While we love any and all green decor, we love going green, too! Fortunately, you don't need to sacrifice style and design when it comes to eco-friendly accents. Chic silk pillows, contemporary vases, and relaxed trays are just a few of the earth-friendly ways we're styling our home for Earth Day. Under $50, these touches are easy on both the earth and your wallet. Done and done!
There's something to be said about using the sleek, basic color combination of black and white. Whether you're incorporating these hues through a few accents or theming your entire space around this color duo, you're sure to achieve a high-end, high-style design. Better yet, black and white is a timeless trend, and the neutral hues can be incorporated into any interior and style. Check out a few key pieces below!
I am fascinated by accents — consonants dropped, vowels found. It's a fascinating piece of history imprinted in what we can and cannot do with our tongues, in a SFW sort of way.
A true New York accent is inescapable. It's in every syllable and sigh, almost as if you can hear it before a person opens his mouth. But as with all things, it's far less intriguing when it's your accent, and it doesn't help that the Jersey Shore has made a mockery of the tristate's diction.
Now The New York Times has a trend piece about New Yorkers seeking speech therapy to get rid of their accents for good. Speech therapy is extreme, but I've known Bostonians, New Yorkers, and Southerners who have purposefully and successfully lost their accents. Mostly.
Have you tried?
If you read my Color Theory slideshow about my ideas for decorating with people, you know I'm working on integrating a set of hand-me-down purple Louis XIV chairs into my living room, which I received from my mother.
I tossed around a lot of ideas for bringing more of the hue into my home, but you all seemed to vote for accents like throws, pillows, and artwork over large expanses of purple in wallpaper, rugs, etc. So I thought I'd round up some purple accents and decorative accessories to help me bring more purple into my life. I'm loving this Cabled Cashmere Throw ($450) because it's classic and understated, but it's a little more than I'm willing to spend. The World Market Vidrio Glass Table Lamp ($60) wouldn't be a big expense, and I love how it evokes the look of a vintage perfume bottle. Check out my other picks below and let me know which is your fave!
Say something in another language. Anything. It doesn't matter. It's always hot.
Accents have a downside, though. Regardless of the language, and general hotness of the speaker, people perceive foreigners with accents as less trustworthy. They're harder to understand, which creates work for the listener, and a bad rap for the speaker. I'd say not knowing what's being said is what makes them so sexy! Why be bored with reality?
We asked you what you thought the sexiest accent was, and I've rounded up your answers. Some of you said Mexican and Russian, and a lot of you said French and English.
What'll it be for you? The lilt of the Irish? The debonair French? Or another language altogether.
As his name perfectly telegraphs, Marcel Wanders designs objects all over the map, with a dreamlike touch. From reinterpreting his native Dutch design with modern delftware to reinventing seating with his ethereal swings, his home goods are both sophisticated and otherworldly.
The 47-year-old designer made his mark with the modernized macrame of the Knotted Chair, which is now so iconic that you can buy it in miniature ($255). He's known for using unusual materials in high-tech ways, such as sponges dipped in porcelain for his Foambowl ($200). He has designed for Droog, B&B Italia, and Moooi, which he also co-owns, and he also creates luscious wallpaper for Graham and Brown (pictured). To see more Wanders wonders, read more
I thought I'd continue the talk of warm colors with one color that's very trendy these days: orange. I see orange paired often with deep grays in spare, contemporary spaces. But it looks equally smart in traditional rooms, paired with turquoise or navy. A room painted in orange, or even a chair upholstered in orange, probably wouldn't be my thing. But I do like orange used in accents, especially if the color is continued throughout the room. So I thought I'd round a few up. From clocks and candles to wall hooks and letter trays, orange comes in all shapes, forms, and functions.
I've always found it fascinating that dogs "bark" in different languages. Though we say "ruff ruff" in English, that same noise is expressed as "ouah, ouah" in French. Now here's something even cooler: German researchers have started to think that babies' wails sound different depending on what language their parents speak.
The scientists observed 60 babies born to families speaking French and German and found that the infants could be absorbing their parents' accents from inside the womb. In the last three months of pregnancy, babies have already begun to memorize sounds, and based on the analysis of the babies' cry "melodies," the sounds mapped closely to the parents' accents:
The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.
The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb.
Fascinating, right? Now I want to hang out with a big international gang of babies and see if their cries all sound different. Wait, that means being trapped in a room with a bunch of crying babies — nevermind!
Maybe we can blame the foreign exchange students in high school or the soap operas we watched that featured mysterious foreigners whose arrival shook up small towns like the fictional Port Charles. Whatever the cause, a lot of chicks love a foreign accent.
Well, the results of a worldwide poll asking 5,000 women who has the sexiest accent have yielded an answer: the Irish. For decades, French men held the title. (Tant pis, mes amis!) The Irish and their sexy (if indecipherable) lilts were followed by the accents of Italian, Scottish, French and Australian men, in that order. (Americans were in tenth place.)
If you like a man with a foreign accent, what do you think is the sexiest?
