patte de Loup and Drap d’Or, there are also delightful walls of espalier pears dressing the main entrance building.

The garden was the winner of the Institut de France garden prize, and the garden’s head gardener, Gilles Guillot, has also been elected best gardener in France by the Demeure Historique. The property was also awarded the label of “Remarkable Garden” by the Ministry of Culture. 

Walking through this place, it is easy to see why France – and gardeners the world over – love it so much.

The Prieuré de Notre-Dame D'Orsan (Priory of Our Lady of Orsan) is located at Maisonnais in Berry, France, and is open to the public. See www.prieuredorsan.com or further details of the garden and hotel.

All photos copyright © Janelle McCulloch 2012

The Sins of Instagram

Confession. I really, really, reallly dislike Instagram.

Sure it's quick, and it's easy, and you can share the photos with the world in seconds. And you don't need to drag an enormous camera around. You can snap life with your iPhone while on the run. But the quality of the photos is so depressing.

When there is so much colour in the world, why would somebody create something that bleaches or sepiarises life? It doesn't make sense. Even the brighter photos have a kind of washed-out feel to them. It's the filters. They're designed to make everyone look like a great photographer but the irony is that all the photos are starting to look the same.

Gauguin and Monet and Van Gogh laboured for years and cut off their ears to show us the beauty in blues, greens and bright, sunflower yellows. Yves Klein created his famous reputation by capturing the joy of the infinite in an ultramarine, lapis lazuli-style pigment now known as International Klein Blue (IKB). While Jackson Pollock spent much of his life in seclusion in the Hamptons, trying to perfect the beauty of his fantastic, multi-coloured messes canvases. So why are we resorting to filtering our life down to browns and greys? (And I bet Oscar de la Renta and Valentino didn't use Instagram to inspire them for their palettes. Why would they, when there is so much inspiration in bright shades?)

           

Instagram is a gimmick, a tease, an invention designed to make us nostalgic for old 1970's polaroids and faded happy snaps from our glory days. We're sharing our lives on it, but are the photos really doing our lives justice?

I don't know about you but I can't look at any more brown sunsets. I can take any more dull, muddy-coloured scenes. Forgive me while I go and take a photo of a spring flower in full bloom, so I can remember the heady sight of natural, unadulterated colour for once.

I suspect Instagram, like many other things, won't be around for long. And I fear for all those people who have taken photos with it. Their computer archives will be full of muted scenes that, in years to come, will seem devoid of energy and life. (NB These photos of Paris are mine; I've bleached them to make them look Instagramish for the purposes of this post. The original ones are much prettier. I don't use Instagram. It's the devil's work, as Miss Faux Fuchsia would say.)

Please don't forget the joy of real colour. Pack a tiny Leica or Panasonica DMZ in your handbag and use that instead. If you can find room for a mobile or cell phone, you can always have a camera in a spare pocket of your bag. The photos from a camera taken without a filter, without a phone, without some nifty Instagramesque influence, will look far more beautiful in years to come. Believe me.

A LITTLE STUDY IN COLOUR

As a quick PS, my niece Alex is studying styling at RMIT University in Melbourne. (Who knew there was a degree in it?) She's asked me to help her with a project this week, so I've been practising beforehand, with a 'faux project' based around the theme of colour. (Just like we did at university all those years ago.) Here are some poor attempts, which Alex will no doubt laugh at. But don't you just love the colours?