- Unbound
- Publisher: Pocket Books (Jun 2002)
- ISBN-10: 0743446356
- ISBN-13: 978-0743446358
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
"Sex and the City" meets Martha Stewart in this savvy and eclectic interior-design manifesto for high-flying chicks with nesting fantasies from the authors of the bestselling "Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life."
In their first breakthrough style manual, fashion designer Cynthia Rowley and former "New York Times" Sunday Styles editor Ilene Rosenzweig showed girls-on-the-go how to navigate the world with a little swagger and a lot of grace. Now they're taking the "Swell" aesthetic home with this inspiring guide to creating the ultimate dream pad. With more of the friendly tone and wry wit that lit up their first book, they introduce the idea of haute decor: How to make dressing up your home as exciting and accessible as buying a new wardrobe: Making it sexy. Trying new looks. Breaking rules. Mixing retro with modern. Changing with the seasons and your moods.
Offering a blueprint for the entire creative process, the two best friends and coauthors take you from inspiration to practical execution. Tour the swell playhouse room by room and see how design daydreams inspired by movies, a Palm Springs vacation, a painting, a favorite dress, or your own personal nostalgia (for the Brady Bunch living room) can become reality.
Full of the authors' own anecdotes and wisdom from a pantheon of swell style heroes, "Home Swell Home" has household hints, tips, and bits of history on everything you wish you'd known but never would have thought to ask. Some of the tour highlights ahead:
The sixty-minute makeover for when
romantic company's coming
A recipe for a four-star dining room
(hint: logo-print slip covers)
Furniture EMS to resuscitate
doomed hand-me-downs
Turning theunderused kitchen
into a day spa
Wiring "moonlight" into your trees
Create the ultimate sitcom screening room
Three new uses for your coffee table
"Paint" the walls with colored
fluorescent lights
Get real paint out of your hair!
Swinging from uptown decadence to downtown chic, "Home Swell Home" demystifies design, sweeps away snobbery, and shows how any house or apartment can be a place for high-style adventures. So come on in!
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I love Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig's "Swell" series. I have every edition and must confess that I am a bit of a "Swell" addict. I found "Home Swell Home" really up my alley. I love home design and decorating. I love Cynthia Rowley. And, I love illustration (which is very glorified in the "Swell" series).
This great book is a mix between Martha Stewart (traditional) and modern chic. I find each idea very creative and while some thing's I would never attempt (way too "out-there") but there are many ideas that I have and WOULD do. I love their sense of fun about everything. From throwing a dinner party - to painting a room. It's all done with a sense of style and humor. I really love that and I will always try to bring that into my design and home.
This great book is a mix between Martha Stewart (traditional) and modern chic. I find each idea very creative and while some thing's I would never attempt (way too "out-there") but there are many ideas that I have and WOULD do. I love their sense of fun about everything. From throwing a dinner party - to painting a room. It's all done with a sense of style and humor. I really love that and I will always try to bring that into my design and home.
Love the entire "Swell" series and I will continue to follow their work for as long as they do it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
26 reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
The inspiration you need for a Swell pad
15 Jan 2003
Format:Hardcover
Just like it's mama publication Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life, this isn't a bible--it's for inspiration. CR and IR remind you that your place is a reflection of you--so why not make it just as kooky, fun, crazy, and yep, swell, as you are? You're not going to read this book on the way to Home Depot to pick up exactly what you're going to buy to re-do your bathroom. You're going to read it and be inspired to think up your very own ideas. What could be more swell than that?
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Is this for real???
11 Mar 2004
Format:Hardcover
This book was a disappointment. There is a small handful of good ideas (ie. using frayed denim as a bedskirt, paintng one wall a bright color and the rest of the walls white, hanging hooks on the bedroom wall to hang your outfit for the next day, etc.). However, the remaining totally absurd ideas, the constant suggestions of having a bar/minibar throughout various rooms of the house, the abuse to books (nevermind perhaps reading the books and enrichening oneself), and the flippant suggestions to just have your carpenter come over and do the work made me think the authors are just a bunch of arrogant mindless rich witches most likely on drugs. Not everybody can afford to own a place or hire a carpenter/contractor, especially during these times. The real creativity lies in making something wonderful with little resources. I also did not appreciate the broad generalizations they make and hold as truth, such as stating it is a known fact that people who can cook cannot make a good cup of coffee. Ehhh? I don't think so. This was the most irritating book to read, and I had to force myself to read it through to the end. I really felt like burning it when I finished reading. And I consider myself pretty open-minded.... It's amazing how much crap gets allowed to be published.
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful
yawn.
22 Sep 2002
Format:Hardcover
I actually had put this book on my wish list before it had come out - but decided to check it out at the bookstore before ordering on Amazon. First off you'll notice the book is thin, at only 192 pages, and remember that includes the intro, index, and bibliography, etc. Keep in mind that this is not coffee table sized hardcover either, but around 9 X 7. There are also no real pictures (save for one of the two writers/designers on the last page). A decorating book with no pictures? There are illustrations, but c'mon, we're not talking detailed images or even very imaginative ideas. I kept on going back to the table of contents thinking that I must have missed something, that they were somehow hidding pictures, or projects, or different colour schemes or anything, but alas no. If you're really looking for a swell guide to designing your digs this is surely not it. I'm pretty sure I wrote something like this book a few years back for a college 'zine. Trying for a groovy 'It' girl look? try checking out my lists, or check out design books by period, get a feel for your style, which designers you like, which period you like. If your interested in this book, i'd put the time periods around 1940s and on.
PS for some kooky rooms but great projects check out Pad: The Guide to Ultra-Living -- by Matt Maranian.
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