issue no. 15: on windows.
Read between the blinds.
naked truths and consequences.
I think you should take the curtains down, my godmother said to me at the start of this year. I was preparing for a shoot and complaining about my apartment again. She came over, trying to work one of her home decor miracles that involved tables dancing around the room, a tackle box with over a dozen varieties of thumbtack, and something being taken out of the apartment to be donated and never seen again. It alleviated my stress to get a fresh perspective, but I usually had to leave the house when this happened because I started to have too many conflicting decor opinions or notes on things I had tried before. You just need to trust the process, she said. I mostly did.
It reminded me of this scene in Because I Said So, where Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore stand with their hands on their hips and declare that something is just not right about the room. Then there's a montage of furniture moving, and ultimately, they put the apartment back the exact way it started.
My godmother was right though, my curtains had collected dust and cat hair and darkened a space that only got good light for an hour or two a day. I watched her yank them down and place them in a garbage bag, thinking about how once again, I would be the neighbor without curtains.
How does that rule go? If you can see them, they can see you?
Out of my two living room windows, I can see my neighboring building and the balconies that face the park. Some days, if I catch the outline of a neighbor across the alley way, I hold whatever garment I have in my hand using it as some sheath to prevent the woman with the really good retro lamp from seeing too much. She probably isn’t looking that hard anyway.
I’ve found that this modern modesty is where my half-Catholic upbringing really shines through. Catholics, especially midwestern ones, are famously not proprietors of nude households. My mother was a true exception—she looked like a model out of a 1970s playboy and walked around our Silverlake bungalow with zero shame.
As I got older, it was clear that I did not inherit my mother’s boldness, which really showed when I asked a man to put his supreme boxers back on (despite how much that sentence killed me) because I didn’t need to keep looking at both him and his [redacted] in the eye.
It also meant that she instilled in me zero hair removal instructions. I taught myself how to use a razor, that I bought with babysitting money, on my legs when I was 12 because of how intense the bullying got when we moved to the Midwest from LA. Catholics also could be cruel. I digress.
Consider me your nearly naked neighbor. Proudly crouching to avoid moments of indecent exposure. Without curtains, people could see into my world. People could see everything I wanted them to—a tight edit, slivers of detail you could clearly make out but of course, there were stories about suitors and squares of my apartment that were just out of view.
And if I’m the exhibitionist, are you the voyeur?
Last summer, I was sitting on a dock in Vermont drinking beer, which mind you is very unlike me. There was a man there, a friend of a friend who also was spending his summer tucked into the wilderness, away from the noise of the city. I didn’t ask what he was running from, but surely it was something. We began to talk about creative projects and I told him about this newsletter. Then we talked about love, I was licking my wounds and he was taking naked zoom calls and rebuilding a hut in the woods. He said there was a chance I was making myself undateable, it's risky, he said as we sipped something that vaguely tasted like college.
Was this true, what if this silly project that was in service of a larger story was working against me?
In an early issue of her newsletter Feed Me,
said—First of all I’m never giving a home tour because I don’t want to get ROBBED. Second of all, I don’t want to give a home tour because I think of my home as a TEMPLE, not a place for the internet to piece together to make assumptions about me.If it wasn’t obvious, I have no problem being vulnerable on the internet. I have found safety in talking about my dead mother on the archival scroll that is Instagram. I have let people, photographers, journalists into my home and I have let you into the intimate moments with a smattering of real-living characters. Like when my own NYTimes home tour came out, I got a handful of DMs from men in the neighborhood and even more notes when this newsletter first dropped. People pitching themselves to me—people who if they really wanted to could figure out where I live (not that we couldn’t do this with just about anyone, but still).
I did start to wonder what I owed to myself and what I owed to the building cast of men that found themselves pinned to the walls of this newsletter. Should anyone be protected from being turned into content? What is holy?
About this time last year, my friend and editor Eliza called me for a story she was working on for Cosmopolitan. It was about who owns the break up narrative at the end of a relationship. Timed perfectly to my existential crisis. Whoever is talking louder? I remember saying. She and I were having wine at Rhodora on a weekday afternoon, as we so often do, but this time she had a recorder.
Then a week or so later, in the spirit of breakups and after two glasses of wine I called my ex on the eve of my birthday. The phone rang once, I was going to call you tomorrow you know, he said. We were in what you would call a good patch— one where he wasn’t making out with people in front of me at weddings, one where I wasn't giving him the cold shoulder for making out with people in front of me at weddings. I know you know about the newsletter, I said. It has been mentioned to me, yes. He said. You are a good writer, keep going just so long as long as you write about other people too. I laughed as I rang in my next year with him on the phone. A year later, just weeks ago, I turned 30 without so much as a blink from him, probably for the best. I kept writing.
To use a cliché, the pen really is mightier than the sword, I would forever be quoted on cosmo dot com in Eliza’s piece. But seriously, how can men traipse around acting recklessly with NO consequence? I sounded a little bitter. To be fair, I had just been, for lack of a better word, dumped outside the G train. I stand by what I said.
The goal of this newsletter was never revenge, per se—but instead a humorous way to reflect on outlandish behavior that came with dating men in 2024. It’s not actually really satire, an editor would say to me—as we discussed this newsletters tagline. He was working on a piece on design Substacks. He would go on to write, Sullivan’s Substack is difficult to define. A mashup of dating memoir, design blog and shopping guide, Love and Other Rugs takes well-trod media genres and Frankensteins them into something charmingly new. If this newsletter is Frankenstein, does that make me a doctor?
Perhaps the goal was to hold up a mirror to the men in question and show them what they truly were: a bad shag.
But my Vermont friend’s initial comment got to me, so in some sort of wild panic, I started asking guy friends what they thought, would this newsletter make me undatable? I received various hot takes but all eventually came to the conclusion that the right person would not care. In fact, they may even be charmed by it.
Then last September, with a version of renewed confidence, I went on a really good first date. Charming, funny, got my ridiculous references and jokes. And as a cherry on top of this man, who just moved near enough to my apartment that it was walkable but not close enough that if things went south I’d have to move, his father was an OBGYN that collected vintage rugs. I told him I was a writer—what do you write, he asked—I bit my tongue, remembering my guy friend’s warning. I’m working on a book proposal… about grief. Which of the two truths was worse to talk about? My grandmother died today, he said. Now there were two coffins in the room.
I told him I think about death everyday. Your own? He asked. The car was veering in a direction that I couldn’t reverse. Well I guess, grief, how we don’t talk about it enough. There are very few minutes of the day where I’m not aware I have a dead mother. I could see him follow my hand’s animated gestures with his eyes. I really light up when I talk about death.
After three glasses of wine and four hours later, he wrapped his arms around my waist as we walked. Then we kissed outside the 2 / 3 train near Borough Hall.
After our texts petered away, I got a text saying that although he suggested a second date he didn’t actually feel there was a connection. Maybe he googled me, maybe I talked about my dead mom too much. I appreciated the honesty, and to be fair, he was allergic to cats. It never could’ve actually worked.
However, as I questioned what my missteps could’ve been, I was frustrated with myself. Should I water myself down? Why did I have to be the girl with the dead mom who told you on a first date? Was I exposing too much?
At least you didn’t sleep with him, a friend would say when I called her defeated. Plus, he kinda looks like everyone on this fucking app.
Maybe I should've tried to date his father. I’ll always think of the rugs.
Then this year, after barely dating, on the last day of August (after a giant 30th birthday trip and a two-week artist residency in Mallorca), I was at the Picasso museum in Barcelona. I was struck by a small study (that would become a part of a much larger painting) called Window with a Curtain from Inside painted in 1899 just before his blue period. The title made me think about how you can always see more from the inside looking out than the outside looking in. Am I the voyeur after all?
home goods.
If you MUST have curtains.
Cafe curtains—I’m very drawn to lace cafe curtains. In Milan, the restaurant by design studio Dimore called Trattoria del Ciumbia has full length lace covering their doors and windows. It feels really romantic. It’s also just very chic in general, add it to your Milan list. In LA, I love house Dumsmoor does theirs. Feels like a DIY project waiting to happen.
I’ve been loving what has been coming out of the recently launched site Petra—a collective of the most stunning knobs, pulls, and CURTAIN holders. I loved this Star Tieback.
If I ever have thick velvet curtains up, they will be to frame the window but never to be closed. Hotels do a good job at this—like anything in the Ash portfolio or quintessential french hotels like anything Dorothee Meilichzon touches. I feel like curtains should feel like break up bangs—there for the drama.
Something chic to hold your rod—with a quick google you can find a million drapery accessory sites, I think this feels old-school but modern at the same time.
If you are NOT going to have window treatments but want privacy, I love a divider. I have this Lichen one for moments where I don’t want to put it all on display.
More tie backs, this a little playful and found on Anthro—reminds me of the hand lights at upstairs bar at The Jane (RIP).
My friend
has the MOST dreamy curtains in his showroom—keep the sheer summer going with an almost translucent gauzy curtain.I think of Rejuvenation often, mostly because when I was 22 I went on a press trip to visit their HQ in Portland and got drunk at a tiki bar with their team. But they do really make sensational hardware—a metallic rod will amplify any window display.
sloppy secondhand: barcelona.
Each issue I’ll pick a favorite vintage spot & a local watering hole—maybe you’ll find a new-to-you sofa or a new-to-you man. All I can promise is perhaps some promiscuity and a little credit card debt.
I went to Barcelona for the first time last month—the end of my time in Spain for a writing residency (more on this soon). For this sloppy second hand, I give you must visit stops.
The Favorite Vintage—two stops really stood out to me, the first is The Favorite Vintage by stylist Alissa Ashcraft.
posted on her stories and I flocked there, leaving with the most stunning pieces that felt super unique. She also has the Nordic Knots ribbon rug that I so love. The other is Muy Frágil—a HAVEN for vintage Moschino. I tried on a wedding dress (see below..).Masa Vins—by far my favorite wine bar in Barcelona was Masa Vins—worth the trip to the east part of the city and frankly exactly what my two weeks in remote Mallorca needed (and I’m sorry those utensil holders?!). For food, two meals really stood out Xemei—which my friend Robert who owns Beni Rugs took us to and Bar Mut—insane seafood. Both have great wine lists. Also really loved Bar Brutal (which is on everyone’s list and feels a LITTLE touristy) and L’Anima del Vi, which Sam Youkilis said was his favorite bar in the world.
shop girl.
I shop more than I date, here is everything I bought or saw recently:
I brought two Sophie Calle books with me to my writing residency. This is a favorite, True Stories has digestible yet potent stories about her young life.
The residency I stayed at what two of these amazing folding chairs that look like they are made from life-sized popsicle sticks. I am obsessed. They actually are vintage Ikea from the 70s.
My last night in Paris, I went to the office of Ormaie and found myself smelling memories with their founder Baptise. I loved the perfume named after a now-ex girlfriend of his—sexy, smoky, fleeting. The bottles are chic as well.
In Mallorca, I went shopping in a small town and came home with a bunch of raffia tassels. I love how they look on door knobs or nailed to walls. Here is a good comp.
I caught a show called Fernande Olivier, Pablo Picasso and their friends at the Picasso museum in Barcelona. This painting was of Fernande Olivier, a french memoirist and muse, who dated Picasso before having an affair with the man who painted this painting. She’s giving fall color palette if you ask me.
This summer, I was a party in Amagansett, and took a photo of a girl wearing this Ralph Lauren skirt, reminds me of my grandmother who raised her family in Louisville and the horse landscapes she hung on the walls of her home. A quick Ralph Lauren hunt skirt search had a couple on the interwebs.
I was at the Blockshop store in March and took a photo of this amazing print. THEN
posted her bathroom which was decked out in the same motif.I bought this swimsuit in Venice at the Lido store and have worn it all summer—the metal details on the shoulders elevate and take from pool to night.
I almost purchased a wedding dress in Barcelona—it is a stunning Giambattisa Valli number from Muy Frágil. Still thinking about her.
Beverly Nguyen wore army pants and flip flops so I wore army pants and flip flops. In all seriousness, she posted these J Crew fall shoes and I immediately ordered.
xx