Create a personalized living space that reflects your fashion and style sensibilities with the help of interior designer Annette Tatum in The Well-Dressed Home. Founder of the popular and successful House and Little House lines of high-end apparel, accessories, bedding, and furniture, Tatum reveals how to draw inspiration from the fashion world, pop culture, and especially your own closet to create stunning, one-of-a-kind room designs.

Personality is key when developing your wardrobe, and the same is true when creating a unique decorating scheme for your home. The Well-Dressed Home will guide you in identifying your personal fashion style and then inspire you to use the same creative influences to design your home decor. Tatum reveals eleven of the most universal fashion styles, including romantic, couture, classic, casual, bohemian, retro, and modern, and encourages you to use the colors, fabrics, textures, and patterns characteristic of these aesthetics to decorate your home.

From an eco-bohemian chic loft in New York City to a home in the Hollywood Hills filled with vintage-romantic flea market finds, these enviable rooms will show you how to style your home to reflect your eye for fashion. Tatum understands style contradictions, too, and shows how to express them boldly and beautifully. By layering your inspirations, you can create a space that reflects your style and the styles of those with whom you share your home.

Illustrated with more than two hundred lush, full-color photographs, The Well-Dressed Home is the perfect resource for fashion enthusiasts looking to infuse a sense of their personal style into their homes.

There has been a revolution in the decorating world. When past generations made decision on what their home interiors would look like, their choices were limited. For them, decorating means little more than choosing a style, such as traditional, Mediterranean, or modern, and selecting a "suite" of matching pieces. Once they committed to a particular style, changing the room was a big deal.

Today, however, stylish furnishings are found everywhere - and not only in designer showrooms. Department stores, discount outlets, boutiques, and even online sources all tempt you with well-designed goods. These days, shopping for home furnishings can be as exciting, and as much fun as shopping for clothes.

Clipping items from magazines, watching couture runway shows online, and observing what your favorite movie starts are wearing on the red carpet aren't normally thought of as sources of decorating inspiration, but they're great ways to start. Exploring your own wardrobe is also extremely helpful. Whether the fashions you prefer are bright or muted, tailored or feminine, casual or formal, they will tell you a great deal about what will make you happiest in the home you're designing.

Since you can often find inspiration in styles you might not wear, or even normally consider, this book highlights eleven popular fashion categories: romantic, couture, classic, casual, bohemian, retro, resort, modern, eclectic, vintage, and eco. For each style, you'll find examples of runway fashions, wardrobe references, and a collage of glorious inspirations. As you flip through the glamorous refined, fun and sometimes outrageous photos in the sections that describe these styles, think about what you love about each, and imagine new ways you might use that information to combine colors and textures for your home.

Next, take a look at the rooms that are features in this book. You'll notice that some rooms closely parallel specific fashion styles, but most are a mix of several influences. Putting together a wardrobe that relies heavily on one style doesn't mean you can't embellish it with elements from other styles. When you design your home, you have the same freedom.

© 2009 by Annette Tatum

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About the Author

Annette Tatum is the creator of the multi-million-dollar interior-decor lines House and Little House, which are carried in more than seven hundred boutiques nationwide. She is based in Santa Monica, and her designs can be found in the homes and closets of Marcia Cross, Minnie Driver, and Owen Wilson, among others. Her work has been featured in People, In Style, Romantic Homes, Country Living, and Country Home.