Homebodies
3/20/20 - Have you ever spent so much time at home? For those of us lucky enough to have somewhere to shelter in place, self-isolate, or recover from illness, we're gaining a new appreciation for what are homes are. Or maybe just dying of frustration at so many uncompleted projects. Never fear. Curbed Executive Editor and interim Editor-in-Chief Mercedes Kraus is here. Mercedes is a long-time curator of well-appointed spaces and shares her tips for shopping for and envisioning a welcoming place to live. Especially now that we are trying to be productive, patient, and present at home.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Images: Mercedes Kraus
Executive Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
GUEST
Mercedes Kraus, Executive Editor and interim Editor-in-Chief at Curbed
LINKS
Mercedes writes Curbed's Editor's Notes newsletter
Follow Mercedes on Instagram and Twitter
Dig deeper into some of the design icons Mercedes mentions in this episode:
Maximalist Max Clendinning
Everyday materials artist Tom Sachs
TRANSCRIPT: HOMEBODIES
[Ads]
(0:44)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: She's Ann Friedman.
Ann: She is Aminatou Sow.
Aminatou: And the . . .
Ann: And we're inside. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Yeah, we are inside. We're social distancing and, you know, it's interesting so far.
Ann: I have to say I know that we've been doing this podcast for many, many years at this point but who knew when the moment would arrive when everyone was a long-distance bestie and here we are fully setup and acclimated. It's wild.
Aminatou: Right. See you on the Internet as a lifestyle. We have been here.
Ann: The bulk of today's episode is a somewhat more lighthearted conversation about all of these things that go into our interior spaces. Not just in a moment like this when we are all sort of by necessity spending a lot of time indoors but in general thoughts about how we create the interior spaces of our homes, how we share those spaces, how we use them for all kinds of purposes, sometimes the same space in about ten different ways. Those are the topics of our episode today.
[Theme Song]
(2:15)
Ann: For all the ways that our long-distance friendship and working relationship is often very difficult I am really feeling profoundly grateful right now where I'm like we have some working tools. We know how to do this.
Aminatou: We do know how to do this. I was talking to a friend yesterday. We are all practicing social distance. Depending on what country you're in you are more locked down than others. But I was talking to a friend yesterday who was really struggling with the fact that everything is moving to the phone. She's like we have digital barriers now and I was like because I think we do so much of our job calling each other it had not occurred to me that that was a muscle that we had just kept exercising.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: And so I hope in the midst of all of this everyone is . . . it's not the same as being in person. Anyone will tell you that. Doing a Zoom call is not the same as being in person. Doing FaceTime is not the same. Even picking up the phone is not the same. But thank god for tools that allow you to do that. I just can't imagine going through this moment without the tech that we have. Like I would probably be going completely off the rails right now.
Ann: Yeah. Those of us who are indoor kids by nature are really finding the limits of our indoor kidness I feel like. I'm like all of my hobbies indoor hobbies. All of my favorite things inside things. How are you fairing in your largely indoors life right now?
(3:40)
Aminatou: You know I'm fairing pretty well but I think that it's early right? I am also a fairly indoors person. I love the outside and I thrive in the outside but inside is also my happy place. And so all the home projects that I haven't been doing, it was like okay, I've got to organize my skincare drawer. I need to organize the pictures on the wall. All that stuff is finally getting done which I think because again it's early in . . . how long are we going to be home? It's actually making me feel good. But also you and I are people who work from home. On a day when the weather is bad none of this is different from how my life is, you know?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: So I think we've been in it. I'm also just very grateful today that I don't really share my space with anyone. I'm like great, I'm in my house. I'm quarantining myself. I have my own stuff going on. And a lot of my family lives overseas so I'm very conditioned to reaching out this way but I think the uncertainty of how long is this going to be? I'm like okay, it's day five. I'm doing fine on day five. Talk to me on day 45, you know? It's going to start taking a toll but I think we should just all be really gentle with each other because this is uncharted territory for a lot of us.
Ann: So obviously we've been talking and thinking a lot about privilege and people with different vulnerabilities be they economic or physical or whatever in this moment. I think that when I think about the home space or how we're all retreating indoors those things feel even more magnified to me. It's like if you do not have a physical home how are you supposed to socially distance yourself safely right now? If you have a home situation that is not safe for you, if you share it with someone who is violent or potentially violent towards you, what are you doing right now? And I think I'm also feeling a lot of gratitude and privilege for the fact that not only do I have a safe and comfortable home, I have a home office with a door that closes and I have some of these things that feel like true luxuries at any time but in this moment feel like they are really sustaining me. So I don't know, I'm thinking about that too even as I'm spending more and more time -- rather all my time inside, the ways that these conversations about privilege don't disappear just because of physical isolation.
(6:08)
Aminatou: Right. If anything I think that coronavirus is just really exposing all of the ways . . . it's exposing every Faultline we have in our society and it's really easy to be like okay, here's how society is broken. But I think that a lot of us are being confronted with all of the ways we're privileged. And the ways that we are allowed to luxuriously worry about certain things that are not guaranteed for other people at all. And I don't say that to minimize the impact on anyone; I just think that it's important to acknowledge all of that.
Ann: Absolutely. I will say that the bulk of today's episode is a somewhat more lighthearted conversation about all of these things that go into our interior spaces not just in a moment like this when we are all sort of by necessity spending a lot of time indoors but in general. Thoughts about how we create the interior spaces of our homes, how we share those spaces, how we use them for all kinds of purposes, sometimes the same space in ten different ways. Those are the topics of our episode today.
Aminatou: I am very excited to hear you interview friend of the podcast Mercedes Kraus about this.
Ann: Right. So I talked to our good pal Mercedes Kraus who is the executive editor and interim editor-in-chief of Curbed so she is like a home pro. Truly a home professional and especially I think a home interiors pro.
Aminatou: You know Mercedes is just someone who lives very well I think and is very effective at communicating how the way that you organize your space correlates with how you organize your life. And also someone that's just useful about giving you tips and tactics to better living, so I'm really excited about this conversation.
Ann: Yeah, so here I am with Mercedes.
[Interview Starts]
(7:55)
Ann: Mercedes welcome to the podcast.
Mercedes: Hello! I'm back for my glorious return. You may remember me from 2013 when I talked about Rihanna's Christmas tree and the Illuminati. I think that was 2013.
Ann: This is how we know you are a true . . . you're a friend of the podcast in the truest sense. It's like you might remember me from a very early episode in which we talked about a bunch of random stuff before the show got its act together. [Laughter] Yeah, you've been on team CYG since before there was a CYG.
Mercedes: It's true. I'm very lucky to call CYG my original fam, yeah.
Ann: Ugh, okay. We have I'm going to call it a higher purpose in talking to you today.
Mercedes: Yes, great.
Ann: Which is simply this: many of us are spending lots and lots of hours in our homes right now and I'm curious about some of the things you have to say about the home as a curated space, about how you think about the sort of functionality and comfort of the home space, but then also maybe how you think about the politics of the home space.
Mercedes: Hmm.
Ann: So by way of explanation first off about your job maybe you can talk a little about your role at Curbed.
Mercedes: Sure. I'm the executive editor and interim editor-in-chief at Curbed which means I right now run everything. I oversee our editors, our reporters. We have sites in eight cities across the country where we talk about neighborhoods and homes and cities and all the issues we face because we all live somewhere and we all care about where we live whether that's our house, our block, you know, our entire city.
Ann: Totally. And so let's for the purpose of this conversation bring the lens inside the home.
Mercedes: Yes.
Ann: So how do you as a human being think about your home space? How do you prioritize it? How do you want to feel when you're there?
(9:50)
Mercedes: I have many feelings about the home. Probably one of the things that has most inspired my policy about the home is actually feng shui which I feel like is kind of a '90s vibe, you know? And very easily dismissed. But it just basically talks about how energy moves through a home. And there are a lot of prescribed ways you should and should not do that but I think that there . . . I don't know, I feel like I've always had an intuition about what feels right in a space and I just keep tweaking until I can figure that out. So that might mean moving light or changing light. Light is probably the primary thing also. And then other things for vibes meaning like how furniture is arranged and things like that.
Ann: Plants right? Isn't that a part of it too?
Mercedes: Plants are a huge part of it. Activating space, mirrors, metal. There's a lot of weird corners in our house that just get -- you can just feel they're kind of stagnant and strange because our houses are chopped up and rebuilt in all kinds of different ways. So yeah, in order to keep the chi flowing you've got to put some metal in a corner or a mirror. So yeah, I also strongly believe that in your home everything should have a place. I actually always say that my favorite thing is when everything has a place and my least-favorite thing is when something doesn't have a place. My best home advice actually is even if you have something that cannot have a permanent home have a home of impermanence. So your keys and your mail and things that move through, you've got to have a place where things can move through.
And I think there's no time where that's more acute than right now. So if you're at home and you have to work from home and you have one table in your house and there's not really anything you can do about that. You can't go out in public. You have to be really intentional about how you use that one table. The other thing I would say about that is ritual is super important in the home: getting up, making coffee, making your bed, whatever kinds of things that you do. And so obviously location matters in that, right? The more that you have ritual you're going to things in different locations. And so that kind of helps you get into a groove and get into a space.
(12:05)
And I think especially as a lot of people right now are bringing their work into their homes and bringing their kids into their homes to a new degree that's ever more present. So if you have a table where you normally eat dinner and it has to be the table where you work how can you introduce something into that that will help you change your mind about the place? Whether it's setting the table every time you eat or you have a piece of fabric or something you throw over it when you work then you throw everything off to the side. But being really intentional about your space I think is something I deeply, deeply believe in.
Ann: What do you think about navigating some of these questions with the people you live with? Be they roommates or a partner or children. How do some of these questions change? Because I think a lot about how, you know, it wasn't that when I lived alone it was perfect 24/7 but I do think certain things like setting a tone for how you want to use a space are a lot easier when you're the one using it.
Mercedes: Right.
Ann: And I would love your thoughts about living with others.
Mercedes: So right now I live with a small dog who loves to alert us when she can see literally anyone from the window. I also live with my husband and my eleven-month-old baby. My husband takes care of my baby and so they're there all day long when I have work, when I'm in video calls, all kinds of stuff. So I'm pretty practiced at this at this point but I have learned it just takes time and there will be conflict and frustration and like any relationship you kind of just have to talk through it and say okay, you came in during this call. How do we work through that? Why did this happen?
(14:00)
There's actually -- I'm such a management dork -- there's actually something called the five whys where you ask why five times when a conflict happens so you can get to the root of it then you try to put in place new things at every level of the why. So, you know, maybe that means changing your video call schedule around if you can. Maybe that means -- for me I share my work calendar with my husband so he knows when to . . . Ryan, also friend-of-the-pod. I don't know why I'm saying my husband.
Ann: Well because listeners don't know him but yes, obviously he's a friend to me, Amina and you. [Laughter]
Mercedes: Well and y'all reference him enough and sometimes I'm like I feel like people know him. But yeah, so he knows when I have meetings. So negotiated space means negotiations. You just like -- you don't know what you need sometimes until conflict comes and then you just work through it together and you do your best to be honest and you say okay, I feel like I need to take this. How does that feel to you? Do you need something else? Do you feel like my needs are getting met and yours are not? There's no clear way through it. There's some way to expect when and where conflict can happen but it also just happens and then you just work through it.
Ann: Is that something you learned living with roommates? How did you learn that lesson?
Mercedes: Ugh, I lived with roommates for a very long time. I actually have never . . . let's see. I have never lived completely alone. One time when I was studying abroad in London I lived in a dorm room by myself for six months but I was in a flat with a bunch of other students so I have a lot of experience [Laughs] brushing up against other people and softening my rough edges.
(15:40)
Even when Ryan and I got married we lived with roommates for a couple years. One thing my friend Tess taught me, I remember I was really stressed out one time. I had come home from a serving job. I was trying to freelance. This was in my early 20s. Was trying to freelance and was making no money. It was post-recession and everything was really shitty and bad. I came home in this stress thing and like . . . and I think I had done this a couple times before but she approached me and she said "Look, I don't know if you're aware of this but your energy is very powerful and when you bring that into this house it really affects me." And I was like holy shit.
Ann: [Laughs]
Mercedes: And I of course felt bad. I was mad at myself. But it was a huge lesson for me to understand how to respect other people in the place and how to talk to them and what my piece was in everything. And I thought that was huge of her to be able to do that, you know? That basically changed my life in a lot of ways. And in that way I love living with other people. I think it absolutely makes you a better human.
You know, so that's like you enter a new apartment or you move in with your partner or you get a dog, whatever kind of spatial change, as soon as you can realize hey, this is a significant change, what are our ground rules? And as many as you can set. And they may fall apart but at least you have something upon which you've negotiated to start.
Ann: I have so many more questions about change in a living space. [Laughter] One thing I want to ask you about is aesthetics because you're a woman of a strong aesthetic and for me I often think about making an aesthetic change in my home as a frivolity or something that should only be undertaken every X number of years. I don't know what X -- what number that is. But making investments for a reason not related to functionality is something that can be hard for me once I'm already established in a space even if I feel I've outgrown the way something looks or I've just gotten sick of it.
Mercedes: Yeah.
(17:50)
Ann: And I'm wondering about how you answer some of those questions for yourself because I am a devoted reader of your Curbed newsletter. A lot of it is about you deciding that you want to make an aesthetic change in your space and how you went about it. So I would love to hear about that process for you.
Mercedes: Yeah. Well first of all I am looking at a lot of inspiration all the time thanks to Instagram. I have an Instagram collection called Home. Shout-out to T Magazine. I really don't want them to be the best but my god the homes they post on there are very good. Their account is very good. There are a bunch of other ones of course. There's my latest one I think that I follow is one called Kim Cool Mom and it's just like retro design book images and things like that that just kind of jar my mind into thinking stuff. And I also will pick up design books from estate sales where I go shopping with you even so I feel like I look at stuff all the time.
For me I think the reason I'm regularly messing with my space is that I have a deep-seated desire to be a maximalist in the truest sense of the word. I want like every surface in my house to be hand painted. I even have an idea that wouldn't it be cool if I made a house where literally everything in the house was made or decorated by me? You know, Tom Sachs did Space Mission Mars.
Ann: Who's that? Sorry, do we recognize male designers on this show? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. [Laughs]
Mercedes: Oh no. I know but it's the closest example.
Ann: I'm teasing. Who is Tom Sachs?
Mercedes: Tom Sachs is an artist. Let's say he's the Wes Anderson of the art world not in the color sense but in the every detail prescribed in a certain aesthetic and it all has to do with like very regular-ass materials like plywood and not duct tape but electrical tape and things like that. So he'll make things that seem like they're high-design or luxury or whatever and use regular materials to make those things. But anyway the point is he makes everything out of one material to create one ethos.
(20:00)
I remember a book that really captured my imagination was this artist homes book that I found in a used bookstore in Texas and one in particular, this husband and wife duo, and I think actually it was the wife that did most of it, but like the entire house was hand painted and she like wrote shit everywhere and she made leopard spots on doorways. Just the wildest stuff.
And I know that could look junky and I would want to do it in my own way but I think, yeah, part of the reason I keep working on stuff is I want to see how I can keep filling stuff in a way that feels good and how far can I push this? And how far do I want to push it? And when is too much stuff too much stuff? But when does that feel good?
Yeah, I think it probably feels in some ways very self-reflexive in that way so that's probably a deeper answer than you might have expected but yeah. And I also -- I really love color and pattern and texture and so a lot of the things that I have tried to do, especially faced with the current aesthetic which is . . . I mean it's kind of ongoing. There's always some sort of neutral shade, right? In the '90s it was like beige and now it's gray.
Ann: It's not pale pink? That's not the neutral?
Mercedes: Oh, well . . .
Ann: Or am I speaking too far within my own Instagram algorithm?
Mercedes: I mean it definitely is its own neutral. I would say though like way wider world is more gray because the backsplash tiles you can buy at Home Depot, you can only buy them in gray.
Ann: Really?
Mercedes: Yeah, so the options you have available to you when you don't really know what to do are all super, super basic and so for me I'm like I don't want any of this. Just throw that out. Let's get more creative. Let's be more thoughtful here. And so most of the time those things are used or sometimes I'll even see something and be like wow, I've never seen this before. I want it. [Laughs] Could I put it in my home? Because I can't get another blanket because I'm not going to use it but I found this quilt at the Pasadena City College Flea and I saw it and said this feels very Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. It's this scratched silk and it's this wild-ass thing and I've been trying to figure out how to put something over our bed -- you know we live in earthquake land -- that's like a fabric. I saw this thing and I'm like this is hella colorful. Our bedroom feels weird anyway. I want to keep messing with it. So I just kind of hung it up and now I've started to tweak around it. So sometimes I'll just find a new piece, a new thing that I think is really cool, and then I'll just start arranging everything else according to that cool thing that I find.
(22:48)
Ann: So as a maximalist I would love to hear you talk a little bit about where we are in the cycle of Kondo and reactions to it because I think it always felt inherently kind of consumerist in the sense that look, there's a ton of stuff in my home or closet that doesn't spark joy but it's functional or it's occasionally functional and therefore if I am to get rid of it I have to replace it with something new. There's something about that paring back that feels at least as it is enacted in America also related to granting yourself permission to spend.
Mercedes: Right. Maximalism is definitely on the rise again. With regards to Kondo and with regards to minimalism I think those things often play in different ways, like the reason that so many minimalist spaces look good on Instagram is because it's on Instagram and it's a small space. Most spaces don't look -- you know, it's like you go look for an Airbnb and you're like oh, this place looks so minimal and cool. Then you get there and you're like wow, there's really nothing in here. This place sucks.
Ann: [Laughs] This is a weird shed.
Mercedes: Yeah, you're like this one artwork on the wall looked really precious in this photo and actually it's sad as hell. So, you know, the other thing I'll say is you can be maximalist without being a hoarder. Like the two, I think they often get put in the same category but you can be a Kondo devotee and also be a maximalist. Whether it's color or pattern or texture, whatever, it doesn't mean you have to have a lot of things; it just means that you are happy to fill your space with colors and textures and patterns and fabrics.
(24:45)
There's a designer that we wrote about early in my days at Curbed that Kelsey Keith our editor-in-chief introduced me to named Max Clendinning and he's a British designer and made some really amazing stuff in the '70s and '80s and we have a profile of him and photos of his London home. The number of objects you would call minimalist but the way that he's done his home you would absolutely call maximalist. Talk about hand-painted walls and he has this giant tulip sculpture that's like floor to ceiling and in fact I think his ceilings are 12 feet or something. It's this massive thing.
So there's a lot of visual interest in things and you could say plants or whatever but it's not . . . they're not bad things. They're not hoarded things. They're not, you know, consumerists necessarily. I think it's like when you get maximalism right it is very intentional and it's refined and most of that is through a constant editing, you know? Where do you put stuff? Our closets are small but increasingly we have to live with things because our society is not really setup to share and we feel like we all have to have our own things and then they wear out then you just trash them and you get rid of them.
(25:55)
Like I think there's a real conflict with how we see ourselves and the things we keep in our homes with our actual needs and the ways that we need to connect. I mean this time shows that like anything else. We have so many shared resources. You know, everybody is like hoarding shit.
Ann: Right, everyone is sweeping the shelves bare.
Mercedes: Right.
Ann: Yeah. Okay, let's take a quick break and then Mercedes and I will be back.
[Ads]
(28:18)
Ann: I want to ask you about gender and interior spaces of the home because I think that among -- you know, and this is obviously sort of a generalization that doesn't encompass all races and classes but I do think to generalize I would say that women are kind of expected to be keepers of the internal spaces of a home and the people who maintain the vibe inside a home even if they may be sharing space with a lot of other people. Yet I think like in many areas I think, you know, professional chefs and kitchens being one comparable, a lot of people credited with setting the design norms and the high-minded things for inside the home just so happen to be men. And I would love to hear you talk a little bit about that, the kind of day-to-day who's setting the tone and also on this high-level way of thinking about maximalism, minimalism, Memphis, movements, where women show up in that space too.
Mercedes: Yeah, that's a big question.
Ann: I know, sorry. [Laughs]
Mercedes: I'll probably have to -- no, you know, part of me just wants to say that's the fucking patriarchy, man. You know, it plays out in design spaces like it does in so many other places. You know, I just keep thinking about the study that just came out about how even women are biased about women -- biased against women.
Ann: Oh, you're referring to the study that says upwards of 90 percent of people regardless of their gender are biased against women.
Mercedes: yes. Yes. [Sighs]
Ann: Has that affected how you feel about claiming the home space as an area of expertise?
Mercedes: For sure. I have a lot of conflicts with claiming the home space as my expertise in part because I feel like [Laughs] what I have is from my own experience and everything that I learned on my own basically, you know, from reading.
Ann: You're a self-taught home expert.
Mercedes: I'm a self-taught home expert. I just happen to be very curious and very hardworking and a deep researcher and so that gives me the expertise that I need. The home space doesn't feel as gross simply because hetero men are fewer and further between. They definitely do have power but it's not a super-hetero man-forward space and for that it is a softer space than many others.
The art world for instance, the design world. There are a lot of adjacent -- the architecture world, my god. There are a lot of adjacent disciplines that feel way less receptive to women making bolder statements or non-hetero people, whoever making statements and being taste-makers. Curbed is also about real estate and that's a heavily male-dominated and hetero male-dominated field.
So we kind of get adjacent to all of those things and I think there is a reason I've stayed away from all of them is like I don't want to join in those ranks and there does feel like in some ways like I'm in a safe space. And again I think a lot of that is because I get to decide who we look at and whose voices we elevate and that is a tremendous power that I do not take lightly and who we hire and how we retain people are all really important to me and I use every ounce of power that I have to do right by people and to do right by telling the stories that need to be told.
(32:08)
Ann: I want to ask for some advice. [Laughs]
Mercedes: Sure.
Ann: Because I am picturing someone potentially listening to this and being like yes, I love the idea of a space that is designed to move chi around, that plays with light, that is full of fun color, that is -- you know, feels responsive to who I am as an individual. And when I look around the room I'm currently in I do not see that. [Laughs] And the gap between the sort of desired space that many of us want to live in and the spaces that we actually do live in is quite large. As in many things this is like a capitalism (TM) kind of thing. But I'm wondering about how you would advise someone who's feeling that gap of this is really . . . the space does not reflect me or a place where I feel at my best and most comfortable. Where do you advise them to start making change?
Mercedes: So I feel like that in my house all the time. Just to be perfectly real I agree I think it's a capitalism (TM) thing but even this morning I was thinking I wish my house felt more adult. You know, even as I love its rough edges and it's something that I embrace and I think makes people really comfortable in my home that things aren't overly composed or even regular composed, you know, they are a little bit messy, I think it puts people at ease and I really like that. And I have learned to value it but it's taken me a long time.
I think the biggest thing for me is also like so many things in life which is to not be afraid of failure. You just have to try something, you know? I painted my first New York apartment, my bedroom I painted this caramel honey brown color and I was like this could be bad. I think I picked a color on the orange/yellow enough spectrum for this to be fine.
Ann: But also caramel honey could go diarrhea so quickly. [Laughs]
Mercedes: Yes exactly.
Ann: It's a risk.
(34:12)
Mercedes: But it turned out great, you know? I mean I just studied on the color for a long time and I thought about what this could be. I thought about what it could be, how it could fail, you know, and you could always -- there's a reason they give you those tiny tubs of tester things for three dollars. Yeah, you just have to try stuff and with everything in life know that it is not permanent. Everything must change. Everything will change and that is the beauty of playing in your home. You know, like I said I'll buy something that I think is really cool and then I'll want to bring it out like a new pitcher for a dinner party. And then I'm like okay, what do I have that I want to pull together? And then as I have to pull it together, you know, when you have to show up, when you have to do a thing and you have to compose a space or compose a -- yeah, a table setting, then that's the moment when you go to write something, you go to make a piece of art, whatever, it's still part of the creative process where okay, now I have my elements and I have to put them together.
And you just develop a sophistication and you understand the tools that you have and then when you're out at an estate sale or whatever doing your low-risk shopping then you understand more and more and more of what you want. I think it's worth trying. It's worth making low-lift investments. Even just hanging -- like the other day I hung two pieces of art. They look kind of janky but it changed the space and it helped me see the space in a new way and be like oh, okay.
(35:50)
So even -- right, you just move a lamp or move a table or I'll tack something up without a nail and put it in the wall and be like oh, how does this look next to this? And then I'll move it. You just have to be okay with going and trying things again and doing things again and figuring out just like any creative practice that you have. It's just going forward, getting new tools, understanding what else you need. You know, do I need a new brush or new paint? Do I need a new set of napkins? Whatever the hell it is.
Ann: The home is creative practice.
Mercedes: Yes, the home is creative practice. I think with any art that you share with people it's such a joy to share it. I love having people come into my house and feel comfortable. I love them looking around and being like "Oh, that's cool" or "Oh, look at these bookshelves" or whatever. If they're inspired to have their own space or think about their space in a new way I love that. It truly gives me joy for people to enjoy being in a space that I have put together whether that's at my dining room table or in my living room or then even me enjoying my bedroom space for instance. It is something that feels life-giving and I want people to enjoy in the same way I enjoy somebody's painting or I enjoy somebody's song or something else. And it's weird, I feel like I've never talked about the home in this way. I always say, and you know that I say this, I always feel like I don't have a creative practice.
Ann: Hah! Sorry, but hah! [Laughs]
Mercedes: I know! But for so long I felt like it's supposed to look a certain way, like practice looks like a daily drawing habit or weekly writing ritual or something like that.
Ann: I scrambled to put away my easel before you came. [Laughter] When it's like me with a beret and an easel, that's my practice. No. LOL.
Mercedes: I know! It sucks that I still am held to that even as I know that that's ridiculous but it's strange to me to hear me describe what it feels like for me because I know that I have an intuition about what it feels like to walk into a space and be like okay, well this needs to change or that or whatever. And yeah, I would say that intuition that you feel, that's the kind of chi thing right? Where you're like hmm, something is a little bit weird in here but I can't say what. And maybe it's somebody else's vibe, you know? Who knows? But there is something about honing your intuition and honing your ability to make small changes and adjust the feeling of the space.
(38:20)
And then, right, you have things like interior design magazines or Feng Shui books or Curbed how-to articles. You know I've got to give a shout-out.
Ann: Do it.
Mercedes: To help give you real tools for how you might do that. You know, so for me from Feng Shui it's like okay, yeah, hang a mirror here. I'm like well I have this little shiny thing. I could put it there. And it makes a big difference. Yeah, just develop your curiosity.
Ann: Yeah. I mean it's interesting because I feel like I can name -- I mean this is because I shop with you as well but I can name the names that you are interested in for your own space right now. It's almost harder for me to do that for my own space. I kind of know what I'm attracted to when I'm shopping for things or whatever because of their functionality or their aesthetic or whatever. It's almost easier for me to walk into a friend's house and be like oh, this is what they're all about right now. I'm wondering if you can almost like lightning round style be like here's what I'm into right now.
Mercedes: Hmm. Well first I want to say something about what you just said which is the gift of being able to see someone from the outside is a very special one and so when you go into someone's home -- right, it is part of their creative practice when you look at their art, when you read their stories, when you whatever. So many of us are working through these different forms of creativity to try to fully understand who we are and what we think about the world and our freaking mission for the world. So to be able to dialogue with your friend about what you see and the things that they have made is hugely important. And I learned this from my friend Carrie who's a painter who I've known her for two decades nearly and when I go into her studio and I talk about the things that I see, you know, I can pull up a really long history. And I didn't understand how important that was until she told me "Hey, you making all these connections really helps me start to put this together."
(40:15)
Ann: You get all my references even when I don't get my references, yeah.
Mercedes: Exactly. Exactly. And so seeing all of that is hugely powerful and having conversations about what other people see and I think that's something that I have the luck of having Ryan to see stuff and I love talking about it and so writing for the newsletter, talking to you about it, whoever I'm shopping with, whatever, I can start to get some of those things out. You know, you both have to work let's say in the medium, so rearranging your house and messing with it, and then also talking to people and being like "Yeah, I would really like to find X." Then they'll be like "Oh, I see X in this way. You've really done it really well there." And then you can start to see things in a new way and develop it.
Anyway, lightning round. What am I really into right now? I'm relentlessly into textiles. I love to find something that surprises me. I feel like I have a really good grip on Mexican textiles and I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking at there. I spent a short time in India about a decade ago and picked up some stuff there and I learned about Turkish weaving and Cashmere weaving and a bunch of different things from all over the place so I have some of that and I would like to . . . I'm ready to be surprised by a new form of textile and how people communicate through textile.
Ann: You're ready for a new love. [Laughs]
Mercedes: I'm ready for a new love. And I may not find it for a while and it may be a while before I go out looking for it but I'm kind of like that thing that I found at the Pasadena College Flea, that really surprised me. I have never seen anything like that before and so I haggled a little bit for it but I snagged it. I bought it. And I love it and I'm trying to kind of dive into new things. And that one wasn't any clear form of folk tradition or anything like that; I just really was astounded by it. In fact I am a little bit trying not to get more things. [Laughs] I have a very full glassware cabinet right now.
(42:23)
Ann: Queen of colored glass.
Mercedes: Years of collecting. So right now I'm actually trying to be very contented with the things that I have.
Ann: Right, like are you using it and enjoying them?
Mercedes: Yes exactly. Like again with glassware I find some of the greatest joy is when I have dinner parties so I had a great New Year's Eve dinner party and I got to pull out layers upon layers of glassware and that was fantastic and I probably will not have a dinner party for a little while and that is fine and so I just try to use my stuff in the meantime. Like right now at our table I have some of our special placemats set out and our little juice glasses set out with some nice block chop textile napkins that I got at the . . .
Ann: Sample sale, right?
Mercedes: Sample sale a couple months ago.
Ann: You're gesturing towards me because we attended together. [Laughs]
Mercedes: Yes, and so . . .
Ann: Or rather not together but on the same day. [Laughs]
Mercedes: Yes, I'm gesturing towards you because I bought you the table runner there.
Ann: That I bought myself mere hours later. [Laughs]
Mercedes: And it was a true moment of kismet.
Ann: I really felt so seen, like what is more beautiful than your friend buying you a gift that you just bought for yourself an hour prior? That is truly being seen out of all the beautiful textiles in that room we picked the same one for me. I'm feeling emotional about it just thinking about it.
Mercedes: [Laughs] It's funny because I'm always looking for some like retro future Star Wars kind of a situation. I'm talking acrylic. I'm talking, yeah, any kind of other-colored plastics from the '70s and '80s.
(44:00)
Ann: A chrome accent?
Mercedes: Potentially a chrome accent. I get a little bit afraid of chrome TBH.
Ann: I know but I feel like you can't invoke Star Wars without something kind of chrome in the mix.
Mercedes: I know. It's more like Darth Vader's helmet, you know? Like that shade.
Ann: You want a black lacquer moment. [Laughter]
Mercedes: Potentially yes. I think you have seen the fixture over my dining room table. It's actually black and cold. I was looking for a red one but alas. There's a bunch of really cool stuff on Etsy but it's like a thousand dollars and it's like red glass or red orange glass. So I'll search for things like atomic. Some of that stuff can be a little too Sputnik for me but I'll kind of go into '60s and '70s retro and I'll kind of rabbit hole whether it's on Pinterest or Etsy or Cherish or whatever, I'll just kind of go and just burrow deep into the various referrals of things and then find a new term to zero in on and then search to the bottom of that, you know?
Recently I got some Cartel-style tables. Cartel is a furniture manufacturer and they did a bunch of stuff in the '70s and '80s. I went into a deep hole to figure out out of this genre what was accessible, what was affordable, what was I looking for, and I came up with these two plastic yellow side tables that in another situation might look like children's tables but I love that they look like children's tables and I'm trying to figure out how to make them look alive and cool. That was a rabbit trail.
Ann: I mean I asked what you're into lately.
(45:45)
Mercedes: Yeah, yeah. The weird thing I'll say too about friends and seeing friends in their spaces, I find it very easy to shop for myself. I actually have a very hard time shopping for my friends because I have this weird fear of giving people stuff they don't want or that they don't like even though I am happy when people give me stuff even if I'm like well this is not exactly my thing but like it's so sweet and I love it. And it's weird that I can't get past that. I have this strange impostor syndrome.
Like for Amina actually there are times I actually have bought her a couple small things and not given them to her because I'm like I know she is trying to be minimal. She's got this grownup vibe in this new apartment or whatever and I don't want to just send her stuff.
Ann: But I also feel that's a fear of . . . it kind of comes from that same place of perfection being the enemy of the good right?
Mercedes: Right.
Ann: I see that as like if I don't nail this, if I don't get you the perfect thing, it wasn't worth it at all.
Mercedes: Yeah.
Ann: Even though that's not your experience as a recipient.
Mercedes: Right. When I can talk to someone like aforementioned Carrie, she was looking for some textiles and I was like great, I'm constantly on the hunt so I will look at the next estate sale I go to and I got her one mixed textile that could be used for anything and like two tablecloths that were cool and had some embroidery on them and whatever and she seemed really stoked about all of them. And so I was like yeah, this feels good. I love to be able to give her this stuff that I could use my eye and find. I mean yeah maybe I should just be asking people more of what they're looking for so I don't get so bottled up and afraid when I'm estate sale shopping.
Ann: Or for me part of it is when I give a gift like that I will often give it with an explanation of this is me. This is totally me.
Mercedes: Right.
Ann: This is why I thought of you for this thing. This is a thing I noticed when I was in your home and this is why I gave this to you. So it's so weird. It's my own way of vocalizing the insecurity about the gift.
Mercedes: But it's weird because you've done that for me before and I feel like -- I'm like oh, I feel seen because you have been like I see this thing in my house, whatever.
Ann: Yeah.
(47:50)
Mercedes: And it actually does help make a nice bridge to the thing.
Ann: Where you might've otherwise been like eh. [Laughs]
Mercedes: Right. Maybe not eh but, you know, it makes a fertile ground for the person to receive I think.
Ann: Ugh, okay. And on this fertile ground [Laughter] I have to say thank you for being on the podcast.
Mercedes: Yeah, absolutely.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: Mercedes! I love this. We are cooped inside but we can make inside a little cozier.
Ann: I love it and we will link in the show notes to Mercedes' work at Curbed and her social handles and yeah, I really recommend she's been writing the Curbed editor-in-chief newsletter which I think I referenced in our conversation and she's been doing a really incredible job of thinking through some really great ways to make a home feel like yours so . . .
Aminatou: She's been doing an incredible job. The Mercedes Kraus job, love to hear.
Ann: Ugh, isn't she? Isn't she always? I will see you on FaceTime in your house. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I am going to see you on FaceTime my love. And to anyone who's listening to this if you are feeling a little stir crazy or you are just feeling anxious it's totally fine. Pick up the phone and call someone. I bet you the person on the other end of the line would love to hear from you.
Ann: Absolutely. I've also been sending my friends little video that's just like hello, it's a human face, not a text message. Especially my friend . . .
Aminatou: I have not gotten a video from you as your friend. Excuse me, hello? I'm learning about this on the air?
Ann: I will say I do video chat with you every day so that is one reason why you have not received one. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Wow is this relationship going to survive coronavirus? Tune in next week.
Ann: I love the idea that you're not receiving my sporadic communication because we are in fact in constant communication.
Aminatou: I want all of your sporadic communication. The idea that someone is receiving a cute video from you and I'm not on that list, I'm sorry, when I video time with my therapist later today we will be discussing this.
Ann: Wow, okay.
Aminatou: Wow, wow.
Ann: Okay, well listen, I will see you on the Internet in a disjointed message format okay? Not just in a FaceTime.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: I'm pledging to you right now with all these listeners as my witness.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.