Home Sweet Home: The Selby is in Your Place

There are some people who just inspire you to reach out and harness your inner creativity and Todd Selby is one of them. For fashionistas out there, Selby is the equivalent to The Satorialist and The Face Hunter except that he deals with interiors. A respected photographer, Selby has worked for the likes of Vogue Paris and the New York Times Magazine for over a decade. He launched The Selby in June 2008 as a sideline project, which consisted of him snooping around the pads of friends, friends of friends and other like minded people. Most of them were creatives, had cool jobs and lived in cool areas or were just down right cool. Pretty soon the website became a huge hit and was mentioned in magazines and websites and hence Todd Selby had landed himself a book deal.

What I love about Selby is the way he embraces clutter and hoarding. Not for him the cold and harsh reality of minimalism, instead he seeks out home owners who put their stuff out there. The Selby is in Your Place consists of 40 homes which Todd considers to be his favourites from the website. There are even some famous folk such as Helena Christensen, Erin Wasson and Karl Lagerfeld. We get to see where they live as well as how they live and also get to have a look at the objects they collect. The introduction to the book is written by Lesley Arfin who is a columnist for Vice Magazine where she writes the Dear Diary section which is now a book. The Selby is quite a hefty book which contains some wonderful and vibrant pictures of homes that are truly lived in and loved. It demonstrated that with a bit of imagination you can make your home a space that is just right for you and your possessions. 

The picture above is of Todd Selby at the Collette store in Paris launching his book.

The Selby is in your Place is available to buy from amazon.

Welcome to Home Sweet Home

Well it is another bank holiday and that means one thing – time for some DIY. The property market may still be in a slump but people are still obsessed with their homes. The proof? Well property programmes are still popular and interior magazines are flying off the shelves. Also with Grand Designs LIVE kicking off tomorrow for the 6th year promising to be bigger and better it looks like homes are here to say. The environment you inhabit is very crucial to your state of mind; crappy home life equates to a pretty crappy state of mind. Which is why I so embrace blogs on interiors and crafts which show how we can make our homes a beautiful place. Therefore you can imagine my bemusement when I read an ever so snarky piece in Jezebel having a pop at a selected bloggers who focus on these things, accusing them of being pretentious and responsible for making other people feel inadequate. Come on Jezebel, get a grip! I enjoy reading your website and I enjoy the snarkiness when it is deserved but randomly attacking bloggers for having creative and inspiring blogs is just petty.

Anyway all the nastiness aside, over the last year I have noticed that the interior bloggers have developed a strong community so I have decided to celebrate this by launching Home Sweet Home. Which is an interiors special that will consist of articles and reviews relating to all things home related. We have a lot to look forward to such as a review of The Selby, the much awaited book by Todd Selby, an article on Open Houses where artists throw open their homes to the public so they can check out their artwork but tomorrow we will kick off with an interview with Jeska Hearne from Lobster and Swan who is our Blogger of the Month.

Cult Creatives in the House

Us bloggers are always being asked to share our workspace and show others where we do our creative milling. Last year The Stiletto Effect ran a special feature where she interviewed several bloggers and discussed their private spaces. More recently, Daddy Likey showed off her blog spot and created her own tag by inviting fellow blog mates to do the same. Face it we are all obsessed with other people's private and work space and there may be a housing plummet but our appetite has certainly not waned.

Creative Space: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators by Francesca Gavin gives us a look into the homes of 30 cult creatives based in hip cities such as Barcelona, Berlin, London, New York, Paris and Tokyo. Gavin takes us into studios, apartments and houses of the likes of writers, photographers and stylists and gives us an insight into their minds and how their interiors shape their thinking and creative process. We are all influenced by our surroundings so it is really fascinating to see how a designer such as Hardy Blechman who founded niche label, Maharishi, or Grace Cobb, fashion stylist and creative director for Wonderland magazine create their home.

For those of you who check out The Selby on a regular basis, well if Todd Selby was to produce a book this is what it would be like. Creative Space takes on a different slant from interior magazines that are out there. Instead of featuring perfect show houses that do not look lived in this book focuses on spaces that are spontaneously filled with collectibles that mean a lot to the owner. Francesca Gavin is a writer and editor who works at cool mags such as Dazed and Confused and Elle. Like her I also suffer from an aversion of minimalism so I am delighted to see a book full of vibrant, arty homes with lots of life and colour.

Creative Space: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators is out in bookshops in May.

The Selby

I am obsessed with interior design and I love checking out other people's homes. Whether in magazines, on TV shows or waltzing down the street - yes if you must leave your curtains wide open then it would be rude not to peep. There might be a credit crunch on but making your pad look beautiful is still top priority. They say that your home is your castle, your domain and sanctuary and I agree totally. My home to me is where I can relax, read while on the toilet, do silly little dances and watch whatever I like when I like. It is indeed a document of my life which is illustrated by my clothes, books, magazines, furniture and film collection. Your personal space reflects you and your life. So I was pretty chuffed when I came across The Selby which is a blog that features creative people in their personal spaces. It is created by photographer, Todd Selby and his mantra is to show gorgeous and quirky homes with their delightful owners in them. So you have artists' nesting in their studios in Long Island Queens, film producers flexing in their funky loft apartment in Greenwich Village, NYC, DJs hob knobbing in their cute mews' in Islington, London and fashion designers posing in their apartments in LA. What is interesting about these images is that they also focus on the work of the home owners and mixes them up so they form a fantastic collection.

If you are looking for some ideas for doing up your place or simply fancy looking at some beautiful and unusual homes then check out The Selby.

Picture taken from The Selby.

Person Todd Selby

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