As regular readers will have gathered, I recently moved into a new apartment. Confronted with bright white walls and shiny floorboards, I wondered what to do with all that empty space. In search of inspiration, I started buying interiors magazines. You know the ones: Elle Décoration, AD, Vivre Côté Paris and all the rest.
They are beautiful to look at – but they have about as much in common with real homes as models have with real women. And they are just as photoshopped. Look at them closely. Never in an interiors magazine will you see a fil or a prise, for example. Lamps might as well be sculptures, because they are clearly not plugged in to a power source. Similarly, you never see a TV set or a hi-fi. Occasionally, you might see a computer – as long as it's an Apple Mac. Baths come with showers, but never shower curtains. Of course the baths are antique. Nobody in these magazines shops at Ikea. And where are the owners? It doesn't matter, because the owners didn't decorate the place – interior designers did it all.
There are alternatives online. Todd Selby (Theselby.com) visits real homes, albeit owned by painfully trendy types. There's also Apartment Therapy (Apartmenttherapy.com), although the apartments often belong to designers or artists, which seems unfair. Still, I'll continue to look at them. Like models, they are pleasing to the eye.
