inspiration is where you find it

i am in full tilt interior design mode with my ongoing design quest for our condo. i have the great joy (and sometimes stress) of being able to start from scratch. a condo is very very different from doing the interior of a house - it's open concept for one thing - so every piece is pretty much in full view at all times and everything is close to each other so you are trying to fill separate rooms that are not separate - they all have to work together.

it's like the ultimate dress-up - you choose the dress (the couch and dining table) then you add the shoes (chairs & small furniture) and then the jewels and baubles (lighting and accessories)

I am only halfway in pulling on my dress.

The couch was found almost immediately but the table has been an elusive search for almost a year. we think we have finally found it but we will see - for such a solid item it's damn slippery to pin down. (and i will post pictures but have promised to let it be photoed by a publication - eventually and if they don't tire of waiting for me to finish - so until then can only offer a glimpse here and there as I go)

even though i am completely table focused i still keep a keen eye out for all things glamorous that might work down the road. i have been hunting for a desk chair to go behind my 1970s horn table for a while and have been fixated on this one  (it's gone by the way - judy, of the atlantis home blog and current featured closet collaborator on shrimpton couture, who originally posted the picture of this chair, helped me, via her designer friend, to track down the store it came from - but to no avail - long snatched up it was). i still love it and have been on the hunt for its twin ever since.

however i happened across this picture today of penelope cruz from the movie 'blow', and was memorized.

first - this to me is the epitome of the elusive look i would like to achieve for just one day before i die - its that 'i just swept up my hair in a bun and slicked on gloss and look effortlessly beautiful in that 70s diva kind of way'. (ok so she is doing drugs and is an addict in this scene and those fingernails are horrid - just horrid horrid horrid, but damn the girl looks good still)

second - i think i have the twin of this dress' (1970s dior) so i automatically feel like its a sign from the universe that i was meant to see this picture and know that i need to own this chair!

do you die? is it not a gilded, engraved, shell backed, dragon armed, over the top, completely non-essential, ridiculously unnecessary piece of golden gloriouseness?

if i could find this chair, i could wear my dior twin of this dress and sit in that chair and pretend that i am, just for one moment a

'i just swept up my hair in a bun and slicked on gloss and look effortlessly beautiful in that 70s diva kind of way' goddess of a girl

drug free of course - though i could look fervently over my shoulder for a moment just to feel the full drama of the moment ......

come on you know you would too - how could you resist not doing that??

boy what a chair

its a sign don't you think?