A few weeks ago I learned that one of my new favorite magazines was folding permanently. This recession has been a bugger for the publishing industry (according to all the sad stories on my one source: Gawker); logically, advertising is really low, luxury brands are tanking and a number of less-relevant publications have consequently met their maker.
Domino was one of those magazines that I wanted to hate. Kind of smug, cliquey, they guilelessly promoted a whole lot of products affordable to not many people. Their ‘look’ was deceptively high-end; often kind of boho, but with a very professional price tag. The people they featured in their pages lived extravagant lives, like the painter who lives in an open-air villa on acreage in Africa or the textile scion in the fancy Moroccan country home. To a certain extent, this is common fodder for decorating magazines, but in Domino, everyone was approximately 40 and lived the kind of lives where I would constantly ask myself “how in the hell can they afford to live like that? Who ARE these people?”
All this aside, what I liked about Domino is that the aesthetic was eclectic, colourful, a bit hippie sometimes, and unafraid to celebrate complete over-the-top decorating insanity. One recent issue celebrated the home of LA designer Kelly Wearstler, totally filled with giant useless objects, brass, and patterns so crazy and mismatched that if I visited for tea, I would completely miss the couch. The wallpaper (designed by Wearstler herself) reminded me of the oceanfront condo my grandparents rented in Panama City Beach in the 1980s. In the article, they promoted the decorator’s own line of tchotchkas, including a brass ashtray-looking candy dish-thingy for $995 and several useless and gaudy small stone boxes for over $1,000 each. It was so delightfully insane. I like to see how the other half lives, and I also enjoy a good train wreck. I feel smug reading about people who revel in a complete loss of perspective.
Alongside the nuttiness, there were some profiled homes that I could really get behind. I learned that Thom Felicia from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has the world’s most beautiful cottage. I was inspired by a small one-room kit home that was built in the woods somewhere by a couple of people in a week or so. There was a British woman, a friend of one of the writers, who bought an old home somewhere in the country and re-did it in the most wonderfully colourful and loopy way. I applaud the magazine for letting us into these inspiring spaces.
Overall, what I gathered from this magazine more than any other out there were ideas. The objects in Domino were usually things that I could keep in mind and attempt to replicate at home, search for at garage sales, re-finish, or emulate by splurging on a small piece of fabric or something small to jazz up a whole room. It gave me the inspiration to buy a bright turquoise vinyl and wood platform rocker from a former local nunnery, and pair it with a zebra-print cushion, and place in the corner of my bright orange tv room. I drank martinis and happily wallpapered my walk-in-closet in leopard print and hung my scarves and purses and shoes all over it. It reinforced my love of large plants, paired with old framed botanical prints. I became unafraid to mis-match all my cushions, inspired by both Domino and What Not to Wear, where Stacey and Clinton are forever reminding us that “it doesn’t have to match, it just has to go.” Everything in my house just kind of goes. Very few things match.
These are the sources that reinforce, rather than dictate, my own personal style. Before Domino, I’d never seen a North American decorating magazine that celebrated the eclectic to this extent (from France, Maison Français is excellent – the French do high-class kooky very well). I’d always bumped along thinking that my own personal style was sort of hobo-garbage-dump-meets 5-year-old-kid, but it turns out that there are other people doing similar things, and much much better. It allowed me to see what the progression of my decorating style might be, as I transition from my broke-ass-poor 20s into my rather more comfortable mid-30s – from using garbage and hand-me-downs by necessity to seeking out just the right kinds of garbage and hand-me-downs. I could never put my finger on what my own style is, but in Domino, I could see it all played out, in various colours and options and price points.
All this being said, I will never become a Kelly Wearstler. I still get tremendous satisfaction from finding stuff in the trash and fixing it up. Though I now understand that this is illegal, some of my nicest furniture was found late at night before garbage day, hauled back to our home by hand or in the trunk of our car, and stripped/re-upholstered/painted/reinforced/patched up. Via this method, we proudly acquired hubby’s dresser (a beautiful wooden wave-front cabinet made in Quebec in the 60s), a lovely dressing room chair, a kitchen chair, a silver kitchen chair (decorative – I still have to fix the seat), a bamboo outdoor chair, a child’s chair, used as a plant shelf…. I seem to have a thing for chairs. I adore chairs. Also people tend to throw them out often for some reason. What we didn’t get in the garbage, we inherited from family members, bought at garage sales, or were given as gifts. The only ‘new’ items of furniture we own are our couch (no longer new) and our bed. Posh for me is splurging on something new at Ikea. I can’t foresee a day when this won’t be the case.
I will miss Domino. I will miss their zany decorating profiles, their weird “Can This Outfit Be Turned Into A Room?” feature, their little sticky tabs, the profiles of working professionals who come home on a weeknight and host 12 for dinner – Easy! – and their monthly human guinea pig article. I will miss those $1,000 ashtrays and $250/yard textiles. I gained a lot of great ideas from that magazine, which I will take to the bank. Meanwhile, when I need inspiration I will trudge down to the big magazine store and seek out Maison Française. R.I.P Domino – no surprise you folded in a recession, but it was sure fun while it lasted.
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