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Do It For Design : Netflix Explores the Intersection of Sex and Home Interiors

July 19, 2022September 6, 2022by jessLeave a Comment

As a woman of a Xennial/Elder Millennial age, I grew up with “Sex and the City”, “The L Word” and all of the hookups from the Real World on TV. These shows were groundbreaking for the time, but old hat now. And, one of my besties is a relationship writer and author, so talking about sex openly with friends isn’t a big deal. But I’m not accustomed to writing about sex on any platform. Well, that was until I read that Netflix had a show called “How To Build a Sex Room.” Suddenly I knew I was reading about a show that was standing at the crossroads of design and desire and was ready to talk sex, broadly at least.

First of all, let me say, one of the bright spots on Netflix is the Home and Design content. It’s entertaining, fun, not about flipping a house (thank goodness) and can explore home content deemed too hot for HGTV. With “How To Build a Sex Room” Netflix seems to highlight one of the best things about designing residential design; a designer helping people live their best lives at home. When I began typing this post, the show number was 7 in the Netflix top 10 ( it’s since moved out of the top 10) and that already told me that I was not the only curious “design enthusiast”who was watching. So what am I thinking about it from a design perspective?

What this show illustrates really well in the fact that being a designer is really personal, intimate work, especially in residential design. A designer needs to know how you live, want to live and what goes on day to day. To say there needs to be honesty, trust and empathy between designer and client is an understatement. And while overt conversations about sex may not come up in the client on a regular basis, tangentially, an interior designer may learn things like whether clients sleep in the same room or even same bed as their partners among other private information. Lifestyles questions pertaining to design may uncover even more unexpected details about clients as well. Someone may even answer the door in the and sit through an entire design meeting and presentation in the tiniest of tiny shorts (yes that has happened to me– please don’t do this). But it’s the designer featured on the show, Melanie Rose, that was the real highlight for me. She’s like a naughty auntie, who is probably living a better life than one could possibly imagine. She has also now equipped me with a whole new design lexicon; words for design elements I never knew existed.

While, of course, all of her televised clients want a sex room at home, she learns so much about each of them by asking them open questions about their consensual sex lives, orgasm frequency and sexual boundaries with equal parts professionalism, aplomb and playfulness. Sometimes Melanie leans heavy into cheekiness but never once veering into shame or judgement. From sensual bedrooms to basement lairs to a farmhouse sex shed, no one space is alike and her clients are happy. Melanie even designs custom furniture when the design calls for something more specialized or better suited to her clients’ tastes.

Do I like every room? Actually I don’t like most of them but she also wasn’t designing for me. And, now, my newest design pet peeve is the design of furniture for intimate or sex play. While most of it seems extremely functional and at times more ergonomic and supportive than THE BEST office chair, most of the time the furniture looks aesthetically unpleasant. I liken it to home gym equipment. Materiality can change and perhaps the look of it gets more sleek and modern, but the basic function and form is the same. This makes it so the interior plan, design materials and other non-specific furniture play a larger role in the designed room. If you go back to my gym analogy, an exercise bike would be just fine in your garage but if you dedicated and designed a space for it and other gym accessories, with good flooring, wall treatments, a gorgeous mirror and a suitable space plan, it will probably look a hell of lot better. A sex room feels like it’s in a similar vein.

Turning to escapism, intimate connection, sensuality and play can help us ground into our bodies and process our emotions when our brains can’t handle much more.

Themes that constantly come up on “How to Build a Sex Room” are desire, pleasure and fantasy. And it makes sense for the times we live in. With the rising costs of everything, a never-ending pandemic and the continued fight over abortion and bodily autonomy, it’s a heavy time. Turning to escapism, intimate connection, sensuality and play can help us ground into our bodies and process our emotions when our brains can’t handle much more. While many, probably most, of us won’t have a sex room (outside of the bedroom), we can create an air of sensuality around our homes that comfort us, support us and create a needed escape with or with out the sex. Think about the softness of sumptuous sheets on the skin, how a scented of a candle can ease the vibe, or bringing flowers home. Those are simple every day pleasures. But most of us move into a space and don’t give it the attention it needs or asks of us. Outside of nurseries, I rarely see a space designed for the person or people who will inhabit it. You even see that on the show. A client’s living room is outfitted with neutral, oversized furniture or a bad layout, but the sex room, well, that’s ready with a designer’s touch, fancy finishes and custom furniture. I was definitely entertained by the show, but maybe we all need to think about spreading the sexy around the house. Not every room needs a custom sex swing (does it 🤔?) but can I get a good living room layout and a rug? Before you even get to the sex room, that would help set the mood a lot! Maybe that’s the interior designer in me. Either way I’m in full support of a sexy room and this fun show.

I have a ton of other thoughts about the show but will spare you for now. I’m also thinking about tackling the experiential retail design they highlighted on the show in another post because I have some thoughts on that too. But for now, I gotta go.

Have you watched it? I would love to hear your thoughts!

essays

Blackness, Expensive Old Houses + Pioneering Domestic Dreams

January 23, 2022January 25, 2022by jess2 Comments

My mother says, that I have an innate ability to create my own Sesame Street wherever I live. She’s right, I’ve always been a bright bird, ready to walk into a modern version of Mr Hoopers store and make friends. In fact, last fall, I worked part-time in a restaurant, where the best part for me was getting to know the regulars, some who greeted me with masked hugs and familiar pleasantries. Additionally, in an effort to actually move my body (because health) , I take morning walks around my New York neighborhood. Honestly, New York mornings are the best. Except for some trucks, my hood is pretty quiet and morning air is bright and crisp, even if sometimes cold and biting with wintery breezes. Somehow those walks help as much with my sanity and I find myself being able to create space for day-dreaming especially about the homes and the people who live in them. Somehow I’ve become a student again, studying the the design of these lovely enclaves of urban villages set in my adopted borough of Brooklyn.

All of this dreaminess is grounded by two articles that I can’t seem to get out of my head. Many weeks and months ago, I read an article in the New York Times about a man, Thomas Holley, who in an effort to be friendly to his neighbor with a hello, was quickly rebuffed and dismissed as someone who was unhoused and begging. It turns out that Mr Holley lived on the same block as the dismissive neighbor and had lived there for 58 years. Mr. Holley had raised his family in his home and hoped to one day pass his home to his children or at the very least selling to a person or family of color. The article hit very close to home as I have had similar conversations with my home-owning black Brooklyn neighbors and made think about if I could one day afford a home here. Honestly, at the moment I can’t. The nightmare of Covid times, put some dreams on pause, but it doesn’t stop me from dreaming about a home, where I have a backyard and a garden, where I entertain, work and live in the nicer east coast seasons. It’s not wrong to want to keep these homes in the communities that they cherish. Memories, sometimes, lend purpose to the future, even after we pass on. What I find interesting is the continuous need to create communities, both virtual and in real life, that highlight the yearning for a connection to space, land and nature.

Whether we are performing domesticity or are pioneering it, there’s still an aspect that others or dismisses the Black experience of while we are living our day to day lives, even when we set the lifestyle trends and create communities that people love.

That brings me to another article on I read on Cottagecore (is that a thing in the winter?) and how it seems to have left people of color out of the moment, at least in social media communities. I actually believe this resurgence is cyclical, with every generation thinking back to slower times, in fashion and the built environment especially in times of social change. I saw it as a teenager, as I collected tea cups or mimicked the high-wasted, dresses I saw in the pages of Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar or whatever Jane Austen interpretation was out. And then in 2016, on screen of Beyonce’s Lemonade ( which references visual elements of Julie Dash’s lush film Daughters of the Dust). There, its depiction of Black and Brown women blurring the lines between the space of our bodies and the interior and exterior relationship with our environment reminds me that we can’t be left out of movement we created. Our stories and elements of our material lives are collected and curated, passed on from generation to generation. We’ve designed homes, clothing and products long before the word designer was a thing. We picnicked, bird-watched, farmed, fed and healed folks in our spaces. But what happens when don’t have space, homes or land to purchase and pass on? Do we move on to communities that we can afford? And would those communities be welcoming or watching? I don’t have any answers yet but I have watched every episode of Cheap Old Houses, wondering this very thing. Whether we are performing domesticity or are pioneering it, there’s still an aspect of that our domestic lives that is “othered” or dismissed within the Black experience, while we are living our day to day lives. Sometimes, even when we are setting the lifestyle trends and creating communities that people love and gentrify.

Like, my morning walk, space, land and nature force us to slow down and observe what’s around us. And even though I’ve lived here for 10 years off and on, my observations also led me to become a part of my neighborhood in a way I never imagined. I live here, work here and chat people up. I pet overly friendly dogs, flirt with my neighbors and chat up mamas and babies alike while grocery shopping ( or wine shopping). I pop into quirky neighborhood shops, speaking to shopkeepers who have been embraced by neighbors who didn’t know they needed their wares. And, because, I designed signs, storefronts and store interiors for so long, I often silently observer and sometimes judge those elements as well .

What can I say? I am a work in progress.

design, essays, interior design

Walking Through the Door

August 20, 2021by jess1 Comment

I never thought I would be here again. Sitting at my computer, wondering which image would best illustrate my design topic of choice, but here I am doing just that. I’m writing this first entry from a familiar place. Twelve years ago, I started a blog to make the best out of a sad situation. It was 2009 and I was a recent interior design graduate with big, bright, brown eager eyes waiting for my big shot in the design world. Well, then the market tanked and I, and so many of my classmates, was thrown into a sea of candidates who had been recently let go from various architecture and design firms. Not many people were hiring and it was competitive for the jobs that did exist. But, I was enterprising and I decided to start a blog, like so many that I read in my daily life for inspiration, but from my vantage point and my voice, which I knew was young and different yet nuanced.

In February of 2009, I hit publish on a blog called, Design Wonderland. To keep Design Wonderland going I worked 2 design-related part-time jobs, from an architectural material librarian to junior designer at a residential firm and a few freelance jobs that came up. I woke up at 4:30 AM to write about fashion and textile collections from my favorite brands, review my favorite design books or identify trends I saw coming down the line. For five years, Design Wonderland was my favorite job, even after I got a full time job and moved to NYC to work for a big luxury jewelry company. And the only reason, I folded it was because writing about design and working in design began to feel like my whole world. At the time I did not realize that I wouldn’t ever escape either. OOPS!

I’m writing this in 2021, in a pandemic that won’t quit and after it caused me to lose a job that I moved back to NYC to take. But this space isn’t a Design Wonderland redux. This space is not my marketing tool. And design and I, now, have a complex relationship. Since 2009, my career has spanned more than just what we all think of interior design. It includes retail design, placemaking and both traditional and environmental branding. In spaces that I have built and worked in, I’ve confronted racism, sexism and attempts at bullying. I thought I hated design for a long time. Turns out I do not hate design, I hated some of the environments I was in and I was burning the F out fast. However, I didn’t realize how burned out I was until I was laid off and finally had time to hear myself think.

I plan on waxing poetic on the thing in between design; the spirit of place, home and space. I find joy in the grey area that challenges my idea of home.

Maybe I will explore that here, but mostly I plan on waxing poetic on the thing in between design; the spirit of place, home and space. In this last year, my relationship to all three has changed and I know I’m not alone. I find joy in that grey area that challenges my idea of home. I found support next to a tree in a park that I visited daily when the social uprisings of 2020 occurred and I couldn’t get out of my head. You will read my musings about colors, furniture and design history, as well and my complicated relationship with domestic interiors. Honestly, I don’t know what this space will become ( tarot for home anyone? want to explore the intersection of cannabis and design?). But that is fine with me, because eventually, with these big brown eyes and an even bigger heart for design, I was bound to walk through this door of writing about design again.