Goodness. It feels strange writing a blog post after a year-long hiatus. I was worried that I may have forgotten how to blog, but it seems that after eleven years of writing The Peak of Chic, blogging has become second nature. It feels good to be back.

As some of you know, I have spent the past year writing my latest book, Inspired Design: The 100 Most Important Interior Designers of the Past 100 Years (Vendome Press). I spent countless hours doing research (thank heavens for my library of design books and shelter magazines), writing, and selecting the photos that defined the careers of the featured 100 designers. In fact, I spent so much time working on this book while cloistered in my home, some of my neighbors assumed I had died or moved.
Now that the hard work is behind me, I can say that it was well worth it. The end result is a book that I feel honors a very diverse, influential, and talented group of individuals. The featured designers hail from around the world, including America, England, Yugoslavia, and even Iran. There are living designers who are currently at the heights of their careers, while others experienced their heydays back in the 1930s and '40s. A number of the designers can be classified as traditionalists, but for each of them, there is a designer whose work was, or is, at the cutting-edge. Some were known for their reserved personalities, while others aren't afra...