There was a time when I furnished my rented apartment with "finds" from the street, meaning a dresser that had a least two drawers left in it or a futon that didn't smell, and for art I'd tack up a cool page from Rolling Stone magazine. Then, and maybe it was from female pressure in my life, I upgraded to furnishing my whole place at Ikea. $69 for a Billy bookcase seemed like swell deal, and how about those poster frames for $13 bucks? Now my "art" collection could have some class. But times have changed and so has my taste. Forty years will do that to you, as will a bookshelf that falls apart when you try to move it to another room. Perhaps living with a stylie woman like Sonia Q. will also be influential. I'm not rich by any means, I'm a school teacher, folks. But, now instead of filling my life with whatever's convenient or absolutely affordable, I save my money and wait for that special item to come along. Sonia just brought home a rolling wooden bar that would look beautiful in Don Draper's living room. She'd been eyeing it for a couple of months at Salvage Style in Maplewood, New Jersey. My obsession for the last year has been a search for the perfect schoolteacher's bag. I wanted something leather, something vintage, something of a mix between Dead Poet's Society and Indiana Jones. Then I found it at the fantastic vintage site
puremarfa.com. Colette Kuhnsman, and her sister Danielle, have the best eye for one-of-a-kind items like a vintage retro egg chair, a ceiling lamp that looks like an artichoke or those very cool wooden card catalogues from old libraries. And, amongst all their super cool vintage stuff, I found my dream school bag. I've been saving my money, and now I'm the proud owner of the Sandast Theo Leather Briefcase. Now I can part ways with my twenty-one dollar OfficeMax Mega Bag Ultra.
Check out the style at:
www.puremarfa.com
