Kristen Buckingham Designs (Lindsey Buckingham's House!!)

Good morning!

When I was trying to think of songs for the wedding to be used in the processional and recessional, before I set my heart on The King and I instrumentals, I was seriously considering something by Lindsey Buckingham. I know, I know, you're going--"Lisa. Seriously. No one who has ever met you is unaware of your love of Fleetwood Mac. Enough with the shoutouts." However, fun fact-- did you know the hopelessly romantic "It Was You", a single from Buckingham's 2006 solo album Under the Skin, was almost part of the wedding day itself? You did not! As I googled the names from that song to see if it was actually about his family, turns out, hey! Yes, it was! Things I learned about Lindsey's wife, Kristen:

• She's a dramatic, sharp dresser after my own heart (can I have this dress? Come on, man)
• She and Buckingham met when she was to photograph him for an album cover in the early nineties' and have been together ever since.
• They have three children: William, Leelee, and Stella.
• Kristen Buckingham is an interior decorator!

Now, the last of those tidbits is the one I'm most excited about, because, hey, look-- Lindsey Buckingham's house in Elle Decor:

There's the man himself, skinnylegsnall, behind a gallery wall of framed art. Yes, that is a real Jasper Johns print hanging out like it was no big deal back behind of the sofa. At first I thought the photo on the right shows a different coffee table than the one just below this, but turns out, they just have two coffee tables instead of one. And what a juxtaposition! I usually have a hard time with eclectic riche, as it can be more the latter than the former, but I really like a lot of the individual pieces KB has put together here. And other people do, too-- take for example, Tennessee's own Reese Witherspoon, who hired Kristen Buckingham to decorate Witherspoon's California home. It's pretty cute!

This couch may be my favorite item in the house. The fabric's print is so Matisse-meets-Art-Nouveau I just want to hug it.

A moody Buckingham quote from a 1985 Rolling Stone feature, re: interior decorating, houses:

He glances around his expensively furnished living room, complete with a six-foot-high statue of King Tut and several small glass pyramids. "A house full of new furniture doesn't mean a whole lot," he says in his slightly high-pitched voice. "It doesn't mean shit. It just means you have a nice place to watch TV. But so what?"

Granted, he had just recently broken up with long-term girlfriend, Carol Anne Harris, to whom his Go Insane solo is dedicated and who is no doubt the subject of the broken rhyme in Fleetwood Mac's "Caroline" (Cut the cord if you can is suspiciously rhymed with Caroline). I wouldn't be complaining about much of anything if I had a six foot high statue of King Tut in my living room. Christmas ideas, if anyone out there was looking for one. However, you can see how being unhappy in a nice house and being happy in a nice house does change your outlook on the furniture. That house had been a "Neutra-style" California house he lived in until Kristen became pregnant with their first child, whereupon they built a Spanish-influenced, 1920's style home on the site of Kristen's old house. It may sound intimidating to start from the ground up on a living space like that, but wouldn't it be kind of fun, too? "These doorknobs are not brassy enough...I need more chandeliers! Where's my portico on this sketch? GET BACK TO WORK BOYS." ((as I imagine myself as late fifties' Joan Crawford, overseeing a team of architects))

Haute bohemia meets 1920's elegance, is how Elle terms KB's style...I love the tile in the kitchen and the mural wallpaper in the formal dining room. As much as I've been forewarned against wallpaper, if I had a shot at a mural hanging like this, you know what, I would go ahead and shoot the moon with it. I like thinking about how many chairs and sofas there have to be in enormous houses like this-- and everyone decided upon individually! I hope someday I live in a house big enough to satisfy my vintage furniture yens.

I was surprised at how seventies', but in a pleasing way, the pinch pleat drapery and valances in the master bedroom are. I seriously think I saw this in an Architectural Digest feature on Merle Oberon's home (maybe it was the Middle-Eastern inspired  lattice work that reminded me...or maybe it was a different celebrities' home in that same book)-- but at any rate, doesn't it scream 1979 while not actually being 1979 because of the light and easy print?

KB has her own design firm and online antiques shop, which you can see here. My favorite thing from the antiques section is this chair:

Part of  a set, too! "Set of 6 vintage chippendale style bamboo and cane seated armchairs". I'll take them all, thanks. These are so bohemian twenties' I don't even know what to do with them...other than lounge languidly in a dressing gown, while smoking from a ten inch long cigarette holder, while arguing with Charles Chaplin about the future of pantomime in the motion picture business and absently-mindedly petting my Italian greyhound's head in a scene out of Erte. Turns out, I DO know what to do with them! Let me have one already!

Have you seen any good celebrity interiors lately? Whose house would you like to get a sneak peek into? If you were an interior designer, what would your "style" be deemed by the press? How starry eyed on a scale of 1 to 10 am I over getting to see Lindsey Buckingham's house (spoiler alert: about an 11)?

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow for more rantin' and ramblin'. Til then!