To Wake Up in a Place That Looks Like This...

...is my ultimate luxury ambition. Over the years I've spent countless hours daydreaming about having the house of my, uh, dreams. I'd be launched into another world as I flipped through Wallpaper, transfixed by the sleek furniture designs by the young mavericks of interior problem solving. I'd gaze wondrously at the lush  spaces displayed to show the rest of the world what real wealth can buy, in the pages of Architectural Digest.

Yet while supremely chic and fabulous, there was always an underlying feeling of cold sterility (from the ultra minimalist designs) and a mild disdain for those able to live any way they desire simply because they can afford it, a thousand times over. Why? Because there's only one thing I've ever really coveted, and that is the privilege of waking up in the midst of truly beautiful surroundings, exactly as I would dare to imagine them.

Some years ago I'd take walks in Toronto's Yonge & Eglinton area with my friend Tammy. We were just out of school, embarking on our careers, unknowing as to where our new worlds would take us, or allow us to go. We'd stop in front of The Art Shoppe windows and gaze at the various  installations showcasing living room, lounge and dining room suites representative of the kind of lifestyle that only 'The Others' are allowed to enjoy. In unison we would declare 'ONE DAY!' and spend the rest of the walk floating in our fanciful state.

Really, though, at that time just about anything decent looking was desirable if it was a trade-up from my IKEA littered digs, which prompted one visitor to loudly declare 'This looks like an IKEA showroom!' (minus the smell of Swedish meatballs). Not really a proud moment but then again their designs aren't the most inconspicuous. (Hard to believe something called the LIATORP wouldn't blend.)

So, after determining it was not ridiculous amounts of money, or cool cars, or expensive jewelry that motivated me but rather acquiring the means to one day create my own Xanadu (without the rollerskating goddesses), I realised I didn't quite know what it would look like. Until I came across the Designers Guild website. They had done it. One look and I knew I'd found it. I first saw the website about a year ago and their inspirations have remained true, I love the look as much now as I did then.

Designers Guild is a distributor of high end fabrics, wallpaper and furniture of a particular aesthetic. Colourful, romantic and exquisitely detailed, without the stuffiness or pretension. As you can see from the model rooms created here (I can't bear to think these are actual rooms in someone's house, if so I'm guilty of smashing the tenth commandment into tiny bits), they are impossibly rich in loveliness and so light and inviting that surely you could just sit and bask for hours in the awesomeness of it all.

Or, all of this might make you vomit in disgust. But if the style is to your taste, you would surely fall in love as I have. One day, Tammy...one day.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Oh my goodness! I just love these rooms! Gorgeous pictures! Just so feminine and elegant. ahhhh.... it makes me smile.

[Tammy]

I need to zoom in on the crown moulding in the second photo. Where is craftsmanship like that today?