Vogue Living

My sister, Lauren and I, totally babysat these kids.

First of all, I nearly died of excitement when I found the Vogue Living special edition issue under my regular November subscription. I immediately plopped down on the couch with my coffee and started flipping. With a beautiful cover with Jennifer Garner in her exquisite garden, and pages of amazing home decor, great new finds, and a plethora of new interior designers and their collections.




If you live in New York long enough you end up seeing just how small they 13 x 2 mile island is. Your first few years are spent juggling the jobs you have to work seven days a week just to live there. Once you put in the time, you've built a lot of contacts and know a pretty large network of New Yorkers. I love kids and babysat regularly my first few years here. My sister only lived a few blocks away and alos picked up a family as her regular babysitting gig, the Detigers. When Lauren moved (I'm still not over it), I took over for awhile and saw first-hand what Lauren was talking about. Their Park Ave. pad was a sprawling artist's utopia that seemed the visual definition of a hip, New York family. I would go, half for the home decor, and half for the sweet and cool kids. I once endured a painful screening of the film Kangaroo Jack just to sit on their mod sectional sitting on a white shag.




They asked my boyfriend to give drum lessons to the oldest, 10-year-old Rex. One night that I babysat the two youngest kids, it was because the parents were taking Rex to a freakin' David Bowie concert! Johnny Detiger is an artist who's work I really like. Paintings of his wife and their children were on the walls, but not the portraits you're picturing. Very stark, modernist, washed out pieces that capture the essence of each individual, yet leaving out harsh lines, keeping an open and airy feel. The same feel their homes create with a free, open flow of energy.




This is the family that Vogue Living featured. The Detigers moved to an old hat factory downtown, in a loft space that they completely transformed to fit their space-age, open and Dutch aesthetic. The cocoon pods that they put into the walls are reminescent of Johnny Detiger's Dutch heritage. Apparently in old Dutch culture you would carve out a niche in the wall to sleep in. Now that is rad. However, none of our Dutch relatives have ever offered up a sleeping pod-niche when we came to visit. Family Meeting!



Lauren, we're totally getting Hans to show us how to make these.