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Friday Five with Emily Henderson

If you didn’t already know it, I spent a lot of time watching HGTV’s Design Star show this year. Emily Henderson, 30, a prop stylist originally from Portland, OR, is the season five champion, and she writes a cute blog called The Brass Petal. Her style is quirky, eclectic, and while it leans more toward bohemian chic than it does modern, I think she is refreshing, down-to-earth and speaks my language.

As much as I would love to love fine art, I’m secretly much more interested in commercial art. The fact that you have to sell something while being creative should be some sort of artistic buzz-kill. So when it’s done well, I think it can be even more masterful, more provocative than fine art. Oh, and it can pay your rent, and that never hurt anybody.

1. The Roland Bello/Robyn Glaser team
This is the duo (Roland shoots, Robyn styles) that was behind the Anthropologie catalog for years, the new re-designed West Elm catalog and a trillion Gourmet and Domino editorials that are ridiculously awesome and make me want to cut someone. They set trends in the commercial photography world that filters down into the interior design world very quickly. They create worlds where beautiful people do weird things so naturally, and so provocatively that you can’t help but project yourself into the world. I doth obsess.

2. This photo
This picture had me at ball-fringe. I don’t know who took it, who styled it or what country or year its from. Its weird and unexpected and — AH — I just want to be there. And who, for the love of god, owns of the outfit hanging on the wall? Who???? My secret lover, perhaps? Who plays me love songs on one of his three guitars, as we sit in the parlor swinging in my wicker chair, whilst running my fingers through his leather fringed pants… I dream of this space, and I kinda think it changed my life when I saw it.

3. Photographer Mikkel Vang and this spread from Vogue Living
I love the masculinity in such a “decorated” space. The strange timelessness of the space is intoxicating. It begs the question: What did you win those trophies for, huh? And what exactly are you typing on the typewriter? Have you no laptop? Did it break? Don’t you have Apple care?

4. Prop stylist Christine Rudolph
I mean, I can just stare and stare at these photographs for hours, a la double rainbow, WHAT DO THEY MEAN??? And my god, that black horse lamp is large and makes me feel funny.

I long to be as cool as Christine.

5. Prop Stylist Cindy DiPrima
Granted I worked for Cindy for years and I’m a bit biased, but I think these still life shots are some of the most beautiful ever styled. I want to look like how these photos smell. It tells a story that is at once kinda creepy and totally romantic, and plays with more than just our visual sense (these were shot by Kana Okada, and I love her too).

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.