book of guilty pleasure

of all the great books on design and architecture that i could have picked up recently, i ended up with this one:

and you know, it's a pretty fun flip-through. it's sort of the coffee table version of the 'preppy handbook'. lots of babe paley, c.z. john cheever, india hicks, sister parish types. full page photos of families on the cape, ivy league schools, homes and lifestyles.

where i grew up, pretty much everyone lived (lives) by this conservative ethic. nothing showy, nothing unnecessarily fancy. but always tasteful, stylish and sensible. there's a comfort in it all. i personally, had to move on, entertain other ideas. get a little jiggy with life you might say. but i can still appreciate the predictable ease of it all. and really, it's not a way of living that can be ignored or dismissed.

it's a style that has launched many of today's design trends (Ralph Lauren, J. Crew, Kate Spade) and still speaks of an elegant, casual way of living. reverse snobbery or not, it's worth a perusal.

available at assouline for about 40.00 clam-age, plus some change for tax