"But as I look ahead and think about what may still be relevant in fashion years from now, I think back to eras in style that were defined by freedom."

"I am so happy I was young in the ‘70s and participated in the women’s movement and all it meant. My generation behaved as if it had invented freedom. That was a moment in time, between the discovery of the pill and the arrival of AIDS, when sex was carefree and fun. For design inspiration then, we looked 40 years back, to the 1930s. We loved its furniture and architecture, all minimalist, and the light style of the clothing."

Writes Diane von Furstenberg.

ADDED: Her penultimate paragraph is "Who saw this coming? An icon of the ‘70s: Andy Warhol," which was especially funny to me because as I was reading, I was planning to search for "Diane von Furstenberg" in my copy of "The Andy Warhol Diaries." She's all over the place in there. Sample:

Bianca [Jagger] was there. I thought she’d already left for Paris. She was saying out loud everything I was thinking— what two bitches Diane Von Furstenberg and Sue Mengers were— and she said, “At least Sue can be funny sometimes.” Sue was on her way to Europe to meet her husband, who only lets her see him once every couple of months, I think.

Another one:

And Diane Von Furstenberg was there and she lives in Eleanor Lambert’s building so she invited Bob and me down for dinner and to watch Holocaust. So we went down and Diane’s mother was there, and Marina Cicogna. Diane’s mother had been in Auschwitz, and when the concentration camps came on she was laughing— she said that they made it so much more glamorous than it was when she was there, that all the women had crewcuts and it was a lot more crowded, that where the movie had 20 people there were really 300,000. And it was weird to be seeing this with Marina Cicogna whose family was so involved with Mussolini. Before it was over, Diane was ready to go out, she was calling for a limousine.

And:

There was a mob scene around where Barry Diller and I were sitting because John Travolta sat down two inches away. His eyes are just like— dyed— blue-green. I mean, really deep blue. And he has the most beautiful smile. His teeth must be polished every day. And his skin is beautiful. And he’s so nice. And he says nice things to everyone. And he was talking the most to this girl he thought was with us, but she was a DVF groupie. And Diane is so desperate to be recognized that if one person says, “You’re Diane Von Furstenberg, I love you,” she says, “Come with me,” and she makes them follow her around for the rest of the night so that she can have a following, and then she gives them presents— she carries lipsticks and compacts with her to give out, and she autographs them.

And:

Sondra looked great in this beautiful bright yellow silk dress— the color I used on the Debbie Harry portrait— and it made her look so young, eight years old, and we asked her who made it because it was really pretty and she said, “You’ll fall over if I tell you.” So she told us and Bob and I did fall over— it was a Diane Von Furstenberg. Off the rack for $ 120. It really was pretty.

Also:

Diane Von Furstenberg was having a party for her boyfriend, Alain Elkann, who was married to the Agnelli daughter. He’s French. He’s written four books, and in France if you’re an intellectual, you don’t have to work, they just treat you like this big—“ intellectual.” Like Loulou de la Falaise’s husband who’s supposed to be a novelist but I don’t think he’s ever finished anything. So Diane’s going the Marilyn Monroe route of marrying one person for the name, and now she’s going with this guy who’ll write books about her.

"What Happens When You Stand For 2 Years."

"I didn’t develop any knee, foot, back, or hip pains. I don’t feel exhausted at the end of the day or week.... My posture improved. My neck and shoulders no longer pitch forward. My legs became more muscular. I no longer get back pain...."

I enjoyed reading that. You know I'm a big fan of my motorized sit/stand desk, and I need more reason to opt for the up position.

Somehow, this topic got me around to buying an Indo Board IndoFLO Balance Stimulator. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'll let you know how it works out. This video influenced me. (If you are younger/more athletic, consider this.)

Are your chairs and sofas too 3-dimensional...

... or are your paintings not 3-dimensional enough?

I went to that slideshow after looking at the slideshow that accompanied the NYT article "Making the Best of It at the Milan Furniture Fair," which — unrelated to what I've linked to above — happens to end like this:

Antonio Rossi, a taxi driver here, confirmed that business was slower than usual this year, though he admitted that even so, it was a great improvement over the weeks when the city was not hosting a fashion or design extravaganza. But no trade show, Mr. Rossi insisted, could provide the solution to his country’s economic woes. What Italy really needed, he said, was another leader like Mussolini.

Even though Mussolini was a Fascist?

“Everyone has problems,” he said.

Purchase of the day.

From the April 12, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

Corner Solid Teak Bath, Shower, Outdoor Stool
by AquaTeak

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you sing in falsetto will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: Sustainably harvested, vegan-friendly, and always low-carb.

"Imagine that, you know, you built a table. Maybe it came out a little bit crooked."

"Probably your wife or your neighbor would see it for what it is, you know? A shoddy piece of workmanship. But to you that table might seem really great, because you're the one who created it. It's the fruit of your labor. And that is really the idea behind the Ikea Effect."

Said Daniel Mochon, a Tulane University marketing professor.

I don't identify with that feeling. If I've done something myself, I'm particularly irritated by the flaws (and I'm more likely to know where they are). If someone I cared about had made it, I'd be more lenient.

The downside of the treadmill desk.

Typos.... "up to 11% deterioration in fine motor skills like mouse clicking, and dragging and dropping, as well in as cognitive functions like math-problem solving."

It's silly to walk on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike while trying to work, but I highly recommend using a desk like this with a push-button motor that lets you move back and forth between sitting and standing. Here I am demonstrating it 2 years ago.

We liked it so much we bought a second one. Bought a second 27-inch iMac too.

"15 Frugal Billionaires Who Live Like Regular People."

Fascinating and really cool. Got us going talking about why someone would do this (other than being nutty). Highlights:

1. Warren Buffet, worth $46 billion, "still lives in the Omaha, Nebraska, home he bought for $31,500 more than 50 years ago." And Carlos Slim Helú, chairman and CEO of Telmex, worth $69 billion, has lived in the same modest house he's had for the last 30 years. Christy Walton, worth $27.9 billion raised her son in an 1896 Victorian house so he could have a normal life and, after her husband died in a plane crash, donated the house to charity.

2. Chuck Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group, gave away $4 billion, leaving himself with (currently) $2 million, and he orders the second-cheapest wine on the menu. David Cheriton, worth $1.3 billion says he's "quite offended" by people who build big mansions, thinks "there's something wrong" with those people, and recently bought a Honda Odyssey.

3. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, worth $3 billion, claims to drive a 15-year-old Volvo and alway fly economy. He eats in cheap restaurants and has his house furnished with IKEA stuff.  More on him here, including a picture of his unassuming ranch-style house.

He always does his food shopping in the afternoon, when the prices in his local market start to fall....

Explaining his frugal nature, he said: "I am a bit tight with money, a sort of Swedish Scotsman. But so what?

"If I start to acquire luxurious things then this will only incite others to follow suit. It's important that leaders set an example. I look at the money I'm about to spend on myself and ask if Ikea's customers could afford it."

But Kamprad's image may be a big fake, and who knows about those other characters? The modest image helps the company's reputation, and they don't want to attract the attention of tax collectors, government regulators, and criminals (e.g., kidnappers).

Champagne chair...

... contest.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lauderdale Vet said:

I passed that along to my wife, who seems interested :) She'd make a nice chair, I think.

Which made me think of this famous Thurber drawing:

>

There must be a comical drawing of a woman as a chair or an actual chair in the form of a woman. I looked for furniture in human form, and found some stuff in the general neighborhood — the Dali-inspired lips sofa — and this amused me:



And you can unburden yourself here:

"See? You can be messy on the inside, and no one knows."

Step inside a 400-square-foot apartment space, transformed by elaborate built-ins:



The quote I've used for the post title appears about midway and marks the spot where my mood began to shift from delight to despair. What do we think of this man, who is promoting what seems to be a simplified, de-cluttered way of life, but who is, himself, in a business, promoting expensive merchandise, the machinery of compression. Do we want to be compressed thusly? It's one thing to live like this on board a cruise ship, but permanently? For a certain type of person — perhaps this man, or the man he pretends to be — it's a fine, joyful existence. Would he ever really have a dinner party for 10 in this space, as we see enacted at the end? It's not a real party, because it's an on-camera demonstration of the space. Watch closely and notice how the women are responding. There is something they do not love, and it is visible even in this crisply edited production. I felt empathy with these women and resistance to the man's sales pitch. And I remembered the gutted space shown at the beginning of the video, and thought that I could be happy, living in SoHo, in that 400-square-foot space as it looks right then. Just do the kitchen and the bathroom, nice and modern and constrained into a modest space, and let me put in some normal furniture — a good-sized table near the window for my work and eating space (that can be cleared off if anyone needs to come over for dinner) and I'll order a sleeper sofa from Design Within Reach. Spare me all those insane, ever-encroaching built-ins, and those crazy pop-up extra beds for guests. Guests to the city can get a hotel room or sleep on the floor or I'll add sleeper chair. By the end of the video, I felt paranoid that the government had a plan to shift us into smaller and smaller pods with evil corporations getting rich fitting them out with soul crushing storage bins. Mayor Bloomberg! Who fixed your ducts? Huh? Fixed your ducts, all right. I told you before - they fixed themselves. Oh, yeah? Then where did this come from, eh? Out of your nostril? Eh? Nostrils, eh? Central Services. They don't take kindly to sabotage. Sabotage, huh? Jesus, this place is in a terrible state. Just a minute! You're not gonna leave it like this, are you? Why not? All you gotta do is blow your nose and it's fixed, innit?