Details

[LA Guy]

dude, you cannot put wallpaper in that category (especially if you're going to make arguments in defense of juicy couture for men.) because wallpaper is an androgynous mag. its focus is not clothing, it is design, which isn't usually gender specific.

I pick up Wallpaper once in a while. But seriously, how many straight guys do you know care about interior design?

 

[globetrotter]

the post used to be my home town newspaper. any specific articles I might remember?

 

[@riss]

Quote:

dude, you cannot put wallpaper in that category (especially if you're going to make arguments in defense of juicy couture for men.) because wallpaper is an  androgynous mag.  its focus is not clothing, it is design, which isn't usually gender specific.
I pick up Wallpaper once in a while. Â But seriously, how many straight guys do you know care about interior design?
its sad but true, although i think this has been changing for a while now that style and design are gradually creeping into every facet of our lives. i read wallpaper religiously and am interested in design, but i am certainly in the minority even in my group of friends.

 

[RJman]

Quote:

(LA Guy @ 16 Dec. 2004, 10:25) Quote dude, you cannot put wallpaper in that category (especially if you're going to make arguments in defense of juicy couture for men.) because wallpaper is an  androgynous mag.  its focus is not clothing, it is design, which isn't usually gender specific.
I pick up Wallpaper once in a while. Â But seriously, how many straight guys do you know care about interior design?
its sad but true, although i think this has been changing for a while now that style and design are gradually creeping into every facet of our lives. Â i read wallpaper religiously and am interested in design, but i am certainly in the minority even in my group of friends.[/quote] It's gone to hell and is now apparently a sort of Robb Report for young people. Tyler Brule may have been completely impractical but he and his team, many of whom left with him, brought an esthetic and a flair that's gone out since then. Much of that kismet was situational -- when I flip through my old wallpapers (the only mags I haven't thrown away) it's wrenching to see that glad 1999 optimism in print. Now, of course, modernism is no longer a flavor of the month (not saying it's not stylish, but in the late 1990s it really was the rage). A lot of tasteless trends have come down the pike since then, and any supposedly cutting-edge magazine has needed to embrace them. The writing in wallpaper has lost any of its irony and humor, which were essential in writing what essentially was a magazine-as-lifestyle-catalog. Nowadays, it's a depressing product-placement heavy rag unsure of what it is and of what its target audience is -- gay or straight, starry-eyed design student or bored Manhattan banker, Hoxton media whore or Dubai glamour girl...

 

[@riss]

rjman, i both agree and disagree with you. while tyler brule was the instrumental to the mag, i don't think that it completely fell off once he left. i find it to still be pretty preposterous and funny when they say, "everybody is doing away with spare bedrooms and getting a 'groom room' these days..." i think their aesthetic is still unique and interesting and while they have to push certain products i feel like their discernment is miles beyond most other mags. I really appreciated the different cities they highlighted each month while i was living in europe and able to put the information to use. but you are right, a bad issue of wallpaper is terrible, for example, this months design awards is boring and uninspired.

 

[gorgekko]

the post used to be my home town newspaper. any specific articles I might remember?

Which Post? Jerusalem or National?

 

[globetrotter]

Jerusalem

 

[gorgekko]

Probably nothing you would remember specifically. I wrote several essays on the various peace deals as they were floated, the lack of support for Iraq's interim government by its neighbours and the need for reform in the Palestinian Authority. Some other stuff but my memory is cloudy at the moment. In other words, what a thousand other people have written in the JPost for years

 

[globetrotter]

how does one get to be in a position to publish essays on that kind of stuff, by the way? I am curious.

 

[gorgekko]

I'd love to tell you it's the result of a degree in international relations from Yale but it's actually the product of two decades of research, interviews, analysis and a know-it-all attitude, the province of every writer In short, I am a member of the pundit class -- an opinion on everything if you're willing to stick around and listen.

 

[globetrotter]

cool. I usually have to buy people beer to get them to listen to my opinions.

 

[Get Smart]

details was one of my fave mags in the early/mid 90s, having more of a Maxim/FHM vibe....towards the later 90s it took a turn for the worse with a change in editor and format. lately it's been completely unreadable.

 

[gorgekko]

cool. I usually have to buy people beer to get them to listen to my opinions.

Well, I'm not getting rich doing it -- particularly because I have to buy my friends beer to get them to listen to my opinions, ha ha.

 

[acole]

But seriously, how many straight guys do you know care about interior design?

<raises hand> Always bugged me that we straight guys are supposed to validate our virility by preferring to live in a damp concrete basement lit by a bare bulb hanging from a rope. Our surroundings can be nicer than that, of course, but we're never supposed to care that they are, or take steps to ensure such circumstances beyond giving the little woman a blank check and free rein. I don't read Wallpaper, but I definitely take an interest in the design elements of my living space--probably more so than my wife. I've always found it funny how gender-segregated artistic fields have become in popular conception. Design a building, and you're an "architect", which is safely man's work. Concern yourself with decorating and arranging a room inside that building, and you're an "interior designer", the province of fussy girls and limp-wristed queens. Same goes for visual art and cuisine: a guy's guy is fine as a master painter, sculptor, or chef, but lesser incarnations of craft and cookery are pure Martha Stewart territory.

 

[globetrotter]

but I'll tell you the problem is with that - in my perfect house, the furniture would be simple dark wood, a few good carpets, maybe some high tech lamps, some comfortable chairs and couches. There would be a small number of good prints on the walls, and some good exotic decorations - some russian icons, some indian idols, maybe a few good west african bronzes. that's it, and it would more or less stay that way until I die (actually, if I could trade my ikea bookcases and dinning room chair for some better made ones, that discribes the house I am living in now). I could design it in a weekend and on about what I spend on a vacation, and I never have to think about it again, or spend another dime on it.

I think that is pretty common of men's interest in interior design. you can't build an industry on it.