Car Candy

Feast your eyes on this idea, from decorator Carolyn Espley-Miller (wife of Dennis), as seen in last month's House Beautiful. I can't TELL you how much I love this: slipcovering car interiors? With some fabulous textile? Ingenious! Car upholstery, even in the fanciest of fancy cars, is pretty ho-hum, so taking matters into your own hands is such a phenomenal approach.

I'm not a huge car person. I've never paid much attention to car design, in part, at least, because I have rarely needed one on a daily basis; I grew up in a city, learned to drive at 18, barely drove until I was 23, have lived for the last 5.5 years without a car. When I did have a car, I parked it on the street, where it got dinged up, broken into, scratched, etc. My car was old (1987 Honda!) so the bruising and attery from the street didn't bother me like it would have if the car had been new. I did spend one year commuting an hour each way to a job in Northern California when I was 25, and I have to admit, for the first time in my life, I had new car envy. My car was FINE. But when I did dream about new cars, I wasn't thinking of snappy, zippy cars; I was thinking of very practical four-door sedans. See? Not a car person.

Maybe I've never been excited about different car designs because I feel so many of them look the same, especially on the inside. Oliver and I are doing a lot of driving this week in a rented car (which always feel a little dirty to me, but I try not to think too much about it...and let's not even get into the bed bug issue), so car interiors are on the brain. This idea is going into the "future projects" file.