margaret-russell

Interior Designers React to the Recession

cityfile · 11/18/08 10:52AM

Did you dutifully rush out and buy the $22,000 picnic basket featured in Elle Décor a few months ago? Well, the magazine's editor Margaret Russell would like to make it clear that such items will no longer be darkening her pages: "It just seems vulgar, and vulgar is not a word I want to associate with our magazine." Russell, who was moderating an interior design panel with Cynthia Rowley, Bunny Williams, Celerie Kemble, and Annabelle Selldorf last night at the Pratt House, suggests that quilts are now the appropriate "humble" purchase, while Rowley recommends art: "That's the only thing I buy now." After seeing Rowley's home, we slightly doubt that. But we'll take her advice and resist splashing out on even her Target housewares.