Great interiors are much like the human diet — they require balance. That said, most Americans follow a regimen that suits their tastes and lifestyles. Maybe you’re a maximalist who can’t help but indulge. Or perhaps you prefer decor with the eclecticism of a Cava bowl.

Either way, trends inevitably emerge as goalposts for a healthy (home) diet. When we…

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Announcing Schmatta’s First Annual “Best Design Things” Awards!

When I think back on this awful, awful year, I realize that so much of my joy came through discoveries and furniture/rooms/decor I connected with on an emotional level. So here we go: my 10 favorite design things of 2025. (But seriously, still fuck you, 2025.)

Most Innovative Furniture Company

Sawkille, a small furniture brand based in Kingston, New York, blew me away this year with their tables, cabinets, and credenzas adorned with intimate inlays made of shells, mother of pearl, or brass. Is there a German word for when a piece of furniture makes you feel warm inside and more connected to everything? Because that’s how I felt about this table, this “witch’s hutch,” and this cabinet. Sawkille makes objects that are undeniably poetic.

Best New Product

Congrats to Lazy Jamie founder Jamie McKillop for capturing the design world’s attention with her reinvention of the TV tray. It was an area ripe for redevelopment, and I like that the Lazy Jamie TV Tray Table ($546) isn’t a direct interpretation of the fold-out variety.

Best New Kids’ Product

Let me tell you something: Finding good kids’ toy/junk storage is a challenge. Sourcing something great is unheard of. Most toy chests out there are cheesy and cheap (seriously, we have a plastic-y one from Amazon) or they are expensive without offering enough storage. One of my favorite kids’ furniture brands, NYC-based Oeuf, nailed it this year with its Camel Storage Bench ($620). It’s spacious, and while pricey, is meant to last. And honestly, once your kids are grown, why not paint it, make a custom cushion cover, and put it in your mud room (if you are a fancy New Englander).

Best New Cleaning Product

Alter:Bio reached out to me earlier in the year to ask me to test its new products. Here’s the skinny: Alter:Bio is the first U.S. cleaning brand that meets European standards (and you know they do things better over there). The products work off of synbiotics, which combine pro- and prebiotics to eliminate bacteria. But actually, what I love most was this design tidbit: The bottles are skinny enough to sit on the tiny sink-adjacent countertops of sad New York City apartments. I tried both the spray ($16) and the Active Dish Soap ($19) — both great.

Best New Furniture Brand

Brought to you by the same people behind Sundays, Hetta is an offshoot that offers more traditional-leaning aesthetics. There were two pieces that really stood out to me. First, the Hillside Dining Chair ($990), which is comically oversized, but in an Alice in Wonderland-type brilliance. The second is the Saddle 4-Piece Modular Sectional ($5,200), which features a performance fabric (so great if you have children) that really doesn’t come off at ALL as “performance fabric.” This will definitely be our next couch.

Best Towels for People Who Hate “Trendy” or Boring Towels

2025 was the year Autumn Sonata entered the chat (even though the company was founded in 2022). They make table linens and loungewear, but the towels are the standouts, which immediately struck me as “black sheep”-ish…not adhering to the trends of the day like stripes and checkerboard motifs. My favorites? The Alma collection, followed by the Agnes, and okay, fine, I also love the Hanna.

Best Home Tour

Go figure: My favorite home tour of the year was NOT designed by a designer. It’s the Brooklyn apartment of Diet Prada founder Tony Liu, which was featured in World of Interiors. Liu did have some help on color consultation, however, in the form of Patrick O’Donnell, international brand ambassador for Farrow & Ball. (BTW, I love whenever Patrick shows up on F&B’s IG.) The result is a space that feels entirely cohesive, but doesn’t quite have that “over-designed” feeling. It’s a home that’s all about the absolute perfect color combinations and will definitely be in my permanent inspiration folder.

Best Collab

Look, I will say that the West Elm x Pierce & Ward line was by far the splashiest of the year, and was definitely very, very good as far as mass market collabs goes. But the one I loved the most was with HAY (gotta love them Danes) and Ana Kraš. I had no idea who she was but learned that she created the HAY Bonbon light fixtures that are part of HAY’s permanent collection. The collab she did this year is much more reserved, and almost severe, but kind of perfect in its simple geometry. Of course, it’s basically sold out everywhere except for here and here.

Emerging Talent

I don’t know exactly how I came to L.A.-based furniture and interior designer Addison Byrd but I knew I liked his style immediately. Why? Because the spaces he’s made actually feel like real, attainable homes. There’s a lot of restraint in his work. His talent lies in finding a handful of standout pieces and knowing how to put them together in a way that feels incredibly smart. His most recent project was for singer Lizzy McAlpine. See the brilliance here. (He also has a very happenin’ TikTok.)

Maker to Watch

Ben Tuna runs Glass Visions Studio, a California glassworks business founded by his father over 40 years ago. Ben has been making a name for himself under the moniker “Glass Cowboy” and his Instagram tells me that his creativity is off the charts. (Check out this Porsche that was burned out from the Eaton Fires, which he turned into an art piece, replacing all the windows with cobbled-together scrap glass from stained windows of churches.) I am certain you will be hearing his name more in 2026.

And there you have it! Next week, we will follow suit of many other Substackers and tell you, based on my own data and analytics, what you liked the best in design.

xxoo and happy christmas,

Leo

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Autumn on the Upper West Side is truly dreamy — cue up Harry Nilsson, wander toward Zabar’s, and imagine yourself in You’ve Got Mail.

Of course, the Upper West Side of 1998 (when You’ve Got Mail came out) is a far cry from the Upper West Side of 2025 — and I’d know; I grew up here. The mom-and-pop stores are mostly gone, the beloved nut shop (“where it’s fun”) has vanished, and even the Starbucks where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks crossed paths is now a Verizon store.

What remains are the lovely brownstone streets, their stoops dressed in pumpkins and other fall-related foliage. After dropping my daughter at school, I sometimes treat myself to an $8 matcha and wander the 70s between Columbus and Central Par West to gawk.

Upgrade to Paid??

It’s been a while since I’ve spent meaningful time in NYC, but what’s new to me is all the cabbage. Everywhere from flower beds outside the Apple Bank building to the curated flower boxes of the single-family brownstones. They’re all surrounded by enormous plantings of kale.

The Manhattan elite seem to have conspired to extend a spirit of cruciferous oblige.

Kale is actually quite practical as a cold-weather planting — it withstands frosts and offers a decorative advantage when exposed to low temperatures as the suppression of chlorophyll production leads to the development of a range of green, purple, and blue hues.

Decorating with kale isn’t new. In Manhattan, kale has been a standard fall planting in business and residential districts for at least a decade. And according to Flower.Style (a website to which we will extend the benefit of the doubt): “By the 17th century, ornamental brassicas became attractive new additions to cottage gardens as bedding plants. When ornamental types finally reached the U.S. from Japan in the 20th century, ornamental kale saw its first debut in seed catalogs in the 1930s.”

But when kale starts appearing on the stoops of $16 million brownstones, it’s hard not to see it as a status symbol — part of a plant-as-prestige lineage that stretches back centuries.

Most notably, the emergence of decorative palm trees during the Victorian era and Gilded Age, when the plants were elite souvenirs brought back from long-haul trips abroad. In the days before current billionaire pastimes — like yachting and going to space — Jay Gould, the American railroad magnate, was a proud collector of palms, which he displayed at a giant greenhouse at his Hudson Valley estate. Like many things only available at first to the rich, palms made their way into the mass design vernacular during the 20th century, symbolizing luxury and glamour.

In more recent years, plants took on the role of design democratizers, especially around 2016 when an explosion of “bohemian” design took over Instagram. The fiddle leaf fig, the pothos, and the snake plant became the great equalizers for millennial renters, offering a low-cost strategy for truly filling up a space. Start-ups capitalized on direct-shipping these houseplants, marketing them as low-maintenance, perfectly timed to the peak of millennial self-deprecation — at the point in their lives before children and homeownership and being a “plant parent” was the best you could do in this economy. Oh, and the pandemic. Yeah, that, too.

But you may have noticed in the past year or two that the home tours gracing the pages of major decor magazines feel — generally but not entirely — houseplant-free.

In its stead for the 1%: the standalone indoor tree. Both the Teigen-Legend and Zedd households have one — granted these celebs both have highly engineered fakes. But, I have it on good authority from my friend — a Hollywood landscape designer who works with celebrities and insanely wealthy people, let’s call her “S.” — that rich people have no problem planting expensive trees in the center of their homes, even when those trees need to be replaced every YEAR because they can’t survive in their environments.

S. agrees with me that the indoor plantapalooza is waning with the rich (she said one couple she worked with didn’t want plants indoors because they were afraid they’d attract bugs and spiders). But there’s a rise of decorating indoors and out with tree plantings in vintage pottery, specifically wares by Architectural Pottery designed by David Cressey and Stan Bitters. There’s also an obsession with Frenchman Willy Guhl’s planters. (The comedian Eric Wareheim is a prominent collector/enthusiast of architectural plantings and has been working with L.A.-based Serpentine to curate landscape projects.)

But these plants aren’t really about greenery says S. — it’s more about sculpture and collectibility. “[Wealthy clients] are not into the clean, modern planters anymore. They want curation, they want objects. It’s more a desire for ‘art’ over an abundance of greenery.” Like the standalone trees, these “specimen” plantings are usually not meant to be housed in these types of containers and will need to be replaced — and at no small cost.

Which to me, screams rich-people boredom and needing to find another way to spend their money. But would I love a funky ficus in a huge Willy Guhl conical pot in my home (or on the patio)? Oh yes.

But the yo-yo of taste — from aristocratic to accessible, maximalist to minimal — never really stops. Eventually, Target will make a reproduction of a Brutalist urn for $50, making sculptural plantings as commonplace as kale on a brownstone stoop.

It’s all part of the same choreography: we sanctify the rare until it becomes ordinary, then start the dance again.

Unrelated note: Our craftsman home in Pasadena is available for short-term rental starting Jan. 1.

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Dupe culture is our modern moral paradox. It supposedly democratizes taste for those without means — and simultaneously undercuts the livelihood of the people who created that taste in the first place.

Of course, dupe culture isn’t new; surely ancient in origin, or at least as old as the concept of the socioeconomic class itself. But for the past 15 years or so, the internet has fueled the knockoff industry at the speed of a 5-Hour Energy chased with a Four Loko.

Around the same time that dupes went mainstream, another design movement emerged: the mass millennialization of common objects. Think humidifiers, shower heads, toilet plungers, tool kits — all redesigned to be smoother, softer, more “aesthetic,” and more palatable to a generation allergic to ugliness. These products weren’t literal copies of high design; they were sanitized versions of the ordinary. Their purpose wasn’t to imitate luxury, but to conceal utility. And most didn’t carry luxury price tags — just a modest 10–20% markup for their blush-colored optimism.

Now, though, I sense a new rebellion — what I’d call the “reverse dupe”: taking everyday objects and elevating them to luxury (or artistic) status. The point isn’t to disguise the function, but to spotlight it.

I’m not saying this is a mass trend, just something that makes me wonder…why now?

It’s clear we’ve been overexposed to product design on the Glossier scale. Perfection is so oversaturated that perhaps we’re looking for pleasure in objects that feel a little absurd. A marble Squatty Potty? A $1,200 cheese grater? When the leader of the free world posts a video of him showering his own citizens in shit — it’s a pretty good sign that nothing makes sense right now.

All jokes aside, I see no better example of an artful reverse dupe than Virginia Sin’s Porcelain Paper Plate ($98). Earlier this month, Sin gathered a small crowd (myself included) to celebrate the relaunch of this plate, where she told us that the piece pays tribute to her family’s tradition of cooking an elaborate Sunday meal, only to serve it on flimsy paper plates.

And then there’s Anastasio Home’s solid marble toilet stool. Although the company takes good care — in wording and design — to avoid trademark issues with the Squatty Potty, it serves the same function. Instead this product is called The Throne Adjacent, retailing at $575.

An oldie but a goodie is Concrete Cat’s cinder block unit, a staple of the LES homegoods shop Coming Soon. This is clearly intended as a design object, although it’s still made of concrete, so you could supposedly recreate the cinder block bookshelves of your college youth. But it would just cost you a semester’s worth of housing, considering each unit is over $1,000.

You can’t actually buy HFA-Studio’s reconceptualization of a classic Monobloc chair aka plastic lawn chair. In their own words (translated from German): “The Glitter Monobloc, created through weeks of meticulous handcrafting, transforms the ubiquitous ‘Monobloc Chair’ from the epitome of affordable holiday and garden furniture into a sparkling art object.” Considering you can buy an unadorned plastic chair from Alibaba for $4.13, the glitter version is an ostensible step up.

I am a huge fan of The Perfect Nothing Catalog collection, designed by Frank Traynor, a lovely man without pretense. The PNC takes an unabashed and sorry-not-sorry approach to recasting basic household items — can openers, dust pans, hose nozzles — as status symbol. What’s more brazen than taking a Boden French press, covering it in stones of middling value, and selling it for $1,500? Nothing, especially considering my husband breaks one of these approximately every 1.5 years.

Please, sound off in the comments about your favorite dupes — reverse or regular!

The animated kids’ shows I grew up with in the ’80s and ’90s were great — Nickelodeon in particular ushered in a golden era with Rugrats, Doug, Ren & Stimpy, and the rest. But with the exception of Hey Arnold, almost none of them paid much attention to architecture or interiors. We were usually plopped in some anonymous suburban living room.

These days, the shows I watch with my daughter feel more considered. Gabby’s Dollhouse, Bluey, even Yo Gabba GabbaLand have a distinct sense of place. (Granted, there’s still a whole genre of retina-searing animation populated by Stepford-y children with balloon heads, but I digress.)

One show, though, has completely floored me with its architecturally minded design: Shape Island on Apple TV+. Adapted from Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s children’s books Triangle, Circle, and Square, the series follows three anthropomorphic shapes as they navigate friendship. But what really hooks me are the environments: interiors and landscapes that nod to Brutalism, Bauhaus, Barragán, even Gaudí. It’s architectural, it’s oddly soothing, and it looks like nothing else in children’s programming.

But the environment for this trio’s adventures lends a cleverness that pleases me endlessly. We have structures and interiors that nod to Brutalism, Bauhaus, Barragán, Gaudi. It’s architectural, it’s weirdly calming, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.

I spoke with production designer Paul Harrod — a very cool Portland-based dude whose CV includes Pee-wee’s Playhouse and Isle of Dogs — about how he built the world of Shape Island and why its sets feel so design-forward.

Q: You’ve worked on everything from Pee-wee’s Playhouse to Isle of Dogs with Wes Anderson. How did those experiences shape your path to Shape Island?

Those projects taught me how playful architectural stop motion can be. On Pee-wee’s Playhouse, I designed sets for the opening title sequence — it was all about color, whimsy, and forced perspective.

With Isle of Dogs, it was almost the opposite: 250 meticulously designed sets, many of which only appeared on screen for seconds, but every composition mattered. Both experiences gave me a deep respect for how design can shape character and mood, which carried right into Shape Island.

Q: What were your initial thoughts in transforming a kids’ book into a TV format?

From the start, the director Drew Hodges and I wanted the design to be minimalist without feeling alienating, and we settled on a muted palette to echo Jon Klassen’s illustrations. Apple did ask us to boost the colors in post, but the foundation stayed restrained and architectural.

In the books, a square is a square. In stop motion, a square is a cube, a circle is a sphere, a triangle is a pyramid. We wanted the world to feel toy-like but not too literal. Rocks and trees couldn’t be overly realistic — they had to suggest materials without fully revealing them. That ambiguity was intentional.

Q: Square’s house feels especially architectural. What were your references?

With Square's house, the foundation of it was Bauhaus — it just made perfect sense. He's square, so his home is going to be straight and narrow and all right angles. You're not going to find a curve anywhere in the place.

I also looked at the Japanese Metabolism movement — Kenzo Tange and modular housing plugged into central cores. It was about efficiency and rhythm. I drew from mid-century modern design too, especially the work of Dieter Rams at Braun: pared down, functional, rigorous.

Q: What about Circle’s house?

Circle’s home needed to feel cave-like but not scary — inviting instead of foreboding. I designed a central chimney to let light in, paired with a moat of constantly moving water running around the perimeter, sort of like one of those sushi-go-rounds. That refracted light beautifully across the space, creating a caustic effect. Our DP, Eric Adkins, figured out how to simulate moving water in stop motion, which is always tricky since you can’t use real water.

The space is essentially one large, round room with implied portals to other chambers. We see her kitchen, living area, and sometimes a hammock. I’ve always loved circular architecture — Ken Adam’s war room in Dr. Strangelove is a huge influence on me — and Circle’s house was an opportunity to explore that.

Q: And Triangle?
Triangle as a character is a very chaotic kind of guy — so, to be honest, I started from the idea of a messy, stoner-kid college dorm room. Once we decided he was going to live in a pyramid, we realized: there's nothing chaotic about pyramids. They're very structured. In the end, we took inspiration from the Louvre, creating a pyramid out of pyramids (or triangles). But on the interior, we could make everything intentionally cluttered and disordered, in contrast to the strict geometry of the form. It was about keeping his personality alive within such a rigid structure.

Q: Did you feel pressure to make the show more “kid-friendly”?

Yes, there’s often an assumption that children want bright primary colors, but that’s not always true. Think about Madeline or Eloise, both based on very limited palettes. Kids can handle subtlety — they respond to mood and atmosphere as much as to saturation.

Q: You’ve spent much of your career in stop motion. What’s the draw?

When I was a very young kid, I felt as though the stop motion world was something that could exist in my own bedroom. It has a tactile quality, a sense of being handmade. That’s what makes Shape Island work: it feels like a world you could construct from blocks and paper, but grounded with enough architectural thought to give it weight.

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A few days ago, I headed down to NYC’s Financial District to attend Collectible, a design fair that describes itself as “experimental.” I really didn’t know what to expect because:

• a) Despite being a “design editor,” I’ve actually only been to a couple design fairs. (It’s called editorial budgets, m’dears.)

• and b) I really had very little context for Collectible other than what I was being served on Instagram, which told me that I NEEEEDED TO BE THERE to be conversant with the hip design kids.

When you go into these things, as a writer with no assignment, you’re automatically an outsider. These events are largely targeted at “the industry” — it’s designers; art collectors; rich people looking at things for their homes that are not homes but are museums; and other decor/furniture designers — and so if you’re just trying to low-key look at some furniture stuff with no objective, it’s just like, “How do I explain my presence here?” I can’t fill the criteria of an exhibitor’s ROI: I’m not here to buy something. Or to tell someone else to buy something.

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Earlier this summer, clips of Decorating Cents — a Y2K-era HGTV show — started making the rounds online after comedian Rob Anderson posted them to Instagram. He summed it up as a series about “taking a perfectly normal room, and on a tiny budget, making it worse.”

That may be how we view the transformations now, but when Decorating Cents debuted in 1998 it was a hit, running for 30 seasons until 2009. The premise was straightforward: with just $500 (about $1,000 today), could you give a room a whole new look? Host Joan Steffend presided over projects that ranged from the sensible (a fresh coat of paint, rearranging furniture) to the surreal — painted sofas, rugs painted directly onto wood floors, and an alarming number of birch tree branches forced into service as decor.

I decided to watch for myself (episodes are up on Amazon with a paid membership to Discovery+). What I found was an absolute time capsule: pure late-’90s/early-2000s cheesiness, but it was also uncannily familiar. These were the same DIY tactics I remembered from my own family — the kinds of projects my mom and aunt once tried at home.

I wanted to know more. So I reached out to Steffend, who spoke to me from her home in Minneapolis.

But before we get to the Q&A, here’s Joan’s backstory: She studied acting, went to Los Angeles, and quickly realized that — in her own words — “Hollywood wasn’t looking for me.” So she went back home to Minneapolis, took some radio broadcasting classes and landed herself a job as a local TV anchor. And Joan was successful — spending some 20 years as an anchor and reporter. But she found herself looking for an out. “I’m an empath,” Joan told me, “and it's really hard to talk about horror and tragedy and trauma all the time.”

Opportunity came when, during “wine time” at a book club, someone told her about a producer who was in town looking for a host for a gardening or decorating show. She auditioned and landed the role, but was reluctant to take it — Joan was trying to spend more time with her kids. But the producers kept offering her more money, so she took the job and stayed in it for 10 years.

Below, our interview, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Schmatta: How did you find out that Decorating Cents was resurfacing on the internet and going viral?

Joan: I got some emails where people would say, “Hey, did you hear Decorating Cents is back?” And I was like, Oh, that's cool — but I didn’t look it up. Then slowly, turned into, “Do you know what they're saying about you?” Like, no, I don't, but I still didn't check it out. And then my husband looked it up one night in June. It was a clip from Rob Henderson. It hit in that painful way that unexpected things do.

Schmatta: What were your what were the thoughts going through your head?

Joan: I felt pain for the people who had put their heart and soul into the show — my family of designers, directors, and producers. It just felt painful to hear it, to see the piling on. I kind of froze for a couple of weeks, and then my kids and I just sat down and we decided — let's have some fun with it. So we made a website and put up some some T-shirt and mug designs. A portion of the proceeds go to World Central Kitchen — so we could do some good.

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Schmatta: So you’re feeling okay about it now?

Joan: It was such a huge tsunami of shame that my only response could be — I think I know I'm good with who I am, no matter what anybody says. So it ended up strengthening something in me that I wasn’t aware needed strengthening. But I probably wouldn’t even be doing this Zoom with you if it were a month ago.

Schmatta: I’m sorry you went through that, and that you’re better for it now. But, you know, my place of interest in Decorating Cents is that it was a really accurate portrayal of American homes. And that it maybe now stands as important documentation of the time. In “decor media” we really don’t see the average American home, so I found it to be fascinating. I’m curious to know: Did you have any interest — or background — in design and decor before becoming the host of Decorating Cents?

Joan: I had no interest in either. I grew up with parents who were children of the Depression. And so it was function over form every time. I mean, my mom would make rag rugs out of her old T-shirts and recover furniture and stuff like that.

Schmatta: A lot of the internet chatter about Decorating Cents is directed at you — but it seems more like the designer came up with the decoration. What was the ideation process like for an episode? How involved were you?

Joan: Not at all. I mean, I was as surprised as anybody what the direction of the episode would be. I would be given an address, I would show up, and then it'd be like, “Whoa, really? Okay, cool.” So I was finding out everything along with the audience. But I could always honor the creativity of the designer.

Schmatta: So how was the production team finding these homes? [Ed note: all episodes were filmed within 30 miles of Minneapolis.]

Joan: Well, first of all, they'd have to scout locations to see if they would fit television expectations — because you needed to have a certain amount of room, hopefully air conditioning, and space for all the big vehicles to park. And then they would go talk to the homeowner, and ask, in general, what do you want? They would do their best to to fit what the homeowner wanted.

Schmatta: That must have been a challenge.

Joan: Sometimes homeowners didn't always get listened to. Sometimes the designers did what they wanted to do, or what they could accomplish, or what they think would be good on TV. TV loves a little crazy every once in a while.

But, man, when you're digging in dumpsters and picking up things in alleyways…sometimes [we] didn't even know what color the paint was because they’d get this inexpensive mystery paint at Home Depot, and then you'd kind of build a room around that. I mean, it was wildly creative, and a lot of people might say, you know, “You can buy things for less,” but for television you need to have demo stuff happening all the time. So we couldn't just say, well, we found this lamp at HomeGoods — you’d [have to show] a way to make the lamp.

Schmatta: I assume the designer has a plan going in —

Joan: Yes, but never having tried it out in the space, right? This was just like, good luck. Let's hope it works. Sometimes we would try things and fail.

Schmatta: What episode comes to mind first as something that just didn’t work?

Joan: There was only one time when the homeowner said, please put everything back. And that was the one with the Native American sacred prayers. I'm so sorry. It was a different time.

[To set the scene: In that adventure, the designer takes pages of Native American prayers and decoupages them onto a newly painted cabinet. Joan’s voiceover for the episode explains: “We unanimously decided we had made a mistake…it was much too busy on the door fronts.” So they get to peeling and scraping off the paper, but not all of it will come off. They decide to leave the “distressed, aged look [they] had mistakenly created.”]

Joan: We didn't have the homeowner reveal on camera at that point, but the homeowner did come in and just go: “Hate it, put it back.”

Schmatta: Oh my god, haha!

Joan: Situations like that, you just have to make it work, because HGTV is waiting for a show, and there was literally no show that we did not turn in.

Schmatta: How much of the actual labor did you and the designers do?

Joan: I painted! I painted every time. [Our crew] was so bare bones. There was no makeup. There was one lighting guy. There was one photographer. But we did get extra people to help paint so we could get the painting done in less than four hours.

Schmatta: One thing I really admire about the show — especially in the segments where you go visit peoples’ homes to interview them about their decor — is that the homes aren’t styled. They’re messy and imperfect — especially the home where the mom is showing off her dirty kids’ clothes that she used as decor.

Joan: That's what I have to applaud. [That homeowner] was so joyful to show us that, and it was perfect for [her].

Schmatta: So why did you leave the show?

Joan: After 10 years, you could feel the wheel turning at HGTV. Some word had come down through the producers that there were some age limits that they were working with — for homeowners and for hosts — meaning they wanted to make sure that they were appealing to a younger audience. I'm not saying that that specifically [made me leave], but there was enough in me that felt like I wanted to move on and find another part of my life to live. [HGTV] did make me an offer to come back for another year, and I said that I didn't want to — not because I didn't love [my coworkers] who are like family to me. It was a really hard decision, but I felt like there was something else for me to do, and I really wasn't sure what that was.

Schmatta: So where does that lead you to now?

Joan: I’ve written two books. I founded a nonprofit at one point called Peace Begins With Me, which was asking people to be accountable for embodying traits that might allow the world to be a little kinder. I've worked with my husband on a number of documentaries. Right now, we're trying to fund another documentary about the smallest acts of kindness and how they live on in people's lives.

Schmatta: One last question. What was with beds always being placed in an angle in a corner of a room? Was that, like, a camera trick or something?

Joan: I don't know! I wasn't aware of it prior to doing the show…it was like creating a different, unexpected flow. I can't explain it. It just was.

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Clueless is officially 30 years old.

I can’t understate the impact Clueless had on millennials. To quote from my own book: “Cher Horowitz managed to validate my entire existence. Clueless became my baseline barometer for cool, and my guide to aspirational living.”

When millennials first saw this master reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma, the satire went over our heads. Instead, the film became a fundamental building block for how my generation viewed wealth — it told us that being a moneyed teen could give you adult-like agency in a very “the rules do not apply” world (hello, Cher driving around town in a Jeep on a learner’s permit or wearing a plastic top hat to history class).

In Emma, class isn’t just about how much money you have — it’s about where that money comes from, how long you’ve had it, and how little you need to show it off. For Cher and her Reagan-bred cohort, those nuances have evaporated. Wealth is the whole story, and “classy” means having columns that date all the way back to the ‘70s.

Enter the McMansion, a postmodern phenomenon built on architectural pastiche and faux opulence.

According to Virginia McAlester, author of A Field Guide to American Houses and doyenne of domestic architecture, the term McMansion refers to the oversize scale of these homes: “This penchant for size, particularly when interspersed amid small, earlier neighboring houses — or scattered on super-large far-flung rural lots — led to the nickname McMansion, initially used for Millennium Mansions but now referring to any new house deemed to be either oversized in comparison with adjacent homes or disjointed in style.”

Disjointed in style indeed. Cher’s house combines an astonishing array of references that blend into a kind of generalized “European” imitation — one that some Americans at the time deemed to be “elegant.” The exterior is neoclassical, the windows kinda French, and the grand staircase has scrollwork worthy of an Olive Garden.

What made Cher’s house feel so believable — even desirable — to millennial girls wasn’t just the wealth on display, but the geographic context. This was Beverly Hills, the mythical epicenter of American glamour that we didn’t understand as a breeding ground for new money.

So we didn’t clock the tackiness. The marble floors, the overtly lawyerly office, the chandeliers everywhere — it all passed as good taste, simply because of its 90210 zip code.

Cher’s father’s art collection confuses the discussion of taste even more. When Cher has Christian over for a date (or at least what she thinks is a date), he notes that her father “has a well-rounded [art] collection,” as he admires a poolside Claes Oldenburg statue.

We see glimpses of other sculptures in this scene — works meant to resemble Henry Moore, Giacometti, even Michelangelo. But Cher’s response — “Daddy says it’s a good investment” — pretty much tells us that Mr. Horowitz isn’t buying art for culture; it’s all a money grab. (Then again, can an art “collector” ever portray real integrity when putting all one’s wealth on display is the definition of snobbery?)

These backwards ideals of American grandeur seem especially relevant these days now that Trump has reentered the chat. His gilded, Rococo-fueled redecoration of the Oval Office pushes the boundaries of ostentatiousness and comes across as aggressively masculine — power as decor, decor as intimidation.

(But really, Trump’s White House makeover is all just a bit of movie magic — if we are to believe the above video that identifies the gilded fireplace appliqués as $58 buys from Home Depot.)

We can at least rest easy knowing that Cher’s house had no political agenda — even if it was a symbol of American capitalism, it wasn’t trying to rule the world. It was just offering a fantasy where the fireplaces were remote-controlled and the architecture could get weird.

We have a lot of new subscribers here, likely in thanks to last week’s New York Times article I was quoted in about “slow renovating.” Here’s what I said:

“Slow renovating and slow decorating are actual movements, or at least the internet likes to coin them as such, whereas people have been doing this for ages, but it’s just called ‘you don’t have the time or the budget.’”

The NYT piece is about the virtues of renovating slowly — project by project, over time — which is how most people actually live, if only out of necessity.

But living in L.A., and absorbing a steady drip of decor media, it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one who hasn’t gutted your kitchen on day one. There's a warped sense of normal: Every new homeowner seems to knock down walls before unpacking a single box. And design media rarely mentions the financial scaffolding behind these transformations — the trust funds, the invisible $700K sunk into a home that already cost $2 million.

The footprint might be modest, the family might look refreshingly down-to-earth, but the math? The math LIES!

When we bought our 2-bedroom, 1-bath Craftsman in Pasadena in January 2022, we had plans. Sooo many projects. So many spreadsheets. But first, we had to deal with the essentials — or at least, what we decided was essential — and to do that, we held back money from our downpayment. Here’s the breakdown of our move-in “renovation” costs:

• Interior and exterior painting (definitely necessary — the inside was so dirty and stinky; the outside looked abandoned): $12,000

• Checklist of random fix-its: pulling out some gross cabinetry, rewiring some things, installing light fixtures, installing shelving in closets, installing security cameras, putting in a garbage disposal, adding a “spark arrestor” to our chimney (still don’t know what that is), and about 7-10 other things I can’t remember: $7,000

• Patching up a piece of the living room with new hardwood flooring: $1,000

• Spraying for termites: $1,200

• Window treatments (essential for the bazillion windows in our house): $1,600

• Buying a washer and dryer: $1,500

• Landscaping: $6,000

So let’s round that up to $30,000 in initial costs. Although I’m certain it was more. Let’s say $40k. Dang. These are costs that we will likely never gain back in the event of a sale — it was all just making the home completely safe and fresh as possible.

But, in the spirit of that New York Times article, I thought I’d share:

• The renovations we still have on our list.

• Our realtor’s thoughts on each project in terms of value-add to our home. Introducing the magnificent and handsome John Cabeso:

  

  This man put up with so much during our home search. During Covid, he came to every single viewing, and rocked our baby outside the houses so we wouldn’t have to bring her inside. He helped us get an amazing price on our home. If you’re in the L.A. area, and need a realtor, you can contact him here.

• As John assesses these projects, he’s looking at two things:

  • “There are two types of ‘value add’ in real estate:

    DIRECT IMPACT VALUE is measurable and changes the functionality of the home. Adding square footage, adding a bathroom or bedroom are common examples.

    INDIRECT IMPACT VALUE is perceived value — such as design, which can be fleeting and very expensive.”

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Garage Conversion & Patio Makeover: ~$150,000

Our garage — which we’d like to convert into an office/guest room — is only 156 square feet, so you’d think it wouldn’t cost so much to put in drywall and some A/C, but…permitting in Pasadena is expensive and ADUs (even though ours isn’t technically an ADU) require lots of expensive assessments. We could reduce the cost a lot by doing this illeg*lly, but…people in Pasadena are tattle-tales.

The first step in my vision is to shorten our 2-car-length driveway by placing a gate halfway down the drive. We’d park in front of it and have a door installed to the right of the gate for easy entry. We’d need to get this custom made to fit the style of our Craftsman home. This alone could cost us $5,000 to $7,000 (including permitting and installation).

In shortening our driveway and creating more privacy, I’d love to lay down grass in front of the garage to give our daughter, Eleanor, extra space to play (our back patio is our main outdoor space and it is teeeeeny).

The idea for the garage office is to make it functional for overnight guests, maintain space for storage, and have enough room for a desk along one of the walls.

If you scroll down, here’s a reimagining of our back patio (please excuse the chaotic dimensions). Right now, it’s dominated by a sad chainlink fence and a forgettable dining set we rarely use — it’s more “outdoor afterthought” than destination. My dream is to open things up and give Eleanor more space to run wild. So, let’s ditch the dining table and instead build custom perimeter bench seating with weatherproof storage. I’m also imagining a lightweight or collapsible coffee table we can pull out for guests — something that shifts the mood from weekday playground to evening cocktail lounge.

Realtor John says…

The garage conversion and patio makeover are Direct Impact Value Adds:

• “The 150-square-foot garage conversion (if permitted) can potentially add an average of $867 per square foot. This doesn’t include the indirect impact value: Built-in storage with Murphy bed…I mean who doesn’t love that, especially when maximizing a small space is key? Average ROI could be anywhere between 10-15% in added property value.”

• Patio: “Since Covid, yard space (front and back) has never been more important and is a top ‘must-have’ among homebuyers in Northeast L.A. Adding a fence can increase property value 5-15%, providing privacy and security. Landscaping can grow a home’s resale by 15-20% because it’s all about curb appeal and first impressions. A well-designed patio with weather-proof, storage banquettes can be an added plus.”

Kitchen Renovation: $65,000-$80,000

Below is our current kitchen. And it is “fine.” It’s functional. I actually have no beef with the layout. There’s plenty of storage. Except, aesthetically, I LOATHE it. The cabinets are the most shit cabinets anyone could ever buy (half of them are falling apart). The gray vinyl flooring is soul-crushing. And the “marble” countertops and backsplash…spare me. (As it turns out, those countertops are real marble, but apparently money can buy you marble so shitty it looks fake.)

I’d like to retain the footprint but inject a bit more style into the space.

Even though our kitchen is “small” — it’s a galley kitchen — we technically have quite a long run of linear feet (which is how you calculate cabinetry costs). I refuse to waste my money on shitty cabinetry — so we’d be going custom. Add in new countertops, flooring, and appliances, and you are talking MAJOR money.

I worked on the below renders with Isla Porter. The pricing for the cabinetry alone in these designs ranges from $45,000-$57,000. Granted, Isla is a luxury company; I could potentially reduce the cabinetry costs by going with a local millworker, but still.

KITCHEN INSPO:

Realtor John says…

• Indirect Impact Value Add and, “IMO, NOT WORTH IT.”

• “While it’s true that you'll get the most out of kitchen/bathroom renovations, since yours is functional and has a good layout, spending $65-$80K may not be worth it and won’t add as much value as you think. An inexpensive revamp is best — maybe changing the cabinet doors, new hardware, and tiling the floors.”

Converting Current Laundry Room Into 1/2 Bath-Laundry-Combo: $15,000-$20,000

Here is the crazy thing about our home. It once had a second toilet! But the previous owners took it out! WHY?! Raise your hand if you know what living with an adult male who poops all the time is like.

On the left side of the room, I’d like to install a toilet, sink, and upper cabinetry. On the right, I want to create a built-in storage unit to contain the washer-dryer (vertically stacked) as well as extra cabinetry (and maybe even a built-in litter box).

This would entail: Installing a pocket door, tiling the floor, reconfiguring some plumbing, installing a toilet and sink, and commissioning custom millwork for storage.

HALF-BATH/LAUNDRY INSPO:

Realtor John says…

• Direct Impact Value Add

• “Since there’s currently only 1 bathroom, converting the laundry room to a half-bath while keeping the W/D unit there will be significant. I did this myself! Can be a huge selling point and potentially can add 10-15% in resale value.”

Fireplace Retiling: $3,500-$7,000

The cost of this could vary wildly depending on what type of tile we go with and how custom the encasement would be.

Realtor John says…

• Indirect Value Add

• At the moment, we are boxing it in with drywall to at least make things look cleaner.

Primary Bath Upgrade: $12,000-$15,000

Again, this is a case of me just hating the vacantness of our bathroom. I’d want to paint; re-tile the floor; install new light fixtures; add board-and-batten cladding to the walls; put in a small, custom, Craftsman-inspired closet in an awkward corner; install medicine cabinets; and bring in a new vanity (potentially with just one sink, and use the other half for storage).

BATHROOM INSPO:

Realtor John says…

• Indirect Impact Value Add/not worth it.

• “I almost want to copy and paste what I mentioned about the kitchen. Just new paint and new lighting can make a huge difference — especially if the overall bathroom is functional and not caving down to the foundation.”

Hallway Glow-Up: $5k-ish

Our hallway is fine!! But we do have a recess that is dying for a built-in cabinet (and in a small home, you want all the storage you can get). The first quote we got for the cabinet was like $6,000 — ouch. But I think we could simplify the design and get that way down. Or find a vintage wardrobe to fit the spot. Then, I’d put up wallpaper (either Svenskt Tenn, Ottoline, or Zak & Fox), re-paint our trim and doors to match, and install two sconces (vintage, for sure) on the longest wall of the hallway.

Realtor John says…

• Indirect Value Add (…I knew this would be a personal project)

• “There’s a constant debate about wallpaper on almost every house tour with newer-style wallpaper in a bedroom, powder room — it’s 50/50. This won’t add value, it’ll just make reason for a good debate. The custom cabinet may be a good feature, especially if there isn’t much storage around.”

TOTAL “Exact” Cost of The Renovations I Never Made, AKA a Ballpark Figure: $267,000

Realtor John says…

“Spending $267,000 may take a lot of time to recoup and feel the added value.”

I mean. We do know this.

But it’s a helpful reminder of just how much money is quietly poured into those decor media stories — all in pursuit of an aesthetically cohesive, photographable home. I’m not trying to throw (too much) shade. Truly, nice work if you can get it.

But for those of us living within the confines of actual budgets and boring math…it’s just not “a thing.”

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Here at Schmatta, we generally try to avoid mass decor media headlines/stories. Today is a bit of an exception because I’ve just come across so many interesting ways people are hiding their TVs (or using projectors very cleverly).

Apparently, placing a television in one’s home is quite fraught. In fact, there is an entire Reddit thread called TVTooHigh …

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The Playmobil Victorian dollhouse was a status symbol for millennial girls — not because it reflected anything about our real lives, but because it offered a portal to the so-called “olden times.” If you were the lucky owner of one, it meant you had taste — the kind of taste a seven-year-old associates with miniature fainting couches and heavy drapery. …

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These announcements are extremely valuable to paint companies because:

• Decor media jumps on them, resulting in valuable promotion for businesses like Behr, Benjamin Moore, etc.

• And decor media benefits as well — color news stories perform well on social and news platforms, and it’s always in a publisher’s best interest to offer a gesture of goodwill to paint companies in the hope of landing one as a sponsor. In the world of decor media, paint sponsors are among the most coveted (they can spend serious money), but are also the most difficult to land (they like to spend serious money in the same places every year). (Come to me, paint sponsors.)

In the scope of tools and materials available to homeowners and renters, paint is critical. I’m really not kidding; paint is the most accessible and affordable apparatus for changing one’s space. The color you select for your walls becomes the literal backdrop of your life, and as mundane as that hue might feel after seeing it 365 days a year for years on end, it’s still going to define the vibe and physicality of your home.

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After all, according to comedic genius Julio Torres, colors have legit personalities:

As an editor, I’ve always felt like a liar when talking to our readers about color trends. We would publish a “report” every three months. I feel like it’s impossible for something to be a “trend” within a matter of weeks.

Anyhow, the 2025 announcements are rolling in. So far we have (from the larger/more recognizable brands):

• Behr: Rumors, “a luxurious ruby red adding warmth and rich allure.”

• Valspar: Encore, a deep blue, “an anchoring shade that embodies constancy and confidence to let you create a joyful respite from the ebbs and flows of life.”

• Dutch Boy: Mapped Blue, “a beautiful, medium-tone blue with slight yellow undertones, it adds modern charm to any space.”

• HGTV Home by Sherwin-Williams (unclear if this is different from plain old Sherwin-Williams): Quietude, “a soft sage with a whisper of blue influence…soothes any space inside or out.”

• Benjamin Moore: Cinnamon Slate, a “delicate mix of heathered plum and velvety brown.”

Before I get into what 2025 is trying to tell us, I want to first look at the past handful of years and color predictions from three major paint distributors — Behr, Sherwin, and Benjamin Moore:

What I see here is a narrative being built around peaks and valleys: the American people are either uncertain and unstable, or they are confident and exploratory. Take Benjamin Moore: in 2020, the company tells us that we are in a place of optimism (despite being in a pandemic?) vs. the next year we are unstable. Sherwin-Williams, on the other hand, seems to take a similar tone each year, using the words “calm” and “grounding” consistently. (Either way, I can’t help but read every color description in a hushed voice, as if one is being ushered into the gates of heaven, or seduced by the narrator of a ‘90s Caress soap commercial.) These colors and descriptors attempt to diagnose the mood of the nation, yet it’s clear that there’s not always agreement.

What I do see, looking at paint companies from 2020-2024, is that aside from Benjamin Moore’s “Raspberry Blush,” Colors of the Year do not take risks. This stands in pretty sharp contrast to Pantone, which prefers bold hues. Pantone can be more daring as it’s a guide to everything — there’s less risk in wasting money on a neon yellow dress than painting your dining room that color.

A paint company being risk-averse and rejecting a big swing makes sense to me. But there’s more to it than that. I tend to agree with the artist and writer David Batchelor when he says that the Western world fears color. In his 2000 treatise, Chromophobia, Batchelor writes, “It is, I believe no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalized, reviled, diminished and degraded.” His reasoning is complex but it definitely makes sense, especially in America — most Americans fear bold colors in their homes. (See ’s dissection of the “Beige-ification” of the home.)

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Here’s what “INDUSTRY INSIDERS” have to say about “Color of the Year” announcements:

• Price Latimer, co-founder Alkemis Paint: “While it doesn't seem to be a major game-changer from a revenue standpoint, color trends are an important engagement tool for customers…the neuroaesthetic component of how color influences our feelings and evokes emotional responses can also be used to set a certain emotive tone or idealistic vibe for the coming year.”

• Anonymous former Director of Merchandising from a major U.S. furniture retailer: “Color of the Year makes for great marketing, but I haven’t found it to actually drive sales. We tend to see color trends hold across the home sector for a period of 3-5 years, with little impact from paint or color authorities.”

• , design journalist and Creative Director at Herman Miller: “‘Color of the Year’ is absolutely a PR stunt. It's a way to manufacture ‘news’ around color when understanding color is a much deeper and more sensory experience. (All credit to Charli XCX for pulling off a much more sophisticated color PR stunt.)”

So, okay, yes, we should all be in agreement that a “Paint Color of the Year” announcement has no actual bearing on reality. Still, this might be the first year I’ve seen a paint company make an interesting choice.

::drum roll::

Cheers to Benjamin Moore for introducing Cinnamon Slate (terrible name). The company seems to have picked up on the interest in purples over the past year. But interestingly, the hue apparently has a lot of variation according to light. (I haven’t seen this color and I’m relying on BM’s site to reflect reality.)

In most marketing materials, Cinnamon Slate looks something like this:

Yet, according to the light in your space, it can apparently look more like a taupe or a brown:

Anyhow. In summation: Color of the Year = PR nonsense. But this year, I liked Benjamin Moore’s slightly more “daring” choice.

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Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website to get in touch.

My realization that I’m a “design parent” all started with my search for a playpen for my then-crawling daughter. Everywhere I looked, all I found was gray nylon, brightly colored plastic, or things that looked like castles (and not in a cool way). When I posted to my IG stories in search of suggestions for a “non-ugly baby playpen,” I was hoping one of my design-savvy friends would jump out of the woodwork to deliver me an option. Instead, I received four direct messages, all with the same tone: “It’s not for YOU, it’s for your child — get over it.”

So being a mother who wants to maintain a design sensibility in her home is, apparently, taboo?

But how did we get to this place — where it’s normal and acceptable for a household to be dominated by children’s things? After all, it’s not like the Victorians had rooms overrun with toys for stacking, bouncing, or noise-making.

Indeed, according to American Home Life, 1880-1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services, we discover that the Victorians, overly obsessed with decorum and fearful of their children’s safety, relegated wee ones and their things out of sight — usually in the nursery, “located at the back of the house or on the second or third floor — as far away from normal activity of adults as possible.”

The parlor, a staple of the Victorian middle class, was a public area not appropriate for children. Instead, this curated space reflected (or attempted to reflect) a family’s worldliness and intellect. (It’s referred to as a “museum of the family” in the above book.) Yet by the 20th century, Americans began to tire of formality; the parlor, which was a framework for artifice and performance, evolved into the friendlier “living room” — a multifunctional hub of the home.

A change in parenting styles also led to the increase of the child’s presence in the home. By 1920, American parents allowed their kids to be more independent. “Articles in women’s magazines encouraged mothers to make their homes safe for their babies, so that toddlers can be given the free run of the house without fear of injury,” writes Karin Calvert in American Home Life.

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A steep rise in leisure-seeking and consumerism in the early 21st century brought an influx of objects to market specifically for children — not just toys, but kid-sized furniture, or furniture that was more kid-friendly.

And then we all know what happens. WWII ends and there is a baby boom. The average amount of children per woman goes from 2.3 to 3.5. And while there was a concurrent housing boom, newly constructed homes weren’t palatial — the modest 800-square-foot Cape Cod or Ranch style home became the norm in the suburbs. (That’s a lot to handle for a stay-at-home mom.)

Still, post-war, the living room largely remained an adult space. I asked my father, who grew up in Chicago in the ‘40s and ‘50s, if there was a corner of his childhood living room for toys and he said no: “Playing with my toys in the living room wasn’t off-limits, but all the toys were kept in my own room.” Same went for his friends.

As we get into the mid-century and beyond, parenting focused on the psychology and well-being of the child. But, when we examine living rooms of the ‘60s and ‘70s in publications like Better Homes and Gardens, we still don’t see portions of living rooms dedicated to children (but we do see children playing in them).

A turning point seems to come in the ‘80s and ‘90s, an age of excess and an increase in manufacturing of baby-specific products. I do have to wonder if the increase of women in the workforce — we go from a 43% participation rate in 1970 to 61% in 2000 — was a contributing factor to the living room as playroom. With both parents working, life begins to feel more hectic and disorganized.

In 2024, we find ourselves in the era of helicopter parenting. We are so consumed by our children, that the Surgeon General has officially slapped a warning label on us because we are “exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind.”

And this leads us to a place where we are so intensely focused on our children, that everything else — the things that made you you — become insignificant. Especially for women, there’s an expectation to give everything over to your child.

As we were preparing for our daughter’s arrival and doing the shopping for the one billion things a baby “needs,” I started to get the sense that I was something of an outcast. Friends would text me suggestions for gear (“You definitely need this!”) and I would respond with disappointment (“Okay, but do I have to get this baby formula maker that looks like an off-brand Nescafe?”).

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And then then the baby gate thing happened and I lost it. Why was I not “allowed” to create space for a child in my home on my own terms?

After Eleanor arrived in 2021, we bought our first house — very much a dream come true. It was much smaller than our old apartment, and all of a sudden, our home filled up with even more Eleanor-related stuff.

So we became the type of parents who don’t buy large toys. We set up a tent in the corner of the living room to hide Eleanor’s playthings; there’s also a woven basket filled with toys, but it has a blanket piled over it when she’s not playing.

(Eleanor’s tent is in the corner of the living room, except for the holidays when we move it to the center to make room for the tree.)

But still, that pressure to cede your house over to your child comes all the time. Eleanor’s preschool teacher keeps imploring me to set up a “Montessori corner” for her in the dining room and…::rage-filled sigh:: We also need a new living room rug and the sensible thing to do would be to buy something cheap and boring that won’t show stains. But that makes me feel sad; the rug I want is something I’ve wanted for two years, and I don’t want to wait another two (or more) years to feel like I can make certain decorative choices.

I get that for some families, there are other priorities. And I also understand that maintaining your sense of self (whether it’s through your home, fashion, or otherwise) is exhausting when you’re a parent. Sometimes it’s easier to cave. Or some people don’t have a choice.

But I do know I’m not alone in being a “design” parent. I just wish I could say so out loud and not sound like a total asshole. But, by all means, feel free to rip me to shreds in the comments if you feel differently.

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Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website to get in touch.

In the pantheon of French pastries, the croissant reigns supreme — a golden, flaky testament to centuries of baking mastery. And yet, in a twist worthy of a Camus novel, the croissant now finds itself at the center of an aesthetic controversy that could rival Marie Antoinette's (misquoted) "Let them eat cake!"

This week, the internet discovered that a croissant-shaped lamp from Temu, was, in fact, made of a real croissant, thanks to this girl who tore into the light and then actually took a taste.

@froginahatgirlPls explain temu

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Our initial reaction is of shock — we know Temu is a capitalist colossus mired in environmental and labor evils, and we know they are cheap. But so cheap as to turn an actual piece of bread into a lamp?

I mean, yeah. But there’s more to it than that.

The croissant lamp is not a new phenomenon. In fact the bread-as-lighting category began in at least 2018 (possibly earlier) and hit hard with Brooklynites who like to indulge in decorative irony. Mociun, the NYC-based jewelry brand and home goods shop, has been selling croissant and bread lamps for several years.

These handcrafted pieces are made by a Japanese artist named Yukiko Morita, who sells her wares under the brand name Pampshade. And guess what? They are made of real bread. On purpose. And unlike Temu, Pampshade’s mission is at least somewhat environmentally driven: Morita purchases “unsold bread” “at the highest possible price” to create something out of soon-to-be trash.

Therefore, we should not discount bread as a worthy medium.

Just recently Mrs. Selena Gomez aka Benny Blanco showed off his home to Architectural Digest, and aside from it being a tour I didn’t actually hate, he pointed out a chair made of baguettes:

Created by Lola Abbey of Dadybones, this chair isn’t just decorative; you can apparently sit on it although Blanco says he’s too scared to try.

In 2022, rapper Tommy Cash collaborated with artist Gab Bois to create a conceptual Bellini-esque sofa made from brioche. Although the two hoped IKEA could make turn this into reality, the concept never panned out.

In 2020, Laila Gohar and Sam Stewart created this edible lounger:

And, when you work in the world of decor and DIY SEO, as I did for many years of my career, you learn that uneaten bread is entirely useful in your home. Among other things, you can use a slice to wipe off a dusty painting. (But should you?? The internet doesn’t care.)

Even scientists are figuring out how to use burnt bread to make carbon foam that could be used as insulation.

This is all to say that we are living in unprecedented times where we have to decide what is more absurd: turning a culinary icon into a decorative lamp? Or finding out that someone actually ate it?

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Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein and/or @schmattamag. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website.

Today we’re talking about the architecture of the family home featured in the kids’ show, Bluey. And then we’ll cover some cool, current happenings in Australian design.

Also! I wrote a thing for Dwell on tennis aesthetics. Check it out here.

For the uninitiated or child-free (cat people): Bluey is a kids’ cartoon show. But let me be clear: Bluey is not merely any kids’ show. It is about the realities of parenting and life’s largest moral quandaries. It’s a philosophy, really. And for parents, Bluey is proof that the experience of having children is terrifying, transcendental, tedious, and hilarious — all at the same time. (Which, like, finally, someone gets it.)

A quick rundown if you’ve never watched (honestly, you should, I sometimes watch it without my daughter, don’t judge): We follow the everyday lives of the Heeler family, a clan of Australian dogs. There’s Bandit, the goofy and permissive father; Chilli is the even-keeled and supportive mother; Bingo, the youngest daughter, is wacky and inquisitive; and the titular character is Bluey, the eldest daughter filled with imagination and ambition.

An episode of Bluey can be completely mundane or uneventful but then end with a dazzling thesis. Take Season 3’s “Housework,” in which Chilli and Bandit say everyone has to clean up the house — except the couple completely pauses their housework when they realize their daughters do these silly walks while they clean. Chilli and Bandit drop everything just to watch and attempt to recreate their daughters’ silly walks. Eventually Bluey and Bingo realize their parents aren’t cleaning and ask what’s going on. Bandit explains that they haven’t even started cleaning because they’re trying to learn how to do silly walks. When Bingo then asks why, the parents just reply, “We don’t know!” (The thesis being: Just be honest and weird.)

Then there’s “The Show,” an episode where Bluey and Bingo put on a Mother’s Day play that unintentionally insinuates (to the grown-up audience, not the kids) that Chilli at some point had a miscarriage. It happens in a split second. I mean. This is Shakespearian-level brilliance.

Of course, as a design/decor/whatever person, one of the things I love most about Bluey is the family home, meant to be located in Brisbane.

Their house is an architecturally significant style specific only to Australia called the Queenslander. Queenslander homes were developed during the mid-19th century and share many stylistic details with Victorian and craftsman homes, but they tend to have two defining features: wrap-around verandas and elevated construction. (Btw, Australians spell it verandah, lord only knows why.)

Like most architecture developed before modern technology, Queenslander construction had purpose — to mitigate the effects of Australia’s hot and humid climate (elevation allowed for cool air to circulate below the home, while the veranda accommodated indoor-outdoor living). You’ll see similar techniques used in the shotgun houses of New Orleans. A corrugated metal roof is also characteristic of Queenslander construction.

The Heelers’ Queenslander draws in all of these architectural details while also packing in a ton of historic flourishes that ensure the home’s quaintness right off the bat. You have Victorian windows, a picket fence, and cutout motifs (hearts!) on the porch balustrade that immediately give me sentimental-Disney-feels (think Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty’s cottage, the fencing around the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland)…all of which seems quite Bavarian so ::shrug emoji::.

We also see some charming examples of stained glass, which is another detail you see often in Queenslanders (stained glass provided privacy and reduced solar heat). My favorite references are the fretwork breezeways above the doors (another traditional cooling feature) but in the Heelers’ house, the design is in the style of a dog bone.

As for the Heelers’ interior taste, the overall vibe is giving me West Elm circa 2012 vibes (Bluey debuted in 2018) with midcentury-inspired furniture (although I feel like Chilli and Bandit would mix that with vintage finds), a globe light chandelier, a kilim rug, succulents. The large art piece (a beach with tennis balls, lol) would have been a significant investment — perhaps a purchase from a local artist. As for the shiplap walls, I wonder if those are original but my gut is saying no; if they were original, the boards would be placed horizontally.

Bandit and Chilli’s bedroom feels super unpretentious and vaguely boho. Although I have to wonder how on earth they have sex in this house with those breezeways providing zero soundproofing. And their ensuite bathroom with both fretwork and a slatted pane…that alone might traumatize me.

The one space that seems to be a bit of a departure in style is the study, which has an Indiana Jones-y aesthetic. (Bandit is an archeologist.)

I do have to wonder if the Heelers — or the previous owners — did a renovation as the home has two floors (re-done Queenslanders often fill in the previously unoccupied space under the house). As for the layout, it’s a bit of a mystery, with Redditors unable to agree on a floor plan because the arrangement randomly shifts across episodes.

One notable alteration to the structure is the wide bifold glass door on the lower veranda, which adds a more modern touch.

I’ve seen some very creative renovation projects come out of Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne, where families maintain the historic brick facades of their Victorian homes, expanding the rears into modern expansions to combat the small footprint of the original structure. It’s very much “party in the front, party also in the back” architecture.

Take this project by Maloney Architects. The front is beautifully maintained…

While the back turns into this art gallery-like expansion:

Speaking of Australian design, there’s a lot of innovation happening on that side of the world, and for some reason, it feels largely slept on by Americans (save for furniture designer Sarah Ellison’s Stateside success). Here are a few things I’ve seen over the past few months (years? I don’t even know what day of the week it is).

This kitchen by architectural designer Murray Barker has made the rounds on IG (it’s so good!). It brings in terrazzo floors in a more subtle fashion than the Great Terrazzoopalooza of 2018. Also red marble: feel like we’re going to be seeing a lot of that going into 2025.

Sydney-based YSG is getting a lot of nice attention for combining references from cultures across the globe.

If you like neutral interiors that aren’t actually neutral, Folk Studio is doing some pleasing stuff:

WOWOWA does projects in a style I see often in Australian renos. I’d call it…Pop Contemporary? It’s straight vs. arched lines with bold color choices and plywood builds and lots of gridded tile motifs.

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But back to Bluey. I did reach out to Ludo Studio (production company) for comment on the architecture and decor of the house. Despite multiple attempts, I didn’t succeed, although a very nice office manager named Craig put up with my persistent emails. I was able to find one quote [SPOILER LINK! if you haven’t finished the third season] from series creator Joe Brumm, who called the house a “fifth Heeler character,” and explained that “some past episodes have touched on how a room can become imbued with memories and take on a life of its own.” (I love that.)

I have to imagine that — whether subconsciously or intentional — there’s true significance to Brumm choosing a Queeenslander home for the Heelers. After all, the architecture style developed out of resourcefulness and ingenuity, qualities that are extremely necessary in parenting. A Queenslander is practical but plentiful in its fun, decorative embellishments. And with its traditional raised structure, it suggests a certain openness…or open-mindedness.

Before I sign off, there’s one last Bluey structure that is just unreal: the kids’ school.

This is some sort of Middle Earth-meets-art nouveau-meets-Big Sur luxury eco-lodge fever dream and I am here for it.

So, when can I enroll?

Bluey fans: I’d love to hear about your experience watching the show. Do it in the comments below. <3

**Hearts/shares/comments help us grow and reach more people!**

Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein and/or @schmattamag. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website.

People who consume media (aka all of humanity) are suckers for trends. The idea of a trend stimulates dopamine production because it signals positive change: I can have a new me by tomorrow! (Even if that’s an empty capitalist promise, which it usually is.) This process translates better to fashion because of its fast-paced nature. But when it comes to …

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Let me be clear: Today’s post is not about period furniture, which generally refers to antiques of the Western world. Today’s post is about period — as in blood! — furniture.

Since the dawn of civilization, women have been dealing with menstruation, a monthly event that, to me, confirms God’s status as an adolescent boy. “How about we make her gush blood…

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The arrival of the dELiA*s catalog was as mysterious as the origin of a ‘90s chain email claiming you would die in seven days if you didn’t forward it. No one seems to remember where or how they heard of dELiA*s but once you did, it was life-affirming.

dELiA*s was not just a catalog; it was gospel, supplying ‘90s preteen girls with a new American ideal. One that was cargo-pantsed, spaghetti-strapped, and horizontally striped-shirted. It also introduced us to a non-sensical era of copywriting: “MoRe sTePs ThAn mArchInG bAnD aT BaGGaGe cLaiM”; “A fRiend wiLL trY to tEmPt You wiTH BrocColi”; “moRe FrEsH ThAn A nEwLy FaLlEn SnOwBoarDeR”.

At some point, dELiA*s began including a few pages dedicated to bedroom decor: starry flannel sheets, butterfly chairs, lava lamps, impossibly furry accessories. This is where my obsession with interiors began: dELiA*s could show you the way to turn your room into a dreamy paradise where you could write angsty diary entries, dream about the day you and Leo DiCaprio finally kiss, all with Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” playing on repeat.

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Here’s a look at what dELiA*s was selling to ‘90s girls:

Looking at these images makes me feel sad about everyone’s bedrooms these days which seem to be some variation of beige/neutral tones which is very…not all that and a bag of chips. So I went ahead and reimagined a dELiA*s catalog for all you ‘90s girls — but with 2024 style. *NOnSEnSe pHRaSeS wRiTtEn bY mE InCLuDeD!*

*SChmaTta’S dELiA*s deCoR FOr 2024 giRLs*

a) Dusen Dusen bedding / b) Hem pouf / c) Pampshade lamp / d) Noguchi lamp

a) HAY pendants / b) Sophie Lou Jacobsen glasses / c) Togo lounger / d) HAY crates

a) Backdrop paint / b) Gohar candle / c) Helle Mardahl glass / d) Kartell nightstand / e) Mini Rodini sheets

a) Kelly Wearstler mirror / b) Loewe candle / c) Petra hardware pulls / d) MoMA outdoor lounge chair / e) USM nightstand

a) Anya Hindmarch diffuser / b) Wooj lamp / c) Mociun spill / d) Hawkins sponges / e) Dame vibrators / f) Vacation air freshener / g) Ichendorf Milano glasses / h) Fredericks & Mae cutting board / i) Mini Pratone / j) Concrete Cat mystery item / k) Edie Parker lighters / l) House of Intuition altar blend / m) Bodum coffee maker

Oh and guess what?! Because no bedroom is complete without the right music…

Here is a dELiA*s CD playlist (remember: Super Smart, Super Hot, Super Party??) I compiled a while back, with a sweet 70(!) tracks:

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Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein and/or @schmattamag. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website.

Out of all the pieces of furniture required to outfit a home, the couch is a purchase rife with domestic fraught. It is THE piece to define a space. After all, the sofa is public; it is the framework for your best first impression and a primary spot for socializing. Also, sofas are expensive. When I was in my early twenties and living in a windowless room in Williamsburg, BK, I met a man who told me he had just bought a new couch. From this, I inferred a very important thing: this was a man who lived alone, without roommates, hence: marriage material. (Didn’t last, whatever.)

A couch, when properly selected, is BUE (Big Upholstered Energy). For many of us, we purchase couches that are…fine. Couches that cost more than a month’s rent or mortgage, but are perfectly….okay. On the other side of the coin is the dream: the couch for when you win the lottery, the divan of one’s dreams.

And so, I’ve asked some “cool design people”: What is your GOAT couch? (GOAT standing for Greatest of All Time, which I didn’t fully understand the meaning of until maybe a year ago. I always though it was like a goat, as in an animal, and goats are cool?)

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Jill Singer, co-founder, Sight Unseen

“This is a subject that endlessly delights me, and to be honest, my idea of a perfect sofa tends to change every time I find a new one to love. In the past year alone, I’ve been obsessed with an SCP one with asymmetrical skirting, the super deep Josef Frank–covered one at the Toteme store in Soho, and a Mario Bellini Duc sofa reupholstered in green and white striping by the Chicago vintage dealer Dial M for Modern. I prefer traditionally structured sofas over curved ones, and I’m into visible framing, like on the Kiki sofa for Artek or the Gianfranco Frattini Sesann sofa for Tacchini. But I still want my couch to be super plush and comfortable. One of the only ones to tick all of my boxes is this custom version of the Mooner sofa by David Thulstrup for Common Seating, which Thulstrup designed for his own Copenhagen apartment. To be honest, the commercially available version of this sofa doesn’t even do it for me, but the custom version — with its teddy-bear sheepskin upholstery, tomato-red framing, and juicy thick arm cushions — is unbelievably good.”

Frances Merrill, Reath

“There was a vintage floral Bambole from a few years ago that is ‘the one that got away.’

Or the vintage floral Togo that we did get to buy (photo below). The combo of an old fashioned traditional feeling floral with a classic modern playful shape makes me feel like I don’t have to choose a lane and can have all the things I like in one piece!”

of Deeply Madly

“At this point, my all-time dream sofa is likely custom. Definitely modern in design and even built-in. A ‘70s-style conversation pit sofa with a contemporary twist for an entertaining space.”

of A Tiny Apt.

“I do really like the Remi from West Elm...it's modular and comes in some decently nice fabrics/colors.

I hate a trendy sofa, but this [Roche Bobois] one is just GOOD:

I love sofas that have soft corners, so if you needed to push it up a few flights of stairs, like a lot of city dwellers do, it can make those tight corners.

Jasper Morrison's soft modular sofa [produced by Vitra] is pretty perfect, too.”

David Michon of

“Two sofas compete for PERSONAL FAVORITE, one is hyper specific the other more READY FOR YOU TO GOOGLE. The former is the BELLINI 932 as sold by FORMAS in Los Angeles, for its wildly successful multifabric, which is, like, so rarely executed with such charm (and mainly just by the Roche Bobois Maj Jong).

The other is the Tobia Scarpa BASTIANO, 1962, which is kind of somewhere in the blurry middle between WOODSY and LOFT-ish, which means one needn't commit. HIGHLY ADAPTABLE while not being Blank-Neutral. And, the exceptional WILLETT, we happen to know, has been using the Bastiano quite skillfully as inspiration for some upcoming new seatery. So, we are feeling the Bastiano re-relevance.”

Cliff Fong, designer (Matt Black) and co-owner, Galerie Half

“This [Jean Royère sofa] has been one of my favorite pieces of historically important design. Not only does it represent the principles and philosophy of one of my favorite talents, Jean Royère, but its is incredibly comfortable, and functions within many different design aesthetics, from Art Deco and Art Nouveau, to mid-century modern, transitional, contemporary, and beyond. It looks amazing from every angle, and is so iconic, it potentially validates any room’s aesthetic. And if one is not able to purchase an original, or license edition, there are some many designs that have been influenced by Jean Royère and this sofa in particular, that someone could easily emulate this style in their home at nearly any price point.”

of Ground Condition

“BACHELORETTE PICK: Anything vintage B&B Italia that's low to the ground—no spindly legs!—and modular. I had two pieces of a Afra & Tobia Scarpa caramel leather sectional on loan for five years from Monica Khemsurov. (The entire thing is huge, and Monica has been lending pieces of it to her friend network for a decade-plus.) The only correct mode here is LOUNGE. I guess that's true no matter what your domestic situation. Why would you want to sit upright on a sofa? Anyway, this one is rare—it's called the Elogio. The Erasmo is similar but not as L-O-W.

FAMILY ERA PICK: I have found, with two small children, that our sofa needs have evolved (even though "lounge mode" switch is still flipped on). For one, it needs to be heavy enough that it won't slide around on the floor. Two: Arms and a back, preferably pillow-y, are crucial. Basically it needs to be comfortable enough to support eight hours of nursing a day, children who have recently learned how to bounce, and/or an entire family watching Mary Poppins. I recommend the HAY Mags Soft Low sectional sofa to anyone entering the early phase of parenthood. The upholstery is stain-repellent, the colors are great, and it checks all of the aforementioned boxes while looking tidy and modern. They come in various arrangements (two-seater, narrow sectional, huge sectional, one-arm) to fit most spaces.”

, founder, Design Milk

“I love De Sede’s Terrazza couch because of its form. It’s clearly inspired by topography, which makes it feel less like a piece of furniture and more like a natural landscape. Plus, it’s super expensive, so you don’t see it frequently. Whenever I encounter one, it feels special… like finding a four-leafed clover. It’s pretty comfortable, too but I’ve not been able to see if it passes the nap test yet. Maybe one day!”

And finally, me, Leonora Epstein, of Schmatta

“So, part of the curse of being a design editor is that you are constantly confronted by what’s new and next and it has a way of confusing you, especially when it comes to sofas. In the past five years, we have had a West Elm sectional (bought used), a Lulu and Georgia green velvet sofa (purchased with press discount), a Floyd sectional (comped), and we are now on a Sixpenny Neva (also comped) and have changed out its cover from beige to “sweet potato” (new cover also comped). I love Sixpenny but now I’m aching for something else — something that feels more vintage. I will say: After seeing Benny Blanco’s AD tour, I fell in love with his gold velvet sofa, which I assumed was vintage. But according to AD, it is a new sofa, an ‘oversized sectional from Holly Hunt, reupholstered in Mokum Velvet.’ Nothing on Hunt’s website appears to fit this description so…IDK.

Otherwise, Arflex’s Marenco is so sexy.

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PLEASE PLEASE tell moi: What is YOUR G.O.A.T. (“greatest of all time”) couch? COMMENT, LIKE, SUBSCRIBE! xoxo.

Welcome to part two of our series, Divorce Design. To catch up on part one, read here. Today, we have a home tour with Julie Dickson, whose divorce led her to a beautiful Brooklyn townhouse (minus the pretension that usually comes with the phrase “Brooklyn townhouse”).

Photography by Paul Barbera. Paul is a NYC-based director and photographer whose work has appeared in publications like Elle Decor, Vogue Living, Dwell, Record Magazine, Frame, and more. He is the author of the book House Cat.

I’ve known Julie Dickson since 2009 when I wrote about her first salon — Fox and Boy, in Nolita — for DailyCandy (RIP!). Since then, my hair and I have followed her all over lower Manhattan — she’s owned and operated multiple salons in NYC. Her latest is Joon Drop on the LES, which NY Mag declared the “best salon for fine hair” and counts AOC as one of its patrons. Julie is the kind of person who is unwaveringly kind and cool — oh, and she never seems to age. When she began posting on socials about the progress of her new home under construction, I was immediately intrigued, and even more so when she told her followers that this was her post-divorce haven. Here’s our conversation about relationships and spaces.

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Julie! Hi! You know, I was just thinking…how many salons have you had? 

I'm on my fifth.

Oh my goodness! It made me realize, your divorce aside, you are really good at reinvention. But, let’s talk about your divorce because that was the genesis for this project — and I love that you just, like, announced it on your IG.

I was married for a while to a guy who was pretty good, but…it wasn't good. There were a lot of [problems] going on and I always wanted to be the person who was...gracious. But, I didn't say anything about all this stuff because I thought it would be beneath me. But surely, normalizing all that behavior made me really, really lose myself to be honest.

So you decided you were out and needed a new place.

Yeah. This particular space was me making that final decision to leave. I even picked a neighborhood (Clinton Hill, Brooklyn) that I knew he would never live in because it's nowhere near the train. And like, maybe that was a little bit of self-sabotage on my part because now there's no train for me either. It’s a classic townhouse; I have the first two floors and I rent out two apartments on the upper floors.

What made you suddenly want to be a landlord…lady…landperson?

I was living in Williamsburg (pre-divorce) and I'd walk past all these old ladies and they'd be in their house coats complaining about their tenants. And I thought, “Well, huh…those people are supporting you, lady.” I wanted a fixed income. So I kind of took on a bit bigger of a project than I expected, [as opposed to just finding an apartment to buy].

I mean, that risk paid off. Look at you…living the dream.

I was in foster homes when I was a kid and I moved to New York with $200 to do hair. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And now I'm a homeowner. That's kind of awesome.

It IS awesome. So, you did a big reno, right?

It was a total gut renovation. This house has beautiful bones, a lot of the original plaster, original floors. It's a dream New York situation. I worked with my friend Kate McCann (of Grey Dove Design); she also helped to design one of my salons.

As far as decor, what kind of vibe were you aiming for?

So, I left all of my old furniture with my ex-husband. I also let him have the old apartment, whatever. Even though we spent a lot of time choosing [our old] furniture together…it was tainted for me. So, now, everything I have is kind of new.

Makes sense.

Overall, I wanted it to look like a home full of things I've been collecting over the years — and I think that comes through. Like all my books and art, art that my kids have done, art that my friends have done for me. And there are also books that I read when I was in school, that my kids read, books my kids have drawn in. What I really wanted to do is create a home. So, it’s the new, the old, the good…you know…the good. The good and the good.

I love that. If you had name your interior style, what would you call it?

Ahhh…quiet elegance with shots of silliness? For example, in my guest bathroom, everything's pink, but there's one weird green tile. Otherwise, there are “silly” little things no one would really know about: weird shit or even a dirty book.

Tell me a bit about your kitchen.

This is a super cliché answer, but I just wanted a place where I could hang out and people could hang out if they're over. And I wanted it to be beautiful. I love my kitchen. I don't even really cook. I'm starting to. (Ed. note: In part one of Divorce Design, we discussed the kitchen as being a marker of reinvention.)

Are those Reform cabinets?

Yeah. Originally I had this guy who was going to do a bunch of custom cabinetry, but the quote was just insane. So we found Reform. At first, I was looking at a sort of buttery shade, but then we saw the wood and Kate (my designer) was like, “It’s kind of sexy.” So we did that and changed the handles.

This oven area is insane.

The backsplash is this really cool penny tile, which is pale blue surrounded by brown. It was actually a huge pain — penny tile comes in sheets and when we did it the first time, I could see almost every grid and honestly, it just looked like shit. So this poor man (the contractor), had to do them one-by-one.

I would have never thought to do penny tile for a backsplash. That’s so neat.

I've always really loved penny tile! I think there's just something kind of mesmerizing about it, almost like you're on drugs, but you're not.

Random aside: I love that your dog, Luke, seems so at home in the kitchen. 

Luke was being super protective [when Paul, the photographer] was over because he's like, who's this dude in the house?

Is he like that with any man who comes into the house?

Yeah.

Did you have Luke before your divorce?

No. I literally moved in here on May 3rd of 2020 and I went and picked up Luke on May 4th.

You're like, I need a new man.

Yeah, he saved my life.

As did the house.

Exactly.

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Schmatta is written by Leonora Epstein, a former shelter pub editor-in-chief. Follow at @_leonoraepstein and/or @schmattamag. For consulting and collab requests, please visit my website.