The $40 million relaunch of Condé Nast's House and Garden celebrates the joy of living vicariously
By ZEV BOROW
Welcome, no, welcome back, to the warm, well-appointed, well-heeled, wonderful world of good taste. Though some of the less refined among us may not have noticed, we've all recently been issued a most cordial invitation to return to the good life. The people welcoming us are the editors of the new Condé Nast House & Garden, and they were agreeable enough to not insist upon even the slightest prerequisite knowledge of antiques, proper mulching, the best interior designers or the right New World wines to accompany a Cornish hen.
No, no, no: That snooty stuff was the old House & Garden -- the magazine without 200-plus ad pages, the one abruptly shut down in 1993 by mean ol' S.I. Newhouse, Jr. The new Condé Nast House & Garden -- the magazine benevolent ol' S.I. Newhouse, Jr. recently re-launched to the tune of over $40 million, the one whose editors enjoyed a pre-launch brainstorming retreat at a Rhode Island resort, the one whose SoHo offices sport a specially-made carpet the color of sea grass -- doesn't care if you know a chardonnay from a chartreuse hat. All the new magazine wants, all it needs, is for you to want to know all about the good life, the life you can enjoy if you are willing to soak in the rich aroma of House & Garden, follow its lead and possibly take out a small loan. No experience necessary, first-timers welcome. As H&G's radiantly WASPy new editor, Dominique Browning, so eloquently puts it in her inaugural editor's note: "We need not be so insecure as to think there is only one way to express good taste . . . the houses of our lifetimes are filled with many rooms." Here, here, Dominique! Here, here!
If H&G's premiere September issue is any clue, readers can expect a veritable bi-level, multi-seasonal English garden of delights from this most glossy of glossies. Regular sections include: "Blueprint" (front-of-the-book architecture and interior design,) "Dig It" (about gardening, silly!) and what is perhaps the moral center of the magazine, "House of Worship" (basically a space for copy about pretty churches).
September's "House of Worship" features a darling Episcopalian cathedral in North Dakota. (Can you believe it? North Dakota!) "Dig It" sends intrepid Wall Street Journal reporter Patti Hagan on assignment to the Far East to learn about "China's King of Flowers," the tree peony. "Blueprint" takes readers on a tour of a Mississippi home built with sheet-metal that resembles aluminum siding. Apparently, the house is an attempt to recreate the dilapidated lean-to look of the homes in which all those charming southern poor people live. Except -- get this -- this one was built for a really, really rich CEO of a big lumber company, by a famous New York architect! They call it "vernacular architecture;" you can call it fabulous!
The features (which, what with all the ads, don't begin until page 273) are an equally representative cornucopia of things designed to appeal to the typical reader thinking about redecorating the second garage and doing something new with the south lawn. We're treated to a look inside your basic 5,000-square-foot Manhattan apartment, providing infinite decorating ideas for our own cozy Gotham hideaways. In the article "Green Links," lime-colored lamps and pink-tinted pillows are offered as the antidote to what is surely an unprecented lull in contemporary lamp and pillow design. And a profile of noted English textile designer Tricia Guild reveals her "prismatic palette," and probes the depths of her feelings on the color blue ("Some people feel blue is cold, but I find it the most spiritual color to live with"). There's also a small piece about a really expensive wood chair, and a lyrical attempt to describe the smell of hardware stores.
Sandwiched in between are a few de riguer celebrity literati ponderings on the meaning of things sufficiently House-and-Garden-y. John Updike finds another way to write middle-aged and wistful by describing his boyhood home, while Jay McInerney -- most recently seen penning a regrettable TV Guide cover story about "Seinfeld" -- begins his regular wine column, called "Uncorked." McInerney, whose services are apparently available for a free meal and a nice head shot on the contributor's page, tells us he's "grown sick to death" of hearing waiters say they have "a nice chardonnay." The horror! But McInerney -- once called our era's F. Scott Fitzgerald -- truly flirts with self-parody when he compares California chardonnays with the women of Beverly Hills: "Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against blondes with huge silicone-enhanced breasts. And likewise there's undoubtedly a place for big, heavily-oaked, in-your-face chardonnays."
It's almost too easy to take pot shots at the wealthy, the wish-they-were-wealthy and the tastefully frivolous pursuits they enjoy. There is certainly a place for magazines about homes and gardens and the people that love them -- you just can't take this stuff too seriously. Problem is, House & Garden is a magazine that takes itself very seriously, written for an audience that presumably takes themselves very seriously, too. But that's just what Condé Nast is betting $40 million on -- that and the hypnotic lullaby that nice pictures of pretty things on good, heavily-fragranced paper sings to those yearning to break free of their Ikea-made chains.
In her editor's note, Ms. Browning suggests that we "breathe in the slumber" of our rooms, and proffers that "when we make a home, we honor life and we honor its blessings." But should she ever run out of such domestic wisdom, she can always tap the world of talented writers willing to have a go for two bucks a word -- rumor is that Salman Rushdie is preparing a delightful piece on robust holiday decorating for people on the move.
Zev Borow is a San Francisco writer whose work has appeared in Spin, Esquire and New York magazine.