Starck Naked – Inside the Designer’s Home
By Erin Feher
I love Philippe Starck, but I have to say I never thought much about his sex life. I mean, usually he’d cross my mind somewhere between “Who can I bribe to drive me to drive me to Daly City” and “Where the fuck are the Brita filters,” while wandering the aisles at Target. That is until I got a sneak peak into his home through the brilliant lens of The Selby. Now, I can’t stop thinking about Philippe Starck’s sex life. 
Firstly, his wife is a fox. Like in that brown hair, olive skin, big tits and easy smile way that Italian women who drink and eat and do god-knows-what-else with reckless abandon are (and her name is Jasmine, come on). Secondly, their house is filled with taxidermy, which is weird, but it hardly qualifies as the weirdest shit that takes up residence in there. That might be the wig collection, glass eyeballs or refrigerator filled entirely with cakes. 
But whatever the verdict is on that, it’s quite clear that the Starcks get it on and get it on good. And it probably involves good champagne, their amazing silver soaking tub, gourmet honey, their wig collection and a stuffed polar bear. Think on that next time you’re in Target.
Architectural Striptease – It’s a Dry Heat
By Erin Feher
For most folks, rain may inspire getting cozy under the sheets with company, but for me there’s nothing like the dry, scorching heat of the desert to get my blood boiling, especially if I was camped out in this gold-plated modernist mansion wearing nothing but 24-karat aviators.
Acido Dorado is the realization of architect Robert Stone’s psychedelicvision. The architecture itself: extra-deep steps that slow your pace,exterior walls that open up completely to the vast nothingness beyond, desert modernism reincarnated with futuristic details toys with the visitor’s state of mind.
But Stone isn’t one for foreplay, so he painted every inch of the structure a glittering gold, instantly hypnotizing anyone who comes upon it. The thing is, like anything wild, willing and completely worth it, it’s not that easy to stumble upon. Located just east of Joshua Tree National Park, the mostly undeveloped land and the architectural jewels Stone continues to construct on it has been dubbed “Pretty Vacant Properties“, by its owner (Sid Vicious would know why).
As you would expect of a house dressed in gold down to its bedcovers, its luxurious offerings extend well beyond its color palette. And, while I may be able to scrape up the cash for the gold aviators, I think I’ll have to hold off on the sweaty, sandy weekend getaway: The house is available for rental (http://prettyvacantproperties.com ) at $440$460 per night.
If you are more leather-and-emo than glitter-and-disco, get dibs on Stone’s other property, Rosa Muerta, Acido Dorado’s black sheep of a sibling.
Baby, Wanna Go For a Ride?
By Erin Feher
As anyone who has ever had an inexplicable crush on a deodorant-challenged, alcoholic bike messenger knows – there’s something hot about bikes. Biking is moving each day out of the clichéd confines of crunchy hippies, nerdy, fold-up bike-loving architects and directionless hipsters (unless you count “toward the tattoo parlor” as a direction). 
The latest proof is new kid on the block, Public Bikes. Started by Design Within Reach founder Rob Forbes, this new San Francisco–based bike company is out to prove to us what Europeans have know for years: biking is beautiful, especially if you’re doing it in Louboutin heels and your bike is one of the stunning candy-colored creations designed by Forbes’ team of worldly cycle geniuses. No tacky logos, transformer-style shocks, monster-truck tires, and definitely no folding.
I’ve been riding my beloved rainbow Peugeot for almost six years. It’s carried me through the streets of San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam and even up a Tuscan mountainside to my own wedding. Loyalty to that ride runs deep. But last week I headed to Public Bike’s new shop in SF’s Mission District, took a test ride and had the kind of epiphany that rich housewives have when they realize that they just MUST have that Mercedes convertible…I mean, they’ve earned it. And I earned that eight-speed, powder-blue beauty (upgraded with Brooks honey-colored leather saddle, cork grips and matching powder-blue rear rack).
After years of riding a vintage road bike (with suicide shifters, sawed-off drop bars and metal cages that wore charming indents into my boots) riding my Public is like cruising in an automatic Honda: smooth, comfy and just plain easy. I pick it up tomorrow (each bike is built to order) and pay it off a little later than that (bikes range from $550–$890, not including all the fun extras). I’m not gonna ditch my Peugeot, but now, like a proper rich housewife, momma’s got some good looking options.
Let’s Get Busy Here – Crosby Street Hotel
By Erin Feher
I am so over sleeping on couches. I don’t care how good the party is, how old the friends are or how cozy the cushions. I’ve spent more than enough nights sharing a three-foot-wide hunk of ultra-suede with a string of past crushes, clinging to the romantic notion of body heat as my bare feet poke out from beneath a cat-hair-covered throw.
So maybe it’s no surprise that I’ve grown into a serious hotel girl. And not just a king-sized bed and soaking tub kinda hotel girl—my hotels gotta make me squeal with design delight. No two rooms the same, bold wallpaper, custom light-fixtures, head-scratching art, perfectly curated vintage accessories….
My next trip is to NYC, and while the hotels may be pricey, the cost seems perfectly fair considering I don’t have a single friend who has managed to move-on-up to an apartment with a guest room (the ones whose own beds aren’t crammed between their sofa and their stove have made it big).
So I’m heading straight over to SoHo, where between Prince, Spring and Lafayette Streets I will find the Crosby Street Hotel. This is the first US property for Firmdale, a UK-based boutique hotel operator with six unbelievably stylish hotels in London. Headed by husband and wife Tim and Kit Kemp (adorable? Yes), wife Kit has quite an eye for design and outfits all the hotels herself.
The rooms, lobby, restaurant and bar are each decked out with details that will more than make up for all those nights of couch surfing.
For more design-to-die-for hotels around the globe, check out the brand new 2010 edition of The Design Hotels Book. Don’t leave home without it.
To Do: Buy Kneepads
By Erin Feher
Remember when you were six and you had a list of incredibly cool things that you wanted to do when you grew up? Well, that list worked out pretty well for me (live in California, write a book, marry someone who hails from a sketchy South American country, own one of those one-piece bathing suits with the stomach cut out), so I never really abandoned the habit. And now I have a new item that has pretty much taken priority: dance like Ciara.
This idea came to me like many brilliant ideas do: coming home too late after too many drinks one night and watching MTV. Her newest video “Ride,” is the hottest fucking thing I have ever seen. And there is no reason—like being white, or thirty, or without access to a mechanical bull—that I cannot be just like her. So, being a woman of action, I told my yoga instructor to peace out for a while, signed up for three-months worth of dance classes, and most importantly, bought some expensive sneakers with metallic accents. It is SO on.
Artificial Insemination
By Erin Feher
I’ve been getting blasted with images of all the architectural T&A popping up at the Shanghai World Expo, and one in particular has got me riled. At the Seed Cathedral, 60,000 glowing fiber-optic rods jut out at the viewer, displaying a seed implanted in its tip. If you ask me, that’s not a hypersexual metaphor like Jackass isn’t a sado-masochistic homoerotic showdown. And the architecture crowds are simply exploding in their pants over it. Surprisingly, it’s the creation of the usually buttoned-up Brits: design star Thomas Heatherwick conceived it as something of a conceptual Noah’s Ark (the first sex cruise in history).
The seeds were gathered with help from the Millennium Seedbank Project, which is working to collect and categorize the seeds of 25 percent of the world’s plant species by 2020. Something about all this scientific research and architectural inventiveness on behalf of procreation (even if it is between plants) gets me all unexplainably tingly. Like that time I tore the clothes of my high school boyfriend after watching a show about the mating habits of sea creatures on the Discovery Channel. I guess it gives new meaning to the term “design lover.” (When it shows up on Craigslist’s Casual Encounters remember you heard it here first, kids.)