Gavelle

Take The Fifth

Architectual Digest this month has an article on Fifth Avenue Style and the apartment while unremarkable in the majority has one feature that is fresh and fun. Check out the pendant lights in the kitchen (Murano dated to the 40s).  They do exactly what you want in a kitchen which is make people hungry...let them eat cake!  Also, check out how the dreamy white plays off the beautiful, classic high gloss white subway tile.  Surround Yourself With The Things You Love!

Senator McCain Shows Fiesta Style

Architectural Digest Visits Senator and Mrs. John McCain

Southwestern Style for their Phoenix Family Home

Architecture by Sheiner Day & Associates
Text by Paul Theroux/Photography by Robert Reck Published July 2005

Not every United States senator would consider volunteering his private house—its interior and all its grounds—to casual sightseers, but just before Christmas 2003, Senator John McCain did just that, with the encouragement of his wife, Cindy. Round about a thousand people paid $10 apiece to gain entrance and to gape at family photos and pat the family dogs and idle by the burbling stone fountain that Cindy McCain’s parents (previous occupants of the house) bought in Guadalajara in 1966. It was all for a good cause, not political but to raise money for a local school.

Behind a wrought iron fence and a long row of orange trees on a shady street in north-central Phoenix, the house is unspectacular but supremely comfortable, that enduring symbol of American life and contentment, a family home. The house contains the accumulated memories and heirlooms of four generations, from naval artifacts belonging to Senator McCain’s heroic grandfather and curios from Cindy McCain’s childhood trips to Mexico, to the framed scribbles of the McCains’ seven adored children: Doug, Andy, Sidney, Meghan, Jack, Jimmy and Bridget. Surveying its large rooms, Cindy McCain says, “This house is well used.”

“We were on the open- house tour of the neighborhood two days and nights, to allow people to come in and see it,” Senator McCain explains with a smile. “I showed people around.” Then, lapsing into his characteristic deadpan, he adds, “I kind of got into being a tour guide. ‘Here’s a picture of my father on Midway Island, with Nixon. And look at this rug. And here are some dolls from Mexico.’”

“No one expected to see him,” Cindy McCain responds, laughing. “But he answered the door! He invited the people in. They raised a lot of money.”

The money was for the Catholic school attended by one of their children. Senator McCain did not regard any of it as intrusive—in fact, he was welcoming. “They’re fundamentally nice people,” he reasoned, “because they’re supporting the school.”

“This was Cindy’s childhood home, so that makes it special,” the senator explains. Cindy McCain grew up in this house at a time when Phoenix was a relatively small town and the neighborhood was zoned for agriculture. She rode horses that were then stabled behind the house. In her golden girlhood, she was the Junior Rodeo Queen, and she still has the winsome commemorative photo to prove it. “The rodeo was such a big deal it was a holiday,” she says. She was a student at Central High just down the street. The house was smaller then, constructed of Arkansas brick with a shake roof. In the mid-’80s, when her parents moved elsewhere, the McCains made the decision to move in and hired Neal Sheiner, of Sheiner Day & Associates, to renovate it in stucco and tile.

“We envisioned a Southwest style,” the senator says. “We went down to the foundations.” After many months he decided that their moving in might prove an incentive for the builders to finish. “I got home on a Friday night, as I usually do, and we went to bed. Next morning about 6:30 I heard a loud noise. And there’s this worker looking through the window at us.”

“Almost every memory I have of childhood is in this house—very happy memories,” Cindy McCain says. “I want my children to know this house and have these memories.”

Until Senator McCain developed roots in Arizona, his life had been peripatetic. Born in the Canal Zone in 1936, where his father had been posted as a naval officer, he moved with the family that same year to New London, Connecticut. These were the more serene years for the senator. As he detailed in his eloquent memoir Faith of My Fathers, published in 1999, John McCain suffered more than five years of harsh imprisonment in North Vietnam. He was tortured, endlessly interrogated, bound hand and foot, and clapped into solitary confinement; he endured mental and physical punishment. At last, when it was discovered by his captors that his father was an important officer in the U.S. Navy, he was given permission to leave; yet he refused to go while his fellow prisoners remained behind bars. Because of this stern refusal, his punishment became more severe. Yet the book’s theme is forgiveness and faith.

“By your father’s calling, you are born into an exclusive noble tradition,” Senator McCain writes of a typical serviceman’s children in his book. In his case, his ancestors have been military men, serving with distinction since the time of the American Revolution.

The McCain house is not merely a repository of family memories but a gathering place where, on the recent spring break, no fewer than eight young men—fellow students of Jack McCain’s—were billeted, some of them sleeping off their exertions on a Sunday morning and others looking bleary-eyed at their hosts. The McCains are delighted to have their sons’ friends on board and enjoy traveling with their children. “We snorkel, we hike, we sit and talk by the creek at our house up north. We try to go on a family trip twice a year and do something different. For example, the Christmas before last we went to Vietnam, then to Bangkok, and took the train from there to Singapore. We had four of the seven children.”

Because of his prison injuries, the senator is not a golfer (“And I agree with Mark Twain that golf is a good walk wasted”). The McCains value their family time, realizing that children eventually have their own lives and travels.

The house is also a showcase of the senator’s enthusiasm for buying exotic carpets. “I’m a terrible shopper, but I buy these rugs when I travel. I was recently in Afghanistan and bought this,” he says, pointing out a large, finely made carpet in russet and brown. There are others from Turkey and Georgia, as well as the Native American carpets from his wife’s family.

Cindy McCain is also responsible for much of the memorabilia on view. “Cindy has a picture fetish,” the senator says, gesturing to a bank of framed photographs—family pictures, photos of pets, of landscapes, of the senator himself on the day of his release from his Hanoi prison, of his father, of the late pope visiting Arizona, of a poignant gathering near Sedona, “the day I dropped out of the race.”

Asked whether he will run for president again, the senator chooses his words carefully. “If I talk seriously about it, my activities in the Senate will be viewed through the prism of presidential candidate rather than a senator who’s trying to do good work.” After a judicious pause he adds, “And there’s no need. We don’t have to make a decision on that for a few more years.”

“My best friends are those I was in the Navy with and especially those I was in prison with,” the senator says. Describing one of them, he says, “He is one of those people for whom everything is either black or white. It’s wonderful to go through life like that. I wish I could.” Reminded of his independent and subtler views, he remarks, “That’s one of the reasons [my candidacy] is so attractive,” and with his signature deadpan, “and one of the reasons it’s so difficult.”

Check out the pictures of the McCain home    http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/features/archive/mccain_slideshow_072005?showall=true

Gucci At Home

Check out the lookbook for this fashion forward woman with edgie home style.  The black murano glass chandelier in her dining room adds drama without defined formal. This woman's home style fits her and that is what we should all aim to do.  Surround Yourself With The Things You Love! 

Frida Giannini's Personal Style

Gucci's creative director puts an eclectic spin on her Florence home

By J.J. Martin

Frida Giannini, creative director at Gucci and maker of all things smoldering and sexy, wouldn't be caught dead showing her bare midriff. That's fine for Gucci's corporally adventurous clientele, should they be so inclined, but not for this 36-year-old designer. "You're never going to see this part of my body exposed," she says, motioning vigorously to the forbidden midsection while at home in her striking new city retreat in Florence. The Gucci runway has always been a prude-free zone, but who says the smoke wafting from the models' spike heels has to perfectly correspond to its maker's own wardrobe, itself a steady flow of basic blacks, practical pants, and sharp men's-style shirts, with no skirts?

SEE LOOKBOOOK: FRIDA GIANNINI

"That's like saying Valentino always needs to wear red," says the Roman-born designer as she surveys the high-end lineup in one of her dark glass-lined closets. But the fact that Giannini beat out two other designers to take the reins at Gucci proves she's not lacking for brains or talent. "Even if I feel terrible wearing something supertight," she allows, "I've got to cover the other half of the world's female population, which really wants to look sexy [in my designs]."

Truthfully, the sex quotient at the luxury powerhouse has been taken down a notch since Giannini's ascension - and rightly so, given today's more moderate mood. The bright flowers and bold prints she employs reflect a lighter, softer touch that won't be going away anytime soon. "That's absolutely my vision for Gucci," she says.

For the source of the brand's feminine recalibration, search no further than the designer herself. "I'm a ponytail girl," she assesses. "That's how I see myself." For evening, Giannini prefers a romantic look, like the sweet floral and printed dresses that dotted Gucci's spring runway and that have now become something of a signature for her. For day, it's no-nonsense loose dresses worn with turtlenecks or the low-slung, skinny Frida trouser worn with shirts and cuff links and one of her many vintage watches. The origin of Giannini's practical personal style owes much to her job function, which precludes extraneous frills and flounces. "When I'm down on the ground laying out designs, in the middle of a mess, it's pretty useless if I show up in crepe de chine," she says.

A top job usually means a new I-am-the-decider look, even for Giannini, who admits to adopting a few style tweaks of her own. She now rarely wears other designers' merch, even if her closet does boast vintage Balenciaga and Helmut Lang. "It doesn't really seem right," she says. "It would seem as if I didn't believe in what I was doing." Once, she ventured into the outer orbit of cheap fashion, donning a red-and-black-printed dress from H&M. "My colleagues gave me so much grief when I wore it to the office," she recalls. "I was so mortified that I gave it to a girlfriend." She does, however, indulge in one naughty little habit. "I'm a maniac for French shoemakers," she says with a smile, pointing out the Louboutins and Hardys peeking out from between the rows of Gucci riding boots and heels.

But her Converse All Stars, her old preferred footwear, have completely vanished (replaced by Gucci stilettos, natch), and she's become something of a stickler for the antislacker look. "If one of my design kids comes in wearing Birkenstocks, I tell them to go home and put on a pair of suede loafers," she says with impatience. "We're working for one of the most important luxury brands in the world. There should be a minimum amount of decorum and respect."

If Giannini is toughening up, it's only natural, given the immense amount of pressure on her thin shoulders to constantly outperform Gucci's already stratospheric sales figures. Back in 2004, she was already living her dream by overseeing Gucci's whopping accessories department. "It's something that happened to me," she says of nabbing the all-encompassing creative-director job, which first passed from Tom Ford to Alessandra Facchinetti for womenswear and John Ray for menswear and then, in rather quick succession, all landed with a thud in Giannini's lap. "It's not something I sought out." Now she's living with the consequences, as fulfilling as they are challenging, of having said yes.

"I don't do anything else," she says matter-of-factly of her work-only lifestyle. "I don't have a social life. It's not healthy. I have stomach problems, back problems." She married Italian Web designer Giovanni Battista Guidi in 2005 and is currently mulling the possibility of having children. Her husband wants to, but she's not sure yet. "All of my oldest friends - even the weirdest and most antiestablishment ones - have had kids, and my mom's like, 'Just do it!'" she says. "But sometimes I think, how on earth could I manage that?"

She has, however, made enormous inroads in setting up house. Her sprawling three-bedroom home, tucked into the green hills overlooking Florence, took a year to restructure under the watchful eye of her architect father. "We fought about everything," she says, laughing. The interiors have been decorated by Giannini herself, who sourced her '30s and '40s art-deco pieces from dealers in Paris, Florence, and Rome.

The house has an indoor pool ("I hardly ever use it," she laments) and a music room with 7,000-plus records (a gift from a DJ uncle), but these domestic conceits belie Giannini's normality. "It's about finding a good internal balance and having good values," says the designer of staying grounded, "and not saying stuff like 'I want a private jet because I'm creative director at Gucci.' That just makes me laugh." Initial talk of her having a bodyguard was also scoffed at. "I fought like mad not to have one," she says, again trumping expectations. "I would've felt ridiculous. Can you imagine?" she ponders, swirling her glass of white wine. "Me and my bodyguard?"

source: www.harpersbazaar.com