An Interior Life

Bloggers around the world are breaking out our color swatches. The Other Andrew reveals his unsated longing for a new sofa as he starts his redecorating; thombeau, over at Fabulon, replies that he is jettisoning all his earthly possession in order to seek out greener pastures; and little me, I’m deep within the decorating vortex myself.

In my earlier post ( here ya go ) I swore off my Bollywood meets Malibu Barbie inspired bedroom in favor of a more sophisticated, subdued palette of old gold and taupe. For curtains, I had a bolt of beautiful tapestry-like cloth in those very colors I bought years ago at some damn auction. The aptly named Mrs. Draper, who made R Man’s curtains for us, agreed to whip up some for me that would cover an entire wall of the room. R Man was suitably supportive and after handing off the bolt to Mrs. Draper, we hit the paint store to pick wall colors.

My dreams of a sassy turquoise to offset the muted tones of the fabric shriveled up and died almost as soon as we go to the paint chips. No matter how gorgeous on their own, all the turquoises just looked grotesque up against the swatch. I struggled, oh, how I fought it, but in the end, obviously, the only thing that worked with the studied sophistication of the would-be curtains was TAUPE. Here’s their wedding picture, chip and swatch:
I can appreciate quiet good taste in the abstract, but after a night of fantasizing about my future life in a replica of Nancy Regan’s boudoir, I rebelled, got on the phone to Mrs. Draper to call it off, dumped the taupe idea, and went back out looking for dark, bright blue. Indigo, cobalt, sapphire, luscious deep colors that called to my inner drag queen.

The wonderful world of Britex Fabrics came through not in their decorating department, but with a table of junk obviously meant for the Asian trannie market. If you ever feel the need to run up some dragon lady dress, this is the place. But you can’t have the embroidered midnight blue on blue, because me and my curtains beat you to it.

So here’s the newest plan (and since we have sunk most of the budget into it, this one had better be the final.) Darkest blue Chinese brocade curtains, periwinkle walls to pick up the highlights in the silk, a rough sisal floor to contrast, my fabulous new black tansu bed and a carved teak stool. Wait till you see, bitches, it’s going to be dazzling.