What the hell happened to Architectural Digest Magazine?

It’s the democratization of everything caused by the digital space. Plus everyone’s lives have to “matter” now (I mean this in an elitist way, not a racist one).

I've subscribed to AD off-and-on (mostly on) since I was about 12. (I know - MARY!)

I really was a little design homo from a very young age. I kept all my past issues in my bedroom and would go back over them, again and again. It really shaped (warped) my little brain.

I agree it isn't the same. It's just a matter of the publisher trying to keep the magazine relevant - and afloat - in this bizarre age of Millennial "decor" which essentially means putting random things together in a haphazard way until the room is full.

Good heavens. That house is as bourgeois as a Peter Pan collar. It certainly doesn't belong in AD.

But "what the hell" is going on now applies to Conde Nast period.

Why they are letting the editor of Vanity Fair grind THAT magazine into the dust is a constant wonder. As is its appalling venture for third world trannies, 'them.'

Jesus OP - I thought you were overreacting, but no - those pics are not magazine worthy.

The problem of changing your magazine for the lowest common denominator is that it cheapens the magazine and it is no longer special to have your place or designs mentioned in it.

And no, I don't see people from No Neck Virginia wanting to suddenly subscribe to AD because of it.

The purpose of these magazines are to inspire and to get ideas from them that you may be able to replicate with less money. It's like if Vogue started using only plus models wearing plus fashions from Target. That's just Amber who works at Subway. Why would you pay to look at that?

I used to like the 'Architectural Digest Visits...' articles, although I was so disappointed that Ethel Merman's home looked like an old granny's apartment (which she was, I guess). I always thought she'd live in some fabulous Art Deco penthouse on Riverside Drive and not a tiny hotel suite with all those ghastly Carleton Varney florals and ceramic basset hound.

Everything has gone downmarket.

I’m surprised they haven’t hired the worlds most famous architect former vairst lady melanoma.

That Merman reference is funny. That actually was probably the first crap place that appeared in AD purely on celebrity status. That was in the days celebrity homes weren't covered.

Remember the couple of apartments of NY S&M queens that appeared in the 80s in AD? What a frisson that was!

No imagination, no taste anywhere today. Not in the arts, certainly not in fashion. Our " celebrities" are all trashy looking whores. The new high-rise buildings are ugly and ominous looking. But never did I think I would see that in AD. Depressing. Plain. Ugly. They aren't even trying any more.

Well, the designer/owner does have large pendulous breasts.

That house sucks. It and the owner need a complete overhaul.

That picture of the frau standing on that dirty deck with peeling paint and wood rot around the door.

R9 - when did we have a golden age of good looking high rises in the past 70 years? High rises look better now than the ones in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

You have to ask yourself sometimes - have we met the end of what we can do with lines, circles and color in all design?

OP’s AD article is bizarre. It’s hard for me to equate that with AD. How far they have fallen! Town and Country is another that has fallen - a few years ago a new editor came along and turned it into ELLE. Very disappointing. Veranda is still a beautiful magazine.

On second viewing, I’ve noticed the desk is the exact same one I had growing up. I don’t know if I should be proud or now appalled that something I own is in AD magazine. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it does have a bit of Danish Modern flair about it.

Wait, that woman is a designer and she’s wearing those clothes?! Are they part of Lena Dunham’s new collection?!

I remember a feature article in the early 80s about B. Streisand and all her homes and antiques and "eclectic" décor. One of her quotes that I've repeated over the decades, as an example of the absurdity of wealth, "taste", and bourgeois and superficial display: "I feel very positive about the future of purple."

AD was also 65% silly.

The farmhouse's Danish Modern, pseudo-Shaker aesthetic would have been captured better if they'd gotten rid of the houseplants, which look like they need water anyway.

R17 Lol, for some reason I remember the color being “mauve?” She had a whole house on the compound built around the color?

I highly recommend the British mag “World of Interiors”. Here’s a spread they did on a modest cottage.

Paige Rense turned the magazine into a gauche money-worshipping rag perfectly in line with Reagan-era materialism. It got boring and stupid because no magazine should have the same EIC for 30+ years, especially when said editirix is a spiteful bitch. Now it just features investment properties or former homes that celebrities are about to sell.

AD has been a POS for at least 25 years. It became the poster child for selling ads, and went downhill from there. I suspect very designer featured in it pays heavily for the promotion, and it features nothing cutting edge, just the same old crap you see anywhere else. I stopped even thinking about it years ago, but occasionally run across an article from 30 years ago which actually highlighted architecture, and not some stupid frau-inspired pablum.

AD has been a POS for at least 25 years. It became the poster child for selling ads, and went downhill from there. I suspect very designer featured in it pays heavily for the promotion, and it features nothing cutting edge, just the same old crap you see anywhere else. I stopped even thinking about it years ago, but occasionally run across an article from 30 years ago which actually highlighted architecture, and not some stupid frau-inspired pablum.

Architect here. I used to live for this magazine. Every month felt likes ages until next edition came out. Then, gradually I noticed it veered to Interior Design, and endless advertising. I put up with it for a while but eventually gave up. the adverts also made it look like you were getting this big kind of Vogue collectors item, and it just went downhill from there. I can't remember when I stopped buying - maybe around 1989. Now, I just augh when I see it.

^^ laugh....when I see it. Another note: I also don't even bother looking AD up on line. Just zero interest. If I need an architectural **fix** I'll google architectural design winners from various countries. More information, more relevant, more detail, more professional, and zero puff pieces on tablecloth designs or cutlery designs.

Why is that heifer wearing a garbage bag with zippers ??? That crappy house is decorated like a B&B .Zero personality.

Too many celebrity McMansions, not enough high design. I’ve started viewing the British design mags instead like House and Garden. But perhaps like many, I’ve also stopped trying to adhere to dictates of designers - there is so much diversity now with Etsy and online furniture and decor makers, I find the idea of paying hundreds of thousands for a “look” absurd.

It became indigestible.

R5- You are one SNOTTY QUEEN.

R 21 22 I agree with both of you. The quality of the work in AD has slipped dramatically over the last 25 years. These days, only a celebrity client or designer will get in no matter how bad the work might be. I let my subscription run out years ago and so I had not seen the helfer and her shack in the woods. That should be the nail in the coffin of another formerly great magazine.

Milieu magazine, which is like a cross between World Of Interiors and AD is excellent.

The trouble all interior mags now face is like that of porn: there's so much being given away free online.

There's another magazine called Interiors, which is very high end, and like Veranda, has its own distinctive aesthetic, which is really hard to pull off in a design mag. Think tailored and refined. And ALL its issues are free to read online!!!

Can the architects and designers on here recommend any Instagram accounts? I love minimalist homes.

I wonder if this woman paid someone for the article. There's a link in the article to her beyond shitty website with really crappy art collages. This may be a paid advertorial and a way to increase revenues.

The woman in the article does work at a design firm - but she looks like a typical child of wealth who married a corporate lawyer (yes, she did) and does this as a hobby profession.

The link to her website is embarrassing - as is the article itself.

Instagram accounts:

@martinbrudnizki (Personal account of high end Brit designer: again the stuff of dreams)

@melissa_penfold (Rustic dream homes)

Thanks R34!

This eye-popping Instagram account is worth five minutes if you're interested in seeing what the oligarchs are spending their money on: @constantinfrolov.design

Two more Instagram accounts:

@thedevotedclassicist (lovely traditional)

@grays_collection (object d'art and ivory male flesh)

Remember Dakota Johnson’s delightfully ramshackle mid-century house? We ooohed and ahhed for weeks over it as shown in an AD Visits video. Well, it looks like she upgraded the interior considerably. Shows her bedroom for the first time and her bathroom. No shot of the tiny teal kitchen though.

Like Vogue, the magazine has become celebrity-driven. Vogue and AD only sell if there is a celebrity on the cover.

I spy a drop ceiling in one of the photos in OP’s link. Gag.

R30

Live Laugh Love dreck.

It is bad. AD used to be a real indulgence, the was so much to look at. You could spend a few hours browsing an issue. Now it's half as thick, and the last couple issues I bought left me feeling empty. I just bought the latest issue of World of Interiors, which is much more satisfying.

Those photographs are terrible.

I notice the photographer has only done two articles for AD, the other one in 2018, where the photos were much better.

R17 and R18, I just had to look it up, and it did not disappoint. It was MAROON!

[quote]“Sometimes I long for a Moroccan house, all white walls and practically no furniture. Then I come to my senses. I remember how much I like burgundy, and what I feel about the future of maroon."

R44 Ha! That's it.

R44 - God - that looks like one of my aunt's old apartments.

R44 Thanks R18 and OP here. It turns out that the one I was thinking of was the Burgundy (and grey) house on the Malibu compound of houses, which is talked about in the AD article here.

Oh lord, Streisand is standing next to a Lempicka in r47, someone fetch me my smelling salts

Mary E. Nichols is the photographer my cousin worked for decades ago. It looks like her last shoots were in 2017. She’s not quite Julius Shulman, but she really defined the look of what an AD shoot should be and set the bar very high. My cousin parlayed his time working with her to doing high end real estate sales in LA.

Yes, gorgeous interiors and glam fashion shoots are still around, but they're on Instagram now.

Pure talent with no "woke" editors and affirmative action hires fucking things up.

Well...the home is relatable, to me anyway. I like farmhouses. It's simple. I haven't looked at AD in a long time. I guess they're trying to have something for everyone, even though some people may not like it. I enjoy looking at home tour videos on youtube. My favorites so far are...House and Garden UK (my preferred style) and Quintessence at Home With Susanna Salk. The Quintessense channel has some really gorgeous, creative and unique homes. I drool over those...

R50 So in your bitter, scared universe, EVERYTHING is about white supremacism, eh? I guess you feel positive about the future of white.

I used to enjoy AD's issue featuring country homes, which usually came out in June...I think. Do they have that anymore?

R52 No it seems that in YOUR world everything is about white supremacism.

Funny, in a thread here about interior designers a while back, I posted about my personal favorite: Darryl Carter. Last time I looked, he wasn't white. And probably my second favorite (because their styles are similar) is Vincente Wolf.

Agree that Veranda and World of Interiors are the best interior design magazines on the market today.

Midcentury is such a stunning and brave design choice.

AD lost its way. It used to feature stunning interiors of lesser known people. Now, it screams “CELEBRITIES” no matter how average or downright bland the decor. Somehow, the house has allure because it’s owned by a celebrity.

Furthermore, how many more times have they recycled Nate Berkus? (He’s a mediocre designer with boring interiors.)

Thanks for the accounts. I like to look at pictures of simple interiors.

[quote] God - that looks like one of my aunt's old apartments.

Careful, R46. Any more comments like that and R28 will call you a snotty queen.

R54 Some of my best interior designers are......

R60 My, we are original aren't we?

[quote]AD lost its way. It used to feature stunning interiors of lesser known people. direction

It was a very deliberate change in direction, implemented by the current editor about 3 years ago.

This is today's Condé Nast. Have you seen what they've done to Vogue. It's not about quality...it's about checking boxes.

You can just see Mrs Vreeland going: It looks like an ordinary cabin! WHAT could be moooorrrrreeee BANAL!!!

Mid-Century was Hell then and it’s Hell now. I can’t wait for this trend to die.

Me too^^

R47, Madonna bought that Lempicka painting from Streisand when she sold it at auction.

When I escorted for a brief time in NYC, a quarter of the AD100 top interior designers were clients of mine. I was a big interior design fan, so I got paid to sleep with them AND I got to see all of their fabulous apartments in NYC and their vacation homes in the Hamptons, Nantucket and the Pines. It was a wonderful time.

R65 Write a tell all memoir please! They had no NDA back then right?

Here's an older AD article about Travolta's & Kelly Preston's house in Florida. Thought you guys might enjoy it.

Yes, the house at OP is boring and basic. Reminds me a bit of Apartment Therapy.

After all that, they ended up selling the house?

R52 Are you talking white paint?

White walls show scuff marks. White exteriors are a disaster.

Worse is their YouTube channel.

Satire at link.

@R47

[quote] Barbra Streisand has been a collector her entire adult life, and then some.

What does "and then some" mean?

It's gibberish.

Those small towns in the Catskills New Yorkers are fleeing to in droves always gave me the creeps. Lot of hillbillies and meth addicts.

No! Not knotty pine!

That is hideous and a new low.

I've followed AD since college, subscribing, cancelling. There were the Eighties and the dreaded Paige Rense decades, the obsession with Richard Meir-esque cover house, slabs of what and sheet glass on a perfect sheet if green, so green grass and equally blue pools, and the dual obsession with entertainment celebrities. No, I am not interested in how Melanie Griffith lives. Mostly AD was shit, but once in a while it would rally. And there were saving graces...the current one Mitchell Owens often wonderful and smart, sense with detail essays or short articles on some aspect of interior design history.

The 1989s/1990s HG was my favorite, and then as it dried up I turned to World of Interiors which sometimes has the most expensive interiors, but much more often has some if the most interesting and fairly unknown spaces, isn't afraid of a bit if patina, and doesn't give a toss about the owner unless he is full on Victorian Dandy.

I get AD now, but AD España the content all different from the U.S. version. More shirt pieces, more emphasis on small projects and product design. I like it but a different beast.

HG *was* wonderful. I found a whole batch at the Fleamarket & pounced. Why it didn’t do well is a mystery.

It’s weird. Yes, the foreign ADs haven’t gone downmarket, and the foreign editions of Vanity Fair continue to be like the old Vanity Fair. For example, I read an interesting article in one on one of Karl Lagerfeld’s man-heirs, which was exactly the kind of thing the old Vanity Fair would have printed. Uner this new editor all it cares about is drab people and identity politics. And any sense of arresting style let alone panache is utterly absent.

No more panache! Count me out!