BASIC MATTER 34: GOOD DESIGN, PAISLEYS AND BEING PREPPY ALL THE WAY

It irks me every time I see a badly designed space. Yes, blame my parents for teaching us young. At 5, I already knew what looked bad and what didn’t.

I didn’t have an awful plastic lamp on my bedside table but instead, a huge vintage brass lamp that looked like an Arabian jar with a huge canvas shade. Again, blame mom!


(Maximilian Sinsteden in pink trousers in his preppy dorm room.)

My sisters and I weren’t allowed to have tacky, bubbling lava lamps and yards of awful linoleum to mask our cracked marble tiles. Mom always had rolls of rugs from her trips hidden in the storage. Instead of posters of celebrities taped on the wall, we had framed paintings and black and white photos of ourselves hence the same treatment in our city apartment.

I chanced upon a photo of Maximilian Sinsteden’s college dorm room when he was a senior at Drew University. Definitely not minimalist – his space is a mix of all things preppy and pure eclecticism.


(Maximilian Sinsteden and friend)

Instead of clean line, his floor is masked with layers of oriental rugs , the walls—painted in Ralph Lauren’s Tapestry Green, brass chandelier, a thrift find screwed into the ceiling, Chinoiserie paper lampshades and paisley bolsters and his cable-knit sweaters all perfectly folded and arranged from light to dark in his vintage dresser. Pretty tidy, huh! Right, anything for cashmere!


(Slipper shoes from Stubbs & Wootton)

I mean, for someone who has a love for Stubbs & Wootton slipper shoes and melon-colored pants, don’t expect a space with clean lines.