Get ready to cheer up your wardrobe: Clare V., the go-to fashion brand for cool girls from LA to Paris and far beyond, makes its Nashville debut starting tomorrow with a two-day trunk show at Neuhoff District.

Founder Clare Vivier is making the trip as well and is ready to make some new friends during the pop-up, which is open from 10-6 this Friday & Saturday, May 8 & 9. Expect a wide variety of Clare’s signature handbags, small leather accessories, clothing, jewelry, hats, and scarves, as well as a great selection of items for Mother’s Day. Neuhoff is located at 1316 Adams Street in Germantown.

But that’s not all!

On Friday night from 6-8 PM, Clare will lead a panel discussion with representatives from the Center for Reproductive Rights, one of the many progressive groups supported by the brand. The event will also be held at Neuhoff District. It’s free and open to the public. Please RSVP to events@clarev.com so we know to expect you.

Can you believe there’s more?

On Saturday afternoon, Soho House members can hear me interview Clare during a special edition of Callaway Conversations, my ongoing series of talks with national fashion and design leaders. The event runs from 5-6 PM in The Sock Room. Members can sign up to attend via the Soho app.

I hope you can make it out to one or more of these events. It’s a busy time of year, but believe me, the Clare V. juice is worth the squeeze!

See you soon, mes amis!

Libby

It’s Sunday night when I’m writing this and my hands are sore from gripping.

Friday night and for most of Saturday, I spent at least a combined 10 hours hanging and re-hanging art all over my home and cleaning out some shelves in underused cabinets. Today, after hitting the Amqui Station Farmers Market in Madison — my Sunday AM go-to for fresh veg from Una Acre Farm — I cranked up my little pressure washer and destroyed a winter’s worth of gunk on my patio.

I’m bone-tired and a little cross-eyed from hunching over the washer for so long. But honestly, I’d be happy if the weekend went on a few more days so that I can tackle the last few spring cleaning items on my list and, even more, be able to keep going room to room, reimagining new wall space for my art or swapping out lamps that might be happier somewhere else.

My big head-slap moment happened Friday night, when I realized that the deeply wonderful red neon “apple dumplings” sign I bought at Nashville’s GasLamp Antique Mall at least 15 years ago (fun fact: I used to work there and was a dealer for six years) needed to move. I’d kept it as part of a happy little tableau I’d created over my washing machine (my closet has amazing custom “Crappy Magic” wallpaper from New Hat as a backdrop, so of course I’m gonna tableau that shit) that also featured a burnt orange fever-dream of a Paul McCartney tour poster I found at an estate sale.

My eureka moment came when I realized it needed to move to a place of honor under the dragon medallion that is a centerpiece in my living room. (A word on the medallion: it came from the same folks who sold me the lacquered arch from a former Chinese restaurant that is built into the hallway leading to my bedroom.)

The piece looks cool just chilling there, unlit, surrounded by pastel Mason jar “plinths” that New Hat (them again!) made for a Domino magazine pop-up I put together in 2018. But switch it on and — double wow. It’s really amazing. A+ move.

I rehung the PM poster in my living room, where is’s living under my Fauvist Southern Thrift triptych and a pair of watercolor studies I found at Round Top a few years ago (there were several others and I kind of hate that I didn’t buy them all).

The other major piece I gave a new life was a killer framed ‘70s dark light poster from the dear, dear Deb and Wayne at the sadly now-closed Wonders on Woodland that’s been hiding in my dressing room behind a bunch of hats on mannequin heads, under-seen and therefore under-appreciated for the last six years. I realize now that I've had reservations about giving this piece a place of prominence due to it’s smoke-’em-if-you’ve-got-’em message, which is ridiculous. It’s art, not a PSA. I mean, if I thought too much about it, I’m sure I could come up with a “moral” reason not to display the apple dumplings sign (fat fear?). Screw that. The lady with the joint stays.

Elsewhere, I am very excited to have hung the collection of Gibson girl illustrations that once belonged to Gaye Romaine, my eccentric second mom, whom I’ve written about before. I also mounted the two masked harlequin wall pockets amid a triptych of harlequin illos.

Believe it or not, I got them all the same weekend earlier this spring, at three different stores in East Tennessee.

One pocket came from my friend Laura Martz’s booth at The Antiques Parlour mall in Cleveland, TN — my hometown. The second one I found in her other booth at Dirty Jane’s Antiques in Chattanooga. (I really cleaned you out, Laura!) The illustrations came from Chattanooga, too: Antique Anthology, my pal Eric Brandon’s killer antique store near Missionary Ridge. So many fabulous pieces of furniture in my home are from Eric. He’s started doing “open studio” sales instead of holding regular shop hours. Believe me: they are worth the drive.

More house news soon!

SUPERLATIVES

Best Dinner Party Guest Advice

The Times wrote a fun Met Gala “service” piece, talking to 2026 hosts/former attendees about the do’s and don’ts of party-going. Vogue editor Chloe Malle had my favorite piece of advice: at a seated dinner party, DO NOT CHANGE THE PLACE CARDS.

If you find your name written on a piece of paper in front of a specific seat a dinner table, it’s not an accident. It takes hours — sometimes days (I am so not kidding) — to work out the who-where of a dinner party. To seat a table, a host has to do their homework, heeding social alliances and political conflicts (and these days, they might be literal) to avoid putting certain friends or foes together. It’s their party and their prerogative to seat you where they want.

There may have rhyme to their reason for sitting you where they do. They might want folks to sit boy/girl, or would like to pair you (or the person who you end up displacing) with a potential new friend or associate. There is intention here.

No, you might not be near your friends. And yes, you might be sitting next to a stranger. But you are presumably sophisticated enough to be invited to a seated dinner, and you can probably manage to hold a conversation with someone you’ve just met. In other words, you’re an adult. Act like it.

Some advice: If you are feel you have to sit with your friends or want to ensure that you aren’t near someone who irks you, call your host a few days before the party and ask them politely to consider your request; they will. Otherwise, remember that you are there at the pleasure of your host, so please honor their wishes. Stay put.

For the past three weeks, I’ve visited the East Nashville Sherwin Williams store ten times, maybe more. The last was yesterday, when I picked up what I am pretty sure is the final batch of colors to get the walls in my house looking shipshape for an upcoming video shoot. (A note on SW: I partnered with them when I was remodeling my house six years ago and have remained loyal.)

Last fall, after going through at least six weeks of wall repair work for a roof leak, I had the fix-up dudes paint my dining room deep pink (in this case, SW Ruby Shade). For a while after, I was left with white trim (SW Shoji White, my fave interior white), which wasn’t giving me the vibe I was looking for.

So, two weeks ago, I got out my blue painters tape, opened a can of black paint (SW Tricorn Black) and got to work doing this:

The final is at the top. I love how it turned out.

Yes, at face value, there is some Victoriana going on. But my intention was to make an homage to 60s interiors legend David Hicks, one of my favorite designers (I have Cole & Son’s Hicks Hex in my primary bathroom). One of the reason I love Hicks’ trad-meets-space age look is that he had a thing for high-contrast trim in colorful rooms:

Devoted readers will remember that I was fretting over my dining room table a few months ago. I was thinking of going in an entirely different direction (mod white, actually) when I found this 1970s Regency/chinoiserie burlwood dining table by Century on Marketplace that was perfection (check out Plethorique Interiors, guys).

For chairs, I set out to find more Thonet #17s to match the gorgeous distressed one I found in an antique mall in Indiana and later had the company authenticate.

Ask and you shall receive. Amazingly, on a regional Marketplace search, I found a guy in Birmingham selling five — for $10 each! Individually, these things can go for four figures, so I could not have been happier to take the three-hour drive down 65 in chilly late February to pack these treasures into my car.

These #17s came with gorgeous bentwood arms, which were great, but wouldn’t fit under the table. So I took them off:

Don’t worry: they’re safely in my storage space, ready to be re-attached when I mix it up again.

Next up in Callaway Compound show and tell: the newly painted entrance hall!

Superlatives

Best Author/Friend Run In | Emma Straub
AND
Best Dress & Shoe Set | Loeffler Randall

At the Loeffler Randall store event I worked on two weeks ago, I was delighted to run into my pal Emma Straub. Emma was spending the afternoon shopping on 12 South (a trip to 12th Avenue South OGs imogene + willie happened as well) before her appearance at Parnassus Books to promote her rad new book, American Fantasy.

Ironically, I’d texted her earlier in the day to say, sorry, I was gonna be late or, ugh, I may not make it to the talk at all because of the aformentioned party. The universe apparently had other plans.

Emma and I met a dozen years ago, when our mutual pal Kerry Diamond reached out to me to ask if I knew anyone in Nashville who might want to do a house swap with Emma and her adorable family (husband Mike and then-baby River came, too) while she was teaching at Vanderbilt in spring 2014. So for four months, the Fusco-Straubs set up shop at the Compound while I camped out at their gorgeous brownstone in NYC’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens. (I adore my little house and Emma and Mike professed to have loved their stay, but I still think I won this swap.)

Living in someone’s space makes you close, even if you don’t spend a ton of time with them. So I now consider Emma a good friend, even if we’ve only been in-person with each less than a handful of times. I mean, we slept in each others’ beds for four months.

I thought I had a pic of us at LR, but happily found this adorable consolation prize taken at the book store (yes - I made it, just in time to catch the last few minutes of the talk):

Emma’s the best. Make sure to read her new book — especially if you’re a fan of boy bands. And! The next time you’re in Brooklyn, stop by her and Mike’s now-iconic indie book store, Books Are Magic.

PS. My rad puff sleeve moire mini dress (and incredible matching shoes, seen below with the whole look) are from Loeffler’s new spring collection. I have been on a major menswear bender for the last few years, so I was surprised how much I love how this looks on me.

DV was right: Think pink!

Best Nashville Pop Up of Spring ‘26 | Clare V. at Neuhoff District

When I met Clare Vivier at our good pal Laura Brown’s 2023 wedding, I made it my mission to get her to Nashville for a pop-up. Voila! Almost three years to the week, my mission is accomplished.

Clare is, of course, the namesake designer of Clare V., the go-to accessory company for every cool girl I know. I’m very happy to report that she’s bringing her colorful situation to the extremely special environs of Neuhoff District next Friday & Saturday, May 8 & 9. The store is open from 10-6 each day. Clare herself will be around, so come say hi!

Until next time!

Libby

Some of you who follow me on Instagram might remember when I posted pictures of all of the ceramic cabbages — aka cabbageware — I clocked at Nashville’s Antiques & Garden Show last month. Their presence might not have been a coincidence: apparently, 2026 is the year of the cabbage.

No joke. Vogue just wrote about it. And AD did, too. And the Food section of the Times sent out one of their emails last week with cabbage recipes as their focus. All the media signs are there, folks.

Of course, my immediate thought was why cabbage? And why now?

In terms of cabbage in edible form, perhaps this surge is an follow-up to the ascension of its cousin, the Brussel sprout, which became a constant on menus in the early aught-teens (twenty-teens?).

The cynic in me wonders if there was a vegetable lobby involved in cabbage’s rising star — no kidding, that’s how these things work. Individual fruits and vegetables often have their own representative, board or council gunning to keep them part of the conversation in the food industry and culture in general. (Pre-Covid, my consulting company, The Callaway, was approached to represent holi basil, believe it or not.)

Sometimes, their work is legislative, with lobbyists ensuring that congressional bills covering, say, school lunches include their veg. Other times it’s more of a PR/perception thing. Not sure if you guys follow prune news closely, but about 25 years ago, the California Prune Board lobbied the FDA to officially change the name to “dried plums,” the thinking being that the word “prune” was a bit too anodyne and too closely associated with constipation. It was approved in 2001 and embraced… until the CPB decided to go back to where they started. Hello, prunes.

Back to today, and cabbage. When no mention of said vegetable’s representation appeared in my searches, I started to wonder if this recent elevation was the work of a cabbage fan who took it upon themselves to make it a thing.

The only way I know this thought isn’t batshit crazy is because it’s happened before.

About 15 years ago, a fashion PR I used to work with in New York named Oberon Sinclair (and what a stupendous name), founder of the consulting company My Young Auntie (again, amazing), launched an experiment to see if she could blow up kale. I don’t have to tell you what happened. Thousands of restaurant menus bursting with dark green salads and Beyoncé can:

You can read Oberon’s story here, with even more here. It’s pretty fascinating — especially if it’s true.

But this still doesn’t explain the why of cabbage’s current ascent. Foodies - have any thoughts?

In terms of design, cabbageware is nothing new, having been around since the 18th century; there are great stories about its history here and here. Apparently it was Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro, the founder of the Portuguese ceramics company that bears his surname, who originally popularized the style, as early as 1884, making place settings and serving pieces to resemble individual leafs.

But it was a Palm Beach ceramicist named Dodie Thayer who really brought it back into modern vogue in the ‘60s, one garden party at a time. (A few years ago, the preppy-eccentric fashion designer Tory Burch reissued some of Thayer’s designs, which you can buy here.)

I’ve been collecting vintage cabbageware for a while now. When I’m shopping in antique malls or on Marketplace, I look for pieces marked Bordallo Pinheiro or Secla, another Portuguese pottery company that produced cabbage place settings in a smashing neon yellow color (it ceased production in 2008).

Yes, the overall look is a little mumsy, but what can I say? I like an old-lady vibe. Ans I’m a fool for food-shaped ceramic serving pieces. So meta!

Over the past five years, I’ve definitely watched it grow in popularity among collectors, with prices on vintage pieces going up. But what I saw at the Antiques & Garden show was another level.

So with that I suggest you stock up on cabbageware now while the cabbage-getting is good. I’m still figuring things out on ShopMy page, but in honor of this post, I’m going to direct you there anyway. As you’ll see, I’ve assembled a collection of my favorite new and (mainly) vintage cabbageware along with some other cruciferous collectibles.

Happy shopping — and eating!

SUPERLATIVES

Best DIY Print Throwback - Big Mess
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, if it wasn’t The New Yorker, Spin, Interview or Vogue, my lifeline to the world outside East Tennessee was the ‘zines I ordered through the mail. Sometimes I’d get lucky and find myself in a city with a great record store or actual indie newsstand (RIP See Hear) and be able to buy all of the them IRL (for the record, my go-to mag categories concerned feminist thought, indie rock and thrifting, which was pretty much all I thought about at 23). So it was thrilling when my friend and long-time girl crush, Christene Barberich of the must-read newsletter A Tiny Apartment, sent me a copy of Big Mess, a culture ‘zine out of Columbus (you can subscribe on their website). Each issue has a theme, and this one was “trash” — an apt subject for CB, as she, like me, loves a rummage through NYC curb detritus, aka trash. (I need to find the piece I wrote for the Post about dumpster diving outside Conde Nast’s old building on Madison Avenue before their move to Times Square in 1999…) Big Mess arrives in an envelope filled with multiple pieces of printed matter, including poetry, a poster, a small piece of art that grows flowers if you put it in moist soil, and, for this issue, a little stapled book titled “trash talk,” which has an interview with Christene about her sidewalk adventures. My favorite touch was something that wasn’t part of the zine: a sweet note from Christene written on the back of a darling butterfly collage by her daughter. Thanks for the throwback, my friend!

Best Reason to Visit The Frist Art Museum this Spring - In Her Place
A few weeks ago, I was invited to an event honoring the Nashville artists had work in In Her Place, a knock-out new show at the Frist Art Museum, where it’s on show through April 26. Right now, the galleries are packed with of the work of ladies I call friends, as well as many more artists that I’d like to meet and know better. Despite its very impressive breadth — In Her Place features 28 artists — it only includes a fraction of the kick-ass women who have contributed to the history and growth of the local art community, which is the strongest I’ve seen it since I moved to town 22 years ago. I’m really proud of Middle Tennessee’s art community and its mission to support and elevate the work of homegrown talent. This is an important show at a time when representation across the board is critical. Thank you to all who made it happen, and major congratulations to all whose work was featured.

I am excited to share that I’ll be back at my kind friend Keith Meacham’s Nashville boutique, Reed Smythe, next Wednesday, Feb. 11, teaching folks how to get their sequined balls on, this time Valentine-style.

Everyone who signs up for the class (the fee is $150) will make and take home their own 3.5-inch heart-shaped ornament keepsake. The event is from 4-6 PM and includes everything you need to make a maximalist masterpiece (or minimalist: you do you), plus snacks and drinks courtesy of RS.

I’ll have styrofoam bodies with and without hanger hooks attached to them for those who imagine their creation living on display in a bowl. As some of you might know, I try to make this as sustainable a process as I can (well, as sustainable as you can be using polystyrene foam — ha!), and use beads I get from deconstructing vintage necklaces I hunt for year-round.

No experience or skill level required; just a sense of fun and imagination! I do ask that folks be at least 16 to take the class; there are sharp pins and scissors and many, many tiny elements involved. (Plus, kids just don’t understand portion control!)

Sign up for the class here. I’d love to see you!

If you’d rather purchase a pre-made heart, I am selling them via my Instagram (@libbycallaway1970). I am also posting a few below that are still up for grabs, ranging in price from $135-$200, depending on the size. Happy to consider custom orders, too!

Hope to see you next week at Reed Smythe!

Fuck ICE.

And fuck ice.

The last two weeks have really been something. While Minneapolis burned with the anger of anti-ICE protests, Nashville was enduring the freezing wrath of Winter Storm Fern.

I’ll touch on the former ICE first. I knew this administration was going to do damage to our country, but my god: what’s happening to innocent people in Minneapolis is taking what was already an evil empire to a new level of dispicable. I am deeply disturbed by the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and disgusted by the treatment of Aliya Rahman (see her testimony to House and Senate Dems here). There are many other stories I’m not naming, not out of indifference but due to space and honestly, exhaustion.

What is happening in this country? It’s clear to see that some of our better angels have left the building and put demons in their place. I have no answers, and honestly not many more words.

Our government is using ICE as a terrorist organization against its own people.

I’s easy to feel helpless as democracy continues to be dismantled a little more each day; I know I do. While I’m not the first or the millionth person to say this, I am going to say to call your congresspeople and tell them to defund ICE (if you don’t know who yours is and how to get in touch, use this link). And give to organizations supporting the resistance, which you can do here.

We learned last year that Nashville’s not safe from all-caps ICE. And we’re not doing a great job with lowercase ice, either.

Fern really did a number on this city, choosing not to give us the 18 inches of show that was initially forecast but instead sending freezing rain that deposited thick layers of ice on everything it touched, especially trees and electric wires.

I woke up around 6 AM on Sunday, January 25; by 8, I’d heard six or seven transformers blow — it sounds like gunshots, and is pretty disconcerting at first. I heard at least that many enormous limbs fall down my street, rendering roads impassible, crushing cars and tool sheds, and puncturing roofs. The wonderful Nashville writer Margaret Renkl had a story about the storm in the Opinion page of the Times earlier this week. Read it here.

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My pal Lisa Donovan and I were cozied up on the couch when the power went off just before 11 AM. We were not alone. At one point during this nine-day nightmare, over 230,000 area homes were without power. Today, 12 days into what can certainly be called a community crisis, I still have friends whose homes are without power.

As I’m typing on Wednesday, Feb. 4, between 16,000-20,000 homes still don’t have electricity; others are still without water. Five people have died in Davidson County, including two elderly people who were found in freezing homes. I suspect that number will climb higher as days pass.

This is not at all good, and people are rightly pissed. NES and the Mayor’s office are going to have to smooth a lot of feathers once everyone warms up. Nashville is never going to have the wintertime assets that Detroit or another northern city has. But we need to at least be confident that the resources we do have and the preventative measures we can address are up to date.

Lisa and I comfortably made it through 35 hours sans power, including an overnight spent under multiple blankets (I wore my Norma Kamali sleeping bag coat all night; it did not let me down). Through most of Monday, we were feeling confident about our chances to tough it out at least one more night. Then a chill set in in the late afternoon that the heat from pans of boiling water on my gas stove couldn’t kill. We were each on hold with local hotels when the sound of my empty garbage disposal began whirring (I must have turned it on at some point when the power was out), a precursor to the lights flicking back on across the house. We jumped for joy with so much force that things fell inside the china cabinet.

I’ve talked to a few others whose power never went out, and folks like us who only had to deal with the cold a little over a day. There is a strange survivor’s guilt that comes from being warm at home when you know other people are suffering because they aren’t. It reminds me of how I felt six years ago when the most violent tornado I’ve ever experienced tore through my neighborhood, demolishing buildings and ripping huge trees from the ground by their roots, all in matters of a few seconds.

In February of 2020, I was staying with my sister, who lives about seven blocks from me in East Nashville, while my home remodel was being completed. It was after midnight when the tornado hit. A lot of folks slept through the government alert — or ignored it, having become jaded after getting out of their warm beds for too many false alarms; I was almost one of them.

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Millie was out of town for work, so I got up and went to the basement with my niece and nephew and my brother-in-law, Matt. It was not a first rodeo situation for me and Matt, and we could sense that the purple sky, high winds and huge pressure drop that we felt before ushering the kids to the basement wasn’t going to pass without at least some damage. We instinctively knew that there was mass destruction nearby. (I ended up writing about it for Garden & Gun.)

I began to worry about my home, which was at the tail end of a massive renovation, but it didn’t feel safe to venture over there until daylight.

Early the next morning, I held my breath as I turned the corner onto my street, only to find my beautiful house drenched in sunlight, birds singing in the crepe myrtles. I felt terrible for feeling relief when 25 people were dead. And I feel the same way now.

Historically, Nashville has been pretty blasé about weather prep. Local leaders often bluff their way through these catastrophes, talking up plans that prove to be either outdated, insufficient or both. The ‘that kind of storm never happens here” mentality has got to change: global warming is real. We know this is not the last time a winter storm like this is going to, yes, happen here. The response to Fern wasn’t adequate and we all know it — including the leadership at Nashville Electric Service.

Today it was revealed that NES was behind on their tree trimming schedule leading up to the storm, and that trees were the main cause of power outages. It had to have stung NES chiefs to share this information. After storm clean up ends (it will be a while), I’m betting that we’re going to start seeing lots of NES trucks out on pruning duty.

I hope that the damage, anger and fear this storm has called might be a catalyst for local leaders to take winter storms more seriously.

I do want to give it up for the NES linemen, who have been working 14-16 hours shifts for almost two weeks to clean this mess up. They are heroes. Their bosses, however, have some explaining to do.

One more note: I was in Belle Meade last Friday evening having dinner and noticed that large parts of both Belle and West Meades — two of Nashville’s wealthiest neighborhoods — were still dark a week into the disaster. While I hate that anyone, anywhere went without or is still without power, I was surprised that it was generally my side of town — the Silverlake to their Bel Air — came back first.

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Interestingly, I’ve shared this observation with friends from several different parts of town who had made the same observation. I am sure there is a combo of reasons for the slower response in West Nashville, including that there are some huge mature trees throughout that neighborhood, absolutely one of the prettiest in town. The destruction there was devastating, for sure. But it does prove that no one in a power position was using the response to cater to any one social or economic community, and that money and power can’t buy that kind of assistance in an emergency.

I wish a swift return of power to everyone in Nashville currently without it. This has been a really exhausting 12 days. Spring can’t come soon enough.

HOW TO SUPPORT NASHVILLE POST-FERN

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce has a trove of recovery resources here.

Those wanting to volunteer can find opportunities here.

If you’d like to donate to Hand’s On Nashville’s recovery fund, please click here.

I’ll be back soon with something lighter. But it’s been too harrowing lately here, there, everywhere to not say something.

Libby

Hope everyone east of the Rockies is surviving Snowpocalypse — or in the case of my corner of Nashville, Icemageddon. I woke up to freezing rain which has turned yesterday’s white winter wonderland a little bit sinister, covering branches and wires in thick rings of ice. My crepe myrtles are not digging this situation.

The power went out about an hour ago — not surprising considering I’ve heard at least seven transformers blow and multiple large branches break under the weight of the elements since I woke up five hours ago. Luckily, I have the cats and my houseguest, my lovely and talented BFF Lisa Donovan, to keep me warm. (If you’re going to get snowed in, I suggest you do it with an award winning chef.)

When I haven’t been scavenging for winter lock-in food (I had no idea people drank as much milk as they apparently do) and losing my shit as democracy is even further eroded in this country, I’ve been laying low lately, shaking off the holidays and getting back into work mode, which seems to get harder every year. This is traditionally a slow time of year for what I do (mainly fashion and retail consulting) and I’m using the deficit to edit, declutter and organize my space.

So far, that’s resulted in three big drops at Goodwill; a deep clean of one of the two 13x3-foot closets off my living room; plans for a spring yard sale; plus the acquisition of a small secondary storage space to get some currently extraneous but still precious items out of the way, including a large portion of my fashion and design magazine archive, which numbers well over 1,000 issues. A spare space is useful as I plot the design changes and visual updates I hope will take place over the next few months (I have a fun late spring deadline to meet).

The first space I’m “evolving” is my dining room. This is one of the two rooms in my home that hasn’t yet gotten a colorful makeover: it’s been white since I moved in in 2011. I’d been planning to paint it at some point during the massive 18-month renovation that I wrapped just before Covid set in, but never got around to it.

It was Mother Nature who eventually forced my hand. A new dark pink paint job was the lone upside to having to deal with (and pay for) the repair of a roof leak that caused water damage on the exterior and adjacent interior walls of the room (thank you, global warming, for the increasingly heavy rains). The process inexplicably took months and was a major inconvenience for me and the cats, who were freaked out by the hole in the plaster and the noise of the huge fans brought in to dry things out. So getting to choose a new color (Sherwin-Willams’s strangely obviously named Ruby Shade) felt like a reward.

The painters were dubious when I told them to paint the ceiling (they made me verbally confirm three times before they’d start). Now I wish I’d told them to do the trim, too. Kept white, it’s just too contrasty. I plan to paint it myself soon.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is a different dining room table. Note that this isn’t a have-to situation, but a want deal. Right now, I have a clear glass number I found on Marketplace in early Covid that’s perfectly fine. But the room is square and really calls for a table that’s round or, better yet, oval.

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I’ve always loved the swooping grace of an Saarinen tulip table, which I think would give the middle of the room a bit more mojo. I’m currently poking around for a secondhand facsimile (I try to buy furniture with pedigree, but I’m not above a well-made, less expensive dupe). Of course, my mind can be changed if I find something fabulous with corners, so don’t be shocked if I end up there.

For years, I’ve been using two different styles of Ghost-style Louis chairs (only one is a real Starck , a Christmas gift in 1996; the rest I got off Amazon). I’d love to trade up there, too, if the coffers allow. The ideal would be to find a full set of Thonet #17 chairs to match the rad distressed one I got at an Indiana antique mall during Covid (you can see it in the shots above; don’t miss the star someone drew on the cane seat in what appears to be magic marker).

All that to say, this room may look very different soon. I’ll share more changes as they happen.

SUPERLATIVES

BEST NEW KICKS BY A CLOSE CHUM | Savas Fleetwood Ankle Boots
A kick-ass new boot style from one of my besties, Nashville designer Savannah Yarborough. Fleetwood is a higher-heeled evolution of Sav’s phenomenal Legend boot, a flat-soled go-everywhere boot that lives up to its name. Both styles are in heavy rotation chez Callaway. PS. Nashvillians take note: You can try on Sav’s boots (and her incredible leather garments; more on them soon) in person at the Savas atelier in Wedgewood Houston, hands-down the sexiest shop in town.

BEST NEW SWEATSHIRT BY A MEDIA SUPERSTAR: Hanover Staple Hoodie
My brilliant pal Chris Black just added designer to his fashion consultant-podcaster-magazine columnist-and-so-much-more hyphenate, and all I can wonder is why he waited so long. Chris is known for his decisiveness when it comes to questions of style, so his first drop is loaded with perfect basics like this killer black hoodie. Last week, I wore it with a leopard print silk skirt (an oldie by Reformation; this one is a similar cut) and destroyed black low-top Chucks. Winner.

BEST NEW AFTER-SHOWER STEP | Uni Body Oil
My friend Kimmy brought this anti-aging body oil to a Dirty Santa party I went to last month. I didn’t take it home, but I did overhear her telling the winner about how great it’s been for her skin and how great it smells. I ordered some for myself; is is really good. The bottle is not huge, so I end up turning to a hack I use for my other favorite Uma body oil and cut it with almond oil to make it last longer.

BEST NEW LOCAL SCULPTURE | Venus by Vadis Turner
Big congrats to my dear friend Vadis Turner, whose strikingVenus in a Landscape sculpture was recently erected in the Frist Art Museum’s Turner Courtyard (no relation). You can listen to Vadie talking about it here. I was lucky enough to be in New York last May when Vadie unveiled this sculpture’s sister, Venus Rising, at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, so seeing this lady in red go up is especially exciting. Venus will be up at the Frist for several years (it’s to the right of the main entrance at the back of the museum so you can’t miss it), so there is plenty of time to see it. But I’d make a case for checking in on her when you’re there to see In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century, the museum’s new exhibit, featuring over 100 works by local female artists celebrating the contributions them and women across the city have made to this community and beyond. A must.

Stay warm, work hard, and be nice,

Libby

When I first saw folks posting about 2016 on Instagram this week, I blew it off. Another social media trend I didn’t need to engage in.

But after seeing enough posts, I softened my stance. It was fun to look back. And after all, what was I doing ten years ago?

Ends up, I was launching The Callaway, my communications company, which was born in January 2016. I had totally forgotten.

My decision to start my own business came after an 18-year career in journalism, followed by in-house positions at two great Southern fashion companies, imogene + willie and Billy Reid. All three experiences were instrumental in getting me to where I am today. (That said, I’ll leave the almost two decades I spent working as a journalist — seven of them writing about fashion for the New York Post — for another time. This is about the work that followed.)

My tenure with imogene felt particularly fated. A few months before I started working there, I saw a psychic. During my reading, she abruptly asked me who Carrie was (note I’m using the most common spelling of that name here; the psychic didn’t specify). “Well, I have a good friend in New York named Kerry…,” I told her, thinking of Kerry Diamond. The psychic said she had no idea if that Kerry was the right one, but that “someone named Carrie is going to change your life.” A month later, Carrie Eddmenson hired me to be imogene’s content chief. I was one of the company’s first full-time employees. (I want to give Carrie a shout out for saying the most magnificent thing an employer has ever said to me, and probably ever will: “We want to work with you. You just tell us what you want to do.” That never happens. Incredible.)

That job did, indeed, change my life. When I wasn’t writing their “Our Voice” blog (which was, objectively, pretty damn good), I was telling all of my fashion media pals in NYC about the great Nashville denim company I was working for. In more than a few cases, this resulted in coverage for i+w in some big publications. A few months into the gig, Carrie asked me if I wanted to do their PR (they had been working with a music PR company — a cool experimental pairing of genres, but ultimately one that didn’t bear a lot of fruit). I remember looking down my nose at the idea: I’m a journalist. I don’t do PR.

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The more I thought about “going to the other side,” which is the joking industry parlance used when a journalist takes a PR job, the more it made sense. Maybe, I thought, PR is like journalism with the guardrails off: the goal is still to get to the same place through storytelling, but you take a different route to get there, one with a lot fewer road blocks or restrictions to how the story gets told. Maybe it was a better way of doing what I already did. I never looked back.

When I left imogene a few years later, I began doing content consulting for Billy Reid, whose namesake designer I’d known since 2001, the night he won his first CFDA award for William Reid. The Billy years were a very creative time for me. I was spending a lot of time two hours south of Nashville, in Florence, Alabama, where Billy Reid is based. I did good work with smart, creative people and cemented what will be some life-long friendships. And it was so much fun.

Flash forward to early 2014, when I entered a four-month house swap with the author Emma Straub. Our agreement found Emma, her husband and their new baby in Nashville, living in my pre-renovation home (it was fine, but not what it is now) while she taught at Vandy. I lucked out and got to crash at her three-story 1910 brownstone in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens (I still feel a little guilty about how well this worked out for me). My work with Billy expanded during this time to include more general marketing and media engagement. Eventually I floated the idea to the brass that perhaps they should consider having a marketing office in New York — and that maybe I was the one to run it.

I moved to New York that June. The marketing director job only lasted a year. Beset with endless miscommunication and frustration on both ends, it was an almost impossible job. Eventually, all parties decided that a small, intimately run fashion business having its marketing chief many hundred miles away from HQ might not have been a great logistical call. They offered for me to keep my job under the condition that I moved to Florence; I knew it was time to come home.

I moved back to Nashville in June 2015. I continued to consult for Billy for another six months, and gave myself time to consider my next step. I thought about the work I’d done since leaving journalism — what had worked and what hadn’t; what I really loved to do versus what I felt I needed to do; and what would allow me to make a difference for people and companies I admired and respected.

I looked for throughlines and differentiators in my work. I loved helping local and regional companies get the national attention they deserved, which at that time meant getting press. And I was good at this and it was fulfilling. A lot of my success had come from being able to tap into the contacts I’d made and real-world experience I’d gained while working in the fashion and media industries in New York (it also helped that at that point in our careers, many of my media contemporaries had ascended to top leadership positions that found them able to greenlight my pitches). Those contacts and my singular background were two things that gave me an edge in the Nashville market. They still do.

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Once I knew what I wanted to do, I needed a name. Enter Laura Brown, one of my trusted besties and the ultimate namer — a true artiste. She came to visit in the fall of 2015 and we were having dinner at City House when I started throwing out what I am sure were truly shitty names. She stopped me. “It’s The Callaway. You’re The Callaway.” And that was that. My friend Lou made me a logo — purple script on a white background, almost identical to the one my mom used for her antique business in the mid'-’70s. I was on my way.

The Callaway’s scope and mission has expanded a lot over its decade of existence. In mid-2017, I hired my first employee, the brilliant Katy Shah (she’s now running her own company, Of Note, with another beloved former TC star, India Mayer). The timing was great: later that year, the PR department at Hermès reached out for help with a pop-up they were bringing to town. Later that year, gigs with Restoration Hardware, Cartier and Gucci followed. The Callaway expanded from being a company that helped local brands enter the national conversation to also helping national and international companies entering the market cultivate their local fan base. I like to say that we make small brands big and big brands small.

Covid lockdown, which happened just days after a tornado ripped through East Nashville, really screwed my pooch. In early February, the team and I had worked up a contingency plan in case this virus thing got bad and we had to work remotely. But that barely mattered when almost all of my clients left me over a three-day period. In May 2020, I made the call to close the OG Callaway. I went back to being a solo consultant, still using the company name.

Today, I have minimal work overhead, less stress, and get to be much more discerning about who I work with and the jobs I take. When I need extra help, I bring in freelancers (the goal is to never have to issue a W2 again).

The older I get — I’ll be 56 in April, which is still young, but not that young — the more I question how to move forward professionally. Do I want to keep working for myself, growing the influence of my own decade-old brand, doing work I continue to love and advancing in a smaller, stealthier way than I did pre-Covid? Yes — for sure. But would I drop this tomorrow and take a great job that matched my skillset, gave me a steady income and benefits (a girl can dream), and appealed to my interests? The answer is yes there, too.

The truth is, I have no idea what the next 10 years are gonna bring, just as I never imagined that The Callaway would have evolved the way it has since 2016, giving me so much joy, satisfaction and pride in the meantime. So much has changed since I had that first logo made — and I never counted on or planned any of it. It’s terrifying and exciting in equal measures. And it’s all part of the ride.

PS. It’s the ten year anniversary of my blog, the OG version of The Callaway Report, as well! Take a gander here.

As some of you know, my holiday side gig is making sequined ornaments. It’s a bit of a tradition in my family, dating back to the 1940s, when my grandmother and a group of her friends would make gorgeous holiday balls using sequins, beads and ribbons to sell at the St. Luke’s church bazaar.

I proudly picked up her mantle about a decade ago, making balls first for my own tree and for gifts. A few years ago, people on Instagram began asking if I gave classes. Flash forward to now, when I’m entering my third year of teaching.

Every December, I host a series of public ornament making classes at stylish locations around Nashville. During each two-hour class, participants design and make their own 3-inch sequined ball, using my curated stash of sequins, ribbons, pins, and beads, the majority of them secondhand and vintage.

I just announced my 2025 line up:

Mon., Dec. 3 - Interior Anthology
1250 Old Hillsboro Road, Franklin
5-7 PM

Thu., Dec. 11 - Ostara Gardens
Neuhoff District, 1312 Adams St., Germantown
6-8 PM

Mon., Dec. 15 - Reed Smythe
73 White Bridge Road, Belle Meade
4-6 PM

Tue., Dec. 16 - Graduate Hotel Nashville
101 20th Avenue North, Midtown
5-7 PM

Thu., Dec. 18 - Heirloom Artifacts
5133 Harding Pike, Belle Meade
5:30 - 7:30 PM

Each two-hour class is $150 per person and includes instruction and all materials. Guests must be at least 16 years old.

To reserve a spot at Interior Anthology, Ostara Gardens, Graduate Nashville, and Heirloom Artifacts, please send an email to libby@thecallaway.com and indicate which class you’d like to attend; I’ll send payment information then. Details coming on Tuesday, Dec. 2 for Reed Smythe. Please check back!

Reservations and full payment must be received at least one day before the event. All sales are final. No refunds will be accepted except in the case of class cancellation.

For those who prefer to skip the work and get right to the good stuff, my balls will be for sale at Savas in Wedgewood Houston and at the holiday pop-up at Neuhoff District starting next week.

Hope to see you there!

Libby

P.S. There’s still time to book a private class as well! Zip me an email (libby@thecallaway.com) and I’ll send you details.

Two weeks ago, in my roundup I mentioned that I was interviewing my friend, the Alabama-based fashion designer Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin, at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum sometime soon. Well, soon is now: our talk is this Thursday, August 28 at 6:30 PM.

The chat is part of Callaway Conversations at the Frist, my ongoing style talk series, and timed to the museum’s current exhibit, Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

As I mentioned in my other post, I met Natalie in 2003 the night of her first New York Fashion Week show for her former company, Project Alabama (though it shared the aesthetic and ethos of AC, it closed in 2006). Other than her fellow Florence, Alabama-based fashion designer, Billy Reid (see Footnotes), I didn’t know many Southern designers in New York, let alone one whose work was based on the kind of hand-stitching used by quilters.

My mom, Phyllis, is a devoted quilter: she’s made hundreds of quilts over the years (and many of Natalie’s patterns as well). So after spending years covering your Versaces and your Calvin Kleins, something felt very familiar and right-on to me about a business powered by a workforce of quilters, some of them under-employed former professional sewers whose jobs in Florence’s booming textile industry were displaced by NAFTA. When I met Natalie, I knew she was someone who had a bigger mission than just getting picked up by fancy department stores — which at that point had already happened for her: in the early aughts, her clothes were being sold at Barneys.

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Through Alabama Chanin, now in its 19th year, Natalie has proved that a fashion company can operate equitably and sustainably, incorporating the traditional work of professional craftspeople while giving them employment and recognition where there otherwise would be none. She’ll demur if you say this in front of her, but Natalie has built something extraordinary: a truly noble fashion business that celebrates community and the art of making as much as form, function and design. Alabama Chanin is absolutely singular — just like its founder.

Nashvillians — if you don’t have plans on Thursday night, I’d love to invite you to come to our talk. It’s FREE with museum admission, which you’ll want to get anyway to see the exhibit beforehand. More information is here.

Here’s my blurb about the talk:

In 2000, when fashion industry veteran Natalie “Alabama” Chanin moved back to her hometown of Florence, Alabama, after years working in Europe, she leaned on the local sewing community to create her first collection of hand-sewn T-shirts, using traditional Depression era quilting stitches. T-shirts led to couture garments including wedding gowns, all hand-sewn from recycled organic cotton clothing that she bought from thrift stores, and sold to elite vendors including the iconic New York department store Barneys New York. Within a few years, her company, Alabama Chanin, became recognized as an international leader in the zero-waste and “slow design” fashion movements, which prioritize responsible production and consumption. At the same time, through the production of her garments, she has contributed to the preservation of the rich tradition of quilting and hand-sewing in the South.

FOOTNOTES

Re Natalie’s website: If you want to spend several really worthy hours learning about Alabama Chanin and the work it does, as well as the people, processes, and ideas that fuel it, dig in to Natalie’s company website. It’s dense with information. And it’t gorgeous to boot.

Re Billy Reid: I met Billy in 2001, on the night his then-business, William Reid, won his first CFDA Award. I can’t believe it, but I just found the story I wrote back then predicting his win! I was the only journalist who said he’d do it. Every other critic in town (including the Times) was calling it for Sean John. I’d had one meeting with Puffy earlier in the year, a day before his runway debut, and had immediately called BS on his BS. Hard no.

Re Natalie & Billy living in the same town: How random is it that there are two CFDA members living and working in The Shoals? What are the odds? CFDA chief exec Steven Kolb once told me that in terms of membership, the biggest concentration of designers was in New York, followed by Los Angeles, followed by … Florence, Alabama.

Re the two Florences: Another shocker/blast from the past: I wrote a travel story in 2015 for the New York Post (in publishing, you can always go home again) contrasting travel to Florence, Alabama and Florence, Italy. Had totally forgotten about this one.

I was talking to a friend last week about the OG TCR, and she suggested I repost a few of them here — a great idea that I’m taking her up on. (If you want to see more posts from the original TCR, you can do so here. I’ll also be posting them here from time to time.)

I actually referred to the installment from June 2016 that I’m sharing this week in a post that went up a few weeks ago about my guest room, which was inspired by a print from electra eggleston, the textile company owned by my dear friend, Andra Eggleston. I loved all of my old TCR posts, but this one has a special resonance due to Andra’s fearlessness as she shared details about how her unconventional upbringing shaped who she is and what she does. That plus Heidi Ross’s amazing photos make it a real keeper.

As for a peg, there’s no particular reason I’m running this story, now, other than I love Andra and it was her birthday last week. So read on and wish her a happy birthday if you see her! Enjoy.

Andra Eggleston | Textile Designer & Owner of Electra Eggleston

This story was originally published in July 2016. The only change I made was to add the video link at the bottom of the eighth paragraph.

About ten years ago, I got an incredible assignment from a travel magazine: drive from Nashville to Miami, stop at every thrift store along the way, and write about it. No twisting of my secondhand blouse-covered arm was needed for me to accept.

On one of the last days of my trip, I came across a pair of Regency-style chairs at a junk store in Naples, Florida. They had terrific lines and sat on round metal casters. The paint job on the wooden frame and vinyl upholstery had seen better days (and perhaps too many damp bathing suit bottoms), but that’s what you get for $10.

I didn’t really have room for them in my car, but there was no way I was going to leave them there. I wedged them into the back, by then filled with several dozen bags of vintage clothes, and drove home to Tennessee with a rear view that was more than partially obscured.

I used the chairs as-was for years. They didn’t look terrible-terrible, but they definitely needed to be reupholstered. But I wasn't willing to throw just anything on them and I couldn't find a fabric I loved. These were special to me, and they deserved a special textile. I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew that I’d know it when I saw it.

Two months ago, I finally pulled the trigger. The winning fabric: a pink and black hieroglyphic print called “Cairo” by electra eggleston, the textile company belonging to my friend Andra Eggleston.

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If Andra’s last name sounds familiar, you can thank your art history teacher. Her dad is William Eggleston, the Memphis-based photographer who is widely considered to be the father of color photography. electra eggleston is a project that the father-daughter team shares. William supplies the artwork – little paintings and sketches, some of them tossed off on the back of receipts, others taken from his archives (read the ee process story here)— and Andra turns each into a repeat. The finished patterns, named after an international locale (Berlin, Havana, Kentucky, etc.), are then sent to North Carolina to be printed onto gorgeous silks and linens.

I love every one of electra eggleston’s 15 prints, but Cairo really spoke to me. Design-wise, it’s perfect for the chairs — a dynamic, almost edgy black, white and pink Egyptian motif that’s a cool juxtaposition to their traditional silhouette. You can see for yourself in the photos here.

I’ve been waiting for the right time to feature Andra on TCR and this week felt good for a few reasons. First of all, my chairs’ homecoming seemed like a great opportunity to sit down with her to talk about the life that led her to textile design and Electra Eggleston. Plus, this Sunday is Father’s Day, the perfect time to talk to Andra about her dad and growing up. William Eggleston is famously eccentric and Andra had a colorful childhood, which she recounts here with remarkable candor and humor. (You can see their father/daughter dynamic in action this Sunday, when the two will be featured in a segment on CBS Sunday Morning. NOTE: The clip ran on July 19, 2016: watch it here.)

This story also presented a great excuse for me to finally collaborate with Heidi Ross, a Nashville-based photographer and all-around creative juggernaut. She photographed Andra and Louie, her son with husband Emery Dobyns, playing dress-up, lounging on my recovered chairs and sneaking around the worksite of the home they're renovating in East Nashville. It’s a beautiful, moody shoot and I’m very proud to share it, along with Andra’s beautiful and honest interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

TCR: What was it like growing up with a famous last name?

AE: Difficult. Not comfortable.

TCR: Really?

AE: As an adult, I feel differently about it. I'm so proud of my name, and I really honor how long it took my dad to get where he is. And I'm just so grateful. But when I was a kid, I didn't want to be an Eggleston. It was just a really unpredictable, really unsafe feeling for me. There were always stories about my dad in the newspaper. And I always felt like an outsider. Always.

TCR: A lot of his success came in the '70s when you were younger.

AE: His big, monumental success came in 1976 when he had his first one-man show at the MOMA. I was five then. My memories of his career and of being a kid were that it was just wild.

One time, I woke up in the middle of the night hearing gunshots in my house. And my dad was just firing (a gun) at a wall. There would be a shot and then after I'd hear my mom go, "Oh!" Gunshot. "Oh!" Gunshot. “Oh!” [Laughs]

TCR: One of my first memories of meeting you was at a dinner party a few years ago. We were talking about A Clockwork Orange for some reason, and you said, "Yeah, I watched that when I was six."

AE: I watched it with my mom. Any other mother would have been like, “We're turning this off.”

TCR: But in your case, it’s like, “Nihilism's a good thing for you to know about.”

AE: I was just that kid, though. I think I came into the world a little bit afraid. I came out dodging snowballs. You know? But I got through that.

TCR: Memphis and Nashville are only three and a half hours away and yet the culture of each is so different.

AE: So different. For me, the biggest difference is that so much of Memphis's history is grounded in violence. I mean, Martin Luther King was assassinated there, the Civil Rights movement (was happening there in full force), the Mississippi River was the hub of the slave trade… And of course, there's blues versus country. Blues music is more violent than country. Country feels wholesome to me; blues does not.

TCR: Also, the avant garde art scene that I understand was happening in Memphis 40 or so years ago was not happening here.

AE: It really was happening there. Truly. The cast of characters around my dad was real. The entourage that he had in Memphis was totally insane. And the city is so eccentric. I think it's no accident that my dad came from Memphis.

TCR: Was art part of your life growing up?

AE: Art was a part of my life in every shape and form. I really couldn't get away from it. It was multidimensional for me. It wasn't just photographs. My dad was drawing all the time. Music was profound. My dad played piano. I grew up around a piano and a harpsichord and five synthesizers. There was music all day, all night.

So, it was a very eclectic and creative environment. My mom was very literary. Together, my parents were very theatrical. It was something you realize only in retrospect, but they were colorful in the best way. And it really shaped who I am.

I spent so much of my younger years resisting that part of myself because it was very unsettling. I didn't ask (to grow up in such a vibrant environment); it kinda got thrown into my face. My inherent personality requires that I be calm and centered, and this just didn't pair up with it. But now I'm so grateful.

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TCR: You were surrounded by nonconformity as a kid. So how did you rebel?

AE: That’s a really good question! It was hard. [Laughs]

I rebelled in my sense of humor, which got me into trouble a lot. I was on conduct probation my whole freshman year in high school. I almost got kicked out and switched schools in tenth grade. I was in supervised study. I lived in detention. I was just always up to no good.

I wasn’t outspoken. I wasn’t the loudmouth. I would just do things that were disruptive. I was a real instigator, too. It’d get everyone else worked up. [Laughs]

In college at the University of Tennessee, I got kicked out of my sorority, which falls right in place with my behavioral issues.

But senior year, everything sort of came together for me. I wrote a one-act play that was chosen to be performed on the radio. When it was, I stood up in front of my class and acted one of the roles. It felt right. The theater department (performed the play) after that. Later, some people (who had seen both versions) came up to me and said, "You know what? I just can't get you in that role out of my head. You should have been in (the second) version too." [Laughs] And I was like, hmmm.

TCR: What did you do after you graduated?

AE: I went home for several months and then moved out to LA. And I just fell in love with plays.

When I was in LA, I was too afraid to say that I went out there to be an actor. Talk about a total identity shift, you know? Even though I was quite a performer growing up with my humor and my behavior, it was never focused or channeled into anything positive. And I just didn't have the confidence to say that that's what I was going out there for. I got a job in entertainment at a management company and took acting classes on the side. It took me several years to finally go, "I'm doing this.” And I loved it. I worked in stage and film.

TCR: When did textile design come into the picture?

AE: It came after I went through a really intense therapy treatment at this place called The Primal Institute. This was in 2005. It changed my life.

TCR: What instigated that?

AE: A break up. I had a nervous breakdown. [Laughs] Have you ever heard of The Primal Institute?

TCR: Yeah. From the ‘70s.

AE: So you know it's based on this book called The Primal Scream, and that John Lennon did it, right? It's old-school therapy. I remember my therapist saying, "You're going to figure out who you are, and when you get out of here, you're going to be shocked. We’re going to get to the real you." And I was kinda like, eh. But when I got out, I couldn’t get back up on stage.

I had just been through a gut-wrenching three weeks of therapy, every day for hours a day. I was a blank slate. And I was, like, I don't think I want to do that anymore. Acting. It was terrifying to me. It sounded horrible. Why would I want to get up on stage in front of people?

So I thought, what do I like to do other than acting? I mean, I hadn't asked myself that in a really long time. And I started looking.

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You were asking how I rebelled? Another way that I rebelled was my sense of fashion and my dress in high school. I was always the one who was wearing things that people would make fun of. Like, I remember in the '80s, I bought a pair of overalls, and no one wore overalls.

TCR: How very Dexys Midnight Runners of you.

AE: And people were just, “I can't believe you had the nerve to wear fucking overalls.” I was that person who was always wearing fashion-forward things, going out on a limb. I was interested in fashion, but I didn't know in what capacity. So I started looking up programs and in my research I came across textile design.

Suddenly, all these memories came flooding in. When I was a kid, I used to draw things in repeat all the time. That was how I drew. I drew in patterns. And I didn't even understand that that was something. I just thought that I was bizarre. [Laughs] I saw that program and I thought, I can do that.

I had to come up with a portfolio. Had to build one from scratch. It was a real personal investigation into myself.

TCR: What did your early patterns look like?

AE: They were very abstract. They're not like my dad's. They were not dense, but they were more spaced out.

TCR: Is this around the time you met Emery?

AE: I met Emery in Paris, actually. In the lobby of a hotel.

My dad was on a business trip and I was with him. I was straight out of school and was going to show my portfolio. I had meetings with agnes b and Issey Miyake’s people.

And it was an amazing, exciting trip. And Emery was staying in the same hotel. At the time, he was working for Patti Smith. It was Fashion Week, and she was performing during agnes b's runway show.

TCR: What an incredible coincidence.

AE: I know – it’s a sweet story.

TCR: Is that the same trip you and your dad did the Marc Jacobs shoot with Juergen Teller?

AE: That was the same trip! Can you believe that? So, Juergen really wanted my dad to do the (Spring/Summer 2007) campaign. P.S. — my dad was like, "Do I have to wear their clothes?" He was not interested. [Laughs]

So, Juergen said to Winston (my younger brother), “Winston – I’ll give you some clothes. Your dad doesn't have to wear anything. Just get him to show up." And we were just like, "How are we gonna do this?" [Laughs]

So Juergen rented a suite at the Hotel de Crillon. He had this idea that Charlotte Rampling should be in the shoot as well. So, we got a room at the Crillon, ordered bottles of champagne, and just basically hung out. And he shot it on the bed – with all of us. It was so much fun. Juergen’s assistants got in the photos, my dad's assistant… I got in the picture, and the one that they ended up using is one where my face is in the corner.

TCR: That was a hell of a trip!

AE: It was a hell of a trip. I met the man I was gonna spend the rest of my life with. I had these amazing meetings. I got to go my first fashion shows ever, and they were in Paris. It was just so inspiring.

TCR: I love the respect Parisians have for fashion. Americans have a much different relationship with it as a craft and as a part of popular culture. In Paris, it’s art. I mean, during Fashion Week there, even the cab drivers there know who’s showing and where.

AE: I know. It's so sophisticated, and such a celebration.

TCR: You just collaborated with agnes b. What’s the story there?

AE: I was in Paris earlier this year, but didn’t get to see her. But I wanted to show her what I was doing. So when I got home, I sent her a box of my samples. And then I forgot about it, because I had so many other things going on. And out of the blue she reaches out to ask about using the prints.

And you know what's crazy? The morning I got the email, I had had a dream that she called me, and she said, "So, tell me the story." And I was like, "What story?" And she said, "The story of the prints, about you and your dad." So I tell her the whole story. And she's like, "Well, I think what you're doing is really great and we want to use some of your prints." And then I woke up. So I had an awesome dream about agnes b, and then I woke up and checked my email, and there was a note from her assistant saying that she wanted to use some prints. Very rarely have I ever had anything like that happen. It’s the most direct, psychic experience I've ever had. It wasn't symbolism. It felt very literal.

It was a real personal dream for me. She is the first big designer I ever showed any of my prints, and now she's the first to license my prints.

I'm really excited to create new collections with fashion in mind because it's going to be a totally different process. With fashion, it’s OK that the patterns are bold, whereas the interior market is so fundamentally different.

TCR: Is it a challenge to get interior designers to use your textiles, because they are bold? That’s so funny, because it’s what I really respond to about them.

AE: And so many people do. But the day that I went into the showroom (that represents electra eggleston) in Los Angeles, they were hosting a panel with four designers talking about how to use neutrals, which they said is important since no one's using color.

TCR: And you’re like, great.

AE: I was texting my sales rep, like, "Are you kidding me? You guys are having a panel on how not to use color?" I'm always astonished when I look in interior design magazines and I see these color palettes and the boldest color in the room is always blue.

TCR: I always want the opposite: I go for the brightest color.

AE: Me, too. I don't understand why more people don't want that.

TCR: On that note, I love the chairs I had covered in your Cairo print. They turned out so well. Can’t wait for you to come over and see them in their natural habitat! What’s it like seeing your prints living in other people’s spaces

AE: Oh it’s a dream! It really is the best feeling to see a product you made go from a sample to the end user. And I love the diversity in people's tastes, what they choose, and how they decide to apply it. I didn't set out to "make people happy" with my fabrics, but surprisingly that is the biggest payoff for me. I have had people tell me how happy they feel after looking at one of my prints. This almost brings tears to my eyes. Like they have fallen in love. I don't know what could feel better than that, honestly.

TCR: What’s it been like working with your dad on electra eggleston? He must be proud.

AE: Also a dream… I have never heard my father say he was proud of me until now. Not that he wasn't, I just don't think he knew what to say. And now as a combination of things, my mother passing, his getting older, this sweet partnership we created, our mutual interest – yes, he is proud. And his face lights up when I walk in the room. I think he's telling me he loves me in the best way he knows how. And vice versa.

Our multi-talented friend Heidi Ross is a whiz with a camera. These photos of Andra and Louis are some of my all-time favorites of her work, which includes the outstanding collaboration with author Ann Patchett, Nashville: Scenes from the New American South. Follow Heidi on Instagram at @heidirossphoto.

My Post-Bag Era

I haven’t wanted to carry a purse lately. I have a few thoughts as to why.

First, I don’t need one. I work from home. When I do leave my house, it’s usually only for a few hours and I don’t need everything I can fit in a typically sized handbag. Or if I do have more than I can pocket, I can leave what I’m not using at that moment in my glove compartment. I’m all about traveling light (note that this does not apply to luggage: there, I’m hopeless).

Second, I have designer bag fatigue. I know I risk contradicting myself, as I sit here wearing rose tinted Gucci bifocals. (Regarding my aviators — they are prescription: I’m not that much of an asshole. However, as someone wearing orange tinted Wayfarers at 10 PM joshingly pointed out to me recently, I did make the decision to wear tinted glasses. So there is that.)

I do appreciate the craftsmanship and design of luxury bags, and have more than a few older designer purses myself (occupational hazard of having had access to private designer sample sales in NYC: I have six Chanel bags that I got for so little dough you won’t believe it — a story for another post, for sure). But carrying an it-can-only-be-that shaped or branded bag right now feels a little Marie Antoinette.

Third, I have more pockets at my disposal than I have in the past. This is thanks to the men’s suits I’ve been wearing (first mentioned here) and my attempt to rock them a la dude. That means only carrying a slim wallet, keys, a phone, and some kind of lippy tucked into one of the many deep, roomy hideaways that men’s suits have.

The challenge, of course, is doing this without adding sags and bulges that will ruin “the line,” aka how a piece of clothing is designed to fall. You need to travel light doing the suit thing sans bag. So if anything, this has forced me to pare down — and find a more compact version of the chunky Gucci Westman Baby Cheeks Blush Stick I use as lipstick.

When I carry a bag, the rule is that it has to add something to my outfit. For example, last weekend I wore a head-to-toe white combo of a loose, button-up linen shirt and gauze skirt from the Japanese company MUJI — one of the few places I buy new clothes (my closet has been predominately secondhand or vintage for the last 35 years). It doesn’t have adequate pockets, so on a whim, I pulled out a beaded raffia clutch that used to be my mom’s. I’m counting my gold ankle-tie sandals as a neutral here, so the vintage turquoise bag was the only real color. The outfit looked fine before, but the bright clutch was sartorial MSG, giving it some bite.

These little beaded bags are great and readily available on auction sites. I like this one, this one, and this one.

Robin Givhan on Marc Jacobs

Last week, my old friend Robin Givhan, senior critic-at-large for The Washington Post — and, in 2006, the first-ever fashion critic to win a Pulitzer — published a great piece about Marc Jacobs and his influence on fashion and the culture beyond. Read it and let me know specifically what you think about his use of the term “contempt prior to investigation.” It made me stop and think about how I react to new information or processes. I love it when a fashion interview challenges me to reconsider how I approach the world.

Mentioning Robin makes me a little nostalgic. When I was covering fashion shows in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s for the New York Post, I was always seated beside her and Booth Moore, then the fashion editor at the LA Times (check out her great Substack). Didn’t matter where we were in the world, we always found ourselves in a section I imagined the PRs labeling “Influential Newspapers That Aren’t the New York Times.” I could not have asked for kinder, sharper seat mates to keep me company while waiting for shows to start.

PS. Robin has a new book about the late designer Virgil Abloh called Make It Ours. I can’t wait to make it mine (surely I’m not the first person to use that line?). Congratulations, Robin!

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The Amplifier’s Rap Mix

This is great. Read NY Times writer Jonathan Mahler’s story about how a New York City in turmoil produced some of its most indelible music here. And if you’re not signed up to get the paper’s weekly Amplifier newsletter, I recommend doing so. I always hear or learn something new.

Heirloom Tomato Salads

I eat a tomato for lunch and/or dinner every day when they’re in season, as they are now (thank you God). Nine times out of ten, I prepare them one of two ways.

With recipes I know well, I subscribe to what the French call cooking au pif, so I don’t have measurements to share. It’s ready when the flavors are balanced to your liking.

Salad No. 1 involves taking a huge Cherokee purple heirloom (my personal fave), cutting it into cubes, and plopping it on top of a squishy piece of burrata. Drizzle with some good olive oil, sprinkle on minced Serrano pepper and sea salt, and boom.

Salad No. 2 features a tomato plus in-season watermelon and a really good sheep’s milk feta (I keep multiple tins of Valbreso in my fridge). Cube the tomato and the melon, toss with feta and diced Serrano (I put it on everything), and dribble on olive oil and flaky sea salt to taste. Yum to the yum.

Saint Viviana Sauvignon Blanc

I am crazy for this wine. It’s dry (sweet is the undoing of alcohol-removed vino), crisp, and one of the very best NA whites I’ve ever had — and I’ve had many, thanks to Killjoy, my neighborhood sans-alcohol beverage emporium (I wrote about them a few years ago). According to the KJ website, Saint Viviana Sauvignon Blanc has “green herbs on the nose, ripe orange, grapefruit, and melon on the palate.” Sure. All I know is I want to always have a case handy so I never run out.

Get it for $27 at Killjoy in East Nashville. (I am sure it’s other places too, but I’m remaining biased.)

Callaway Conversations at the Frist | Natalie Chanin

Time for a bit of self-promotion.

I’m interviewing my old friend, the Alabama-based designer Natalie Chanin, at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum on Thursday, August 28. It’s part of Callaway Conversations at the Frist, my ongoing style talk series, and timed to the museum’s current exhibit, Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

I met Natalie in 2003, at her first New York fashion show, held at Bowlmor Lanes (RIP) on University Place near Union Square. I remember models walking the lanes in her signature hand-stitched clothes (a delight after hours of white runways and minimalism in Bryant Park), attempting to casually knock down a few pins after the show (I decidedly suck), and seeing Debbie Harry, who was a guest and always a fun downtown celebrity sighting. I’ve been a fan and friend of Natalie’s ever since.

I’d love for you to come hear our chat! It’s free with gallery admission, which you’ll want to do anyway to see the exhibit. More information is here.

Here’s my blurb about the talk:

In 2000, when fashion industry veteran Natalie “Alabama” Chanin moved back to her hometown of Florence, Alabama, after years working in Europe, she leaned on the local sewing community to create her first collection of hand-sewn T-shirts, using traditional Depression era quilting stitches. T-shirts led to couture garments including wedding gowns, all hand-sewn from recycled organic cotton clothing that she bought from thrift stores, and sold to elite vendors including the iconic New York department store Barneys New York. Within a few years, her company, Alabama Chanin, became recognized as an international leader in the zero-waste and “slow design” fashion movements, which prioritize responsible production and consumption. At the same time, through the production of her garments, she has contributed to the preservation of the rich tradition of quilting and hand-sewing in the South.

And Finally, Names I Call My Cats

In no particular order:

Mew Mews, Miu Mius, Moo Moos, Boo Boos, Les Petits Poo Poos, Schmoos, Mairzy Doats & Dozy Doats, Puddin’ & Pie, Moodles, Schmoodles, Poodles, Poodle Doodle Doos, Poodley Doodleys, Poodle Doodle Ding-Dongs, The Fuzz

Specific to George: G., Georgie, Georgie Georgerton, Porge, Smorge, The Dark Knight, The Prince of Darkness

Specific to Thomas: T., Tom, Tommy, Tom Tom, Tum Tum, Tommy Tum Tum Tum, Tom Tom-Tom-Tom… TOOOOOOMMMM!, Pooter, Poots McGee

I’m not telling anyone, anywhere, anything new when I say it’s hot outside. Really, really hot.

To combat the steamy weather, I’m spending a lot of time at home, inside with my cats (I am definitely becoming that woman), watching TV and movies.

Despite all of the streamers coming out with new releases, I’ve been bathing in the cool waters of nostalgia. When I’m not working my way back through 30 Rock (my all-time favorite set-up below), I’m digging into the ‘70s — Marathon Man, The French Connection, The China Syndrome… You know: sadistic Nazis dentists, heroin smugglers, nuclear meltdowns. Light stuff.

It was with sheer delight that I returned to another humdinger from my first decade of life: All That Jazz.

The movie came out in 1979, so the first time I saw it was on VHS, probably the early ‘80s. I definitely saw it at the home of Gaye Romaine, my eccentric second mother and one of my own mother’s BFFs.

Gaye, who died about 15 years ago from cancer, had a daughter my age who was my good friend. So I spent a lot of time at the Romaines, who lived two blocks away from my childhood home and across the street from my grandparents (downtown Cleveland, TN is thick with Callaways). Ostensibly, I’d visit to play with Sally. But I was secretly soaking up the indulgent bizarro world that was Gaye’s day to day life.

I adored her, but even at a young age (I was a constant chez Romaine from about age 8 through 14), I knew that Gaye was living in a fantasy world. A lot of things at their house just did not compute. Not that that stopped me from going.

The vibe at my parents’ home was relatively calm, rule-abiding, and comfortably consistent (thank you, mom and dad). If my home was a benevolent monarchy, the Romaine’s bordered on anarchy.

Gaye was unpredictable, and being with her was thrilling for me: you never knew what was going to happen next. There weren’t a lot of rules, and the ones that were in place were frequently broken. Plans were deviated. Deadlines blown. There’s a lot more to this story, but I’ll save it for a potential future post.

Gaye didn’t work and had access to money, so she was able to be peripatetic in her interests, which often involved expensive start-up and maintenance equipment and lessons. She had a lot of part-time personas, including but in no way limited to chef, horsewoman, actor, decorator, and animal wrangler (cats were one of her ongoing obsessions; not long before Gaye died, she had 35, which is as much of a nightmare scenario as it sounds). Of her many identities, the one that I think she prized the most was dancer.

It’s funny: I have no idea if Gaye was any good. As a kid, I hadn’t seen enough ballet to be discerning. I loved her, so she was great! But whatever her actual skill level, in terms of gung-ho-ness, Gaye was the best damn dancer to ever attempt a grand jeté.

Gaye had a lot of dance media sitting around— films, records, magazines, books. The movies in her collection were filled with great performances, but as I mentioned, they were a bit too sophisticated for me at that point. Regardless, I consumed a lot of pop culture at that house — and considering Gaye and Sally subsisted on beef bullion and TaB, media was pretty much my only option for sustenance when I was visiting.

Well before Gaye took me to Atlanta to see it performed live by a touring company, I was obsessed with her soundtrack of A Chorus Line. Again, I had no idea what the majority of the more risqué references meant. The music made me incredibly happy; the message was just a byproduct.

In the same vein, before I was 14 I saw The Turning Point no less than two dozen times with Gaye, never comprehending the central narrative of professional regrets and personal roads not taken going on between Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine. I just knew there was a love scene starring Baryshnikov.

But it was Gaye’s copy of All That Jazz, with its sexy, electric, over-the-top-in-all-the-ways aplomb, that really razzle-dazzled me with glamour, sex, and death years before I should have been razzle-dazzled that way.

Back then, ATJ was a titillation. Watching it now in middle-age (stream it here for free), I know it as a fictional telling of the mid-life breakdown and demise of choreographer Bob Fosse — as imagined by Fosse himself. Fosse wrote and directed, and was therefore very much alive while ATJ was being filmed. I guess that makes it a pre-posthumous autobiography?

As in real life, the movie version of Fosse relied on a self-defeating combination of drugs, sex, non-stop work, drama, and passive-aggression to keep going. ATJ charts the imaginary fallout when the nasty combo stops delivering, leading to a final curtain call for Joe Gideon, the Fosse stand-in. He’s played by the dreamy Roy Scheider, four years post-Jaws, another classic ‘70s movie I rewatch at least once a year.

ATJ is split into “reality” and fantasy scenarios. The former finds Gideon releasing a dud of a movie and half-heartedly directing commercials while balancing, to no great success, the needs of his money guys and the far too-patient women in his life. In a re-occurring bit, he starts every morning with a cassette of Vivaldi’s Concerto in G, a cigarette, eyedrops, Alka-Seltzer, a shower, amphetamines, and a jokingly self-reassuring mantra to the mirror: “It’s showtime, folks!”

Gideon’s phantasmagoric dream world includes a series of non sequitur conversations with a beautiful angel of death (Jessica Lange) and exaggerated versions of his wife, girlfriend, and daughter sending him messages via song and dance numbers.

The capper is a 10-minute pre-death spectacle, “Bye Bye Life” (stream it below). Set against a silver mylar set, the scene is populated by a silver-faced band (paging KISS); an audience of Gideon’s plain-clothed friends, family, and foes; Ben Vereen as a slinky, cat-suited emcee; and most notably a pair of sinewy dancers in white bodysuits covered with exaggerated red and blue veins, a reference to the open heart surgery Gideon endures earlier in the movie (Scheider wears a long silver scar down the middle of his chest in this number for the same reason). It’s a freaky-deaky situation — glamorous, ridiculous, and self-indulgent — and I am here for it.

The trivia about ATJ is almost as good as the movie itself (watch the making-of doc here). A re-occurring point of contention is that Fosse claimed the non-fantasy elements of the movie were only loosely based on his life. Evidence proves otherwise.

Gideon’s jilted but still somehow loyal ex is a spot-on stand-in for Fosse’s real third wife and longtime creative partner, Gwen Verdon, played by Leland Palmer. Gideon’s dancer girlfriend is portrayed in the movie by the sensational Ann Reinking (one of my all-time girl crushes), who had broken up with Fosse in real life just before they started shooting. And Lange, the protagonist’s filmy death angel, began dating Fosse shortly after the movie wrapped. How’s that for meta?

In a film full of great dance performances (there are lots of links in this piece so you can find them easily), I have two favorites.

The first is the opening audition sequence. I love it for the same reason I love the opening number of A Chorus Line: it lays out the stressful, sweaty, heart-wrenching work behind Broadway’s smoke and mirrors. (Apparently, the trepidation on the dancer’s faces was real: many of them really were auditioning to dance later in the film and finding out their fate in real time. Viva la vérité!)

I have to mention the costumes and sets in this section. I die for ‘70s dance fashion — the color combinations (no era did mauves, rusts, ochers, pinks, teals, and greens better), cuts, and layering are really great here. It makes me want to stock up on strappy leotards, elastic waistbands, high-waist bootleg pants, and wrap skirts (ATJ won the Best Costume Design Oscar in 1980).

And check out that killer Blade Runner-looking soundstage. I know it’s industrial piping, but their application on the back wall reads as decoration. Why don’t more people design like this any more?

Next up: my favorite three minutes in the movie. In it, Ann Reinking and Erzsébet Földi, who plays Gideon’s daughter, debut a dance they made up to a version of “Everything Old Is New Again." It’s joyful, fun, and up-lifting. Good luck getting that song out of your head today. And OMG the legs on Ann! Insane.

Another reason I love this scene is that you get a good look at Gideon’s apartment, whose greatness I only clocked in my recent re-watching. This is one excellent New York real estate situation.

In the aforementioned Groundhogs Day wake-up sequences, the bottle of dexedrine lists Gideon’s NYC address as 61 East 58th Street — a location near the corner of Park Avenue that doesn’t really exist in terms of numbering. Apparently Fosse wanted to use his actual bachelor pad address, at number 58; the producers said no.

Regardless, what we get is a spacious, two-story white-box space with double-height ceilings and minimal decor. (The production designers won the Best Art Direction Oscar for their work, and while the movie didn’t clean up in the Best Picture category there, it did win the Palme d'Or when ATJ debuted in Cannes in 1979.)

I love the lived-in hodgepodge of a erudite New York apartment, and this is a sexy version of just that. There are personal touches like photographs, art, plants, posters, a record player set up, and over-stuffed bookshelves; two fab pieces of vintage neon (the blue figure in the tux and top hat is perfection); and some things that look like they were snagged from a set, like the tree of spotlights. In some shots you can see a room in the back, which seems to include a sexy sunken couch with an articulated chrome floor lamp and a huge expressionist art piece on the wall.

For me, the bucket list piece here is the silver metallic poster exclaiming OhWow in black Helvetic Bold script. Of course, I immediately hit up Google to see if I could find one. The search comes up cold, other than this Tumbr page, which gives the poster’s history (you could order one for $10 in 1977 from a New York company called BirthdayBook) and a mention of the only sale that anyone with the same curiosity has been able to find: an OhWow poster sold on AuctionNinja for $67 in 2020. Let the eBay saved searches commence!

Wearing menswear is not a new concept for me; I’ve been in sartorial alignment with the dudes pretty much all my life. (Somewhere in my mess of photos, there is a rather adorable pic of me and my dad in the very early ‘80s, dressed almost identically in blue button downs, bow ties [a Mike Callaway signature], and grey herringbone jackets — mine by Ralph Lauren from the boy’s department at Saks.)

As I get older, I find myself reaching for suiting more often than the colorful, feminine-leaning vintage dresses that have been my signature for over 40 years. I’ll always — always — love a maximalist look, and will continue to go to there when I’m in the mood (my closet archive isn’t going anywhere). But for the most part, at 55, I’m more comfortable in masculine looks based on trouser and jacket combinations. They fit my current mindset.

Welcome to my age of suits.

I have dozens of them in all styles, cuts, and fabrics. They are vintage and new, from the circa late ‘70s navy rayon sailor-style vintage suit by Sonia Rykiel and double-breasted grey wool Yves Saint Laurent jacket with matching skirt and trousers from the early ‘80s, to a modern, wide-legged orange number from Another Tomorrow and a blue seersucker men’s suit by Alex Mill I bought last year at STAG Nashville.

A few years ago, I started making a “hero list” of specific clothes and accessories that I’d like to eventually own. My dream suit entry is a three-piece custom concoction — a double-breasted jacket, a slim vest, and high-waisted, wide-legged pants —in a white three-season wool. I was able to cross black Lucchese boots off the list a few years ago; now it’s time to manifest this bone-colored baby.

The truth is, I already have five white suits in my closet, and three of them are menswear.

There’s this bright white linen entry by Todd Snyder, whose suits are my current favorites (I buy them in the smallest size and they are perfection).

Then there’s this double-breasted tux in eggshell silk, also by Todd. A few months ago, I wore it with vintage black lace bunny ears to the Frist Gala:

There’s a jazzy sequined situation gifted by Cinq à Sept a few years ago:

And this three-season off-white suit by an Australian designer named Ellin Ambe that I bought in Sydney in the early ‘00s, while I was working at the fashion desk of The Australian. I am obsessed with the jacket and wear it as a separate:

And last but not at all least, my grandfather’s double-breasted gabardine Haspel suit, which he famously (in my family) wore to the 1963 funeral of his friend, former Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. (Another “celebrity” encounter had that I just remembered: My model friend Karen Elson once borrowed Grandaddy’s suit to wear in a photo shoot for Bust magazine. Here’s a link to the shots by Kevin & King.)

I wear my white suits without regard to season or occasion (though in the name of sisterhood, I’d stop at wearing one to a wedding). I put them on despite being confident that I’ll drip coffee or iced tea on the trousers or catch the elbow of the jacket on a dirty corner at some point during the day. Such are the risks one must assume to rock el blanco.

Honestly, the entire concept of a white suit is pretty ridiculous. It’s so impractical and counterintuitive that it’s actually very punk rock.

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In their own way, white suit wearers mirror the intention behind the aggressively spiky hair, dangling chains, and torn black clothes of the original English punks. These looks are like armor. I mean, who’s going to fuck with someone bold enough to wear a safety pink through their septum or head-to-toe white outside the safety of their own clean home?

Beyond my closet, there is no shortage of examples of iconic white suit moments in the pop fashion universe. There are a lot more than this (as I’m about to publish this piece, I’m hitting myself in the head for not including David Byrne). If you have a favorite famous white suit, let me know in the comments.

In 1971, Bianca Jagger wore a white YSL skirt suit to marry Mick Jagger. Fifty-four years later, people are still talking about it.

Bianca’s white wedding look and the white pantsuits she became known for wearing later were the antecedent for Zendaya’s Louis Vuitton 2025 Met Ball redux, which I thought was the strongest look on that red carpet.

Later in the ‘70s, John Travolta made history in a three-piece polyester set in Saturday Night Fever, which sold at auction for $260,000 in 2023.

Mark Twain also embraced three-piece white suits, his in linen (that Mississippi sunshine…). Surprisingly, they didn’t become his signature until he was 71.

Like Zendaya, Justin Jones is a newer entry in the pantheon. But damn if the Tennessee State Representative doesn’t make an excellent case for white suits in the halls of the State Capitol. Jones’ embrace of the look was so notable, New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman wrote about it in 2023 as his national profile expanded.

But for me, the Platonic ideal of a white suit wearer is writer Tom Wolfe.

I can’t remember the first time I saw a picture of Wolfe in all of his natty, dandy white-suited glory. I suspect it was during my early pop-culture awakening in the mid-80s, via the author photo in his best-seller, Bonfire of the Vanities — a book that kickstarted my fascination with New York’s crazy social strata and introduced me to New Journalism (both of which, in retrospect, were great primers for my eventual job at the New York Post).

With respect, stripped down, Wolfe wasn’t an especially dashing fellow. It was his accoutrements — the suits, the spats, the high-necked striped bespoke shirts — that made him so memorable beyond his influential and distinctive writing.

There are a lot of fun pieces analyzing Wolfe’s white suit habit, which is mentioned in practically every story about him. In 2018, on the occasion of his death, Time magazine reprinted a Q&A with the author from1989, where Wolfe talks about how he incorporates observations about dress into his work, and addresses the history of his own distinctive look:

Q. What would you say about a character who wears a handsomely cut vanilla-colored suit on a winter day in New York, with a lilac tie and matching striped shirt with a collar seven stripes high, and shoes custom-designed to appear to have white spats?

A. I was afraid you might mention that. I suppose I might say, “Here’s somebody who’s trying to call attention to himself.” But I leave that to others to interpret. It’s always hard to describe yourself.

Q. Does it bother you to be called a “dandy”?

A. Not at all. Writers, whether they want to admit it or not, are in the business of calling attention to themselves. My own taste is counter-bohemian. My white suits came about by accident. I had a white suit made that was too hot for summer, so I wore it in December. I found that it really irritated people — I had hit upon this harmless form of aggression!

I really like the idea of something as inconsequential as a suit color being worn to piss people off. (Not to get too off topic, but I guarantee the people who would still be offended by this are the same ones who voted for the leaders currently dismantling the U.S.’s government-funded arts programming.) I love Wolfe’s delight in this discovery, and that he cared so little about what the haters thought.

I don’t shy away from being subversive in how I dress, either. I’ve never been scared to fight the power of the fashion police and totally disregard fashion conventions, stated or unstated, that I consider arbitrary or just utter BS. Color dictates are exactly that.

It’s not that I think I’m above the rules, and I don’t think I’m a narcissist. But I do have a healthy ego and comfort in my skin that allows me to enjoy being noticed for my unconventional packaging.

And when the wrapper is a stand-out white suit that makes me look and feel like some kind of dandy warrior queen, unafraid to irritate conservatives or weather a stain, I’m all in.

My Guest Room | Too Much is Absolutely Enough

When I started to plan my home renovation/redecoration seven years ago, I knew one thing: I wanted a room covered in fabric.

I’m a big fan of the American decorator Billy Baldwin, who had a thing for pattern-on-pattern design, a maximalist signature that saw him use the same print on repeat in a single room — for instance, a living room with shirred walls plus upholstered furniture (he loved a cozy couch) plus curtains, etc., all in the same size print — or playing with different variations and the scale of a one master pattern. He did this in some of my favorite old-school New York living rooms, including the fashion high priestess Diana Vreeland’s deep red floral print living room, which she called her “Garden in Hell.” It’s a look that I hope to recreate one day. (There’s a good story about it here.)

In the meantime, I decided to try the print-all-over concept to my guest room. My situation was drastically different from that of Babe Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt and Jackie Kennedy, all Baldwin clients in the late-mid 20th century, who embraced the maximal application of similar prints in one space. I was on a budget.

“You can’t afford it.” That’s what my dear friend, the textile designer Andra Eggleston, said when I told her I wanted to pull a Billy and shirr my guest room in “Cairo,” a now-retired print from the first collection produced by her company electra eggleston: a pink and black hieroglyphic-style print based on a drawing by her father, the legendary photographer William Eggleston.

I’d already used Cairo to upholster a pair of Regency-style chairs I got for $5 each years ago at a thrift store in Naples, Florida. (Below, there’s an almost decade-old pic of Andra and her son Louis in the chairs, taken by outstanding Nashville photographer Heidi Ross. The shot is from a feature in the first iteration of The Callaway Report that is well-worth checking out. ) I wanted to use the chairs as a jumping off point for Baldwin-esque, all-over coverage that would find the print on the room’s walls, molding, bedspread, dust ruffle, pillows, and curtains. Think overkill — but make it fabulous.

Andra wasn’t being snotty with her response; she was being practical and maybe a little protective. Covering my walls in her fabric, made from luxe 100% Irish linen, and then having custom pieces made from it for the bed and curtains would be a huge investment that I didn’t need to make, no matter how enthusiastic I was about the idea.

Happily, she had a more reasonable and affordable solution: make Cairo into a wallpaper and roll out the other fabric elements over time.

Andra had already been talking to a very cool, largely b2b wallpaper company in the northeast called Twenty2 which had approached her about a collaboration. She put me in touch with their enthusiastic women-led team and we came up with a plan to make my print-all-over wallpaper dreams come true.

It took Nashville wallpaper hanger Debbie Hall and two members of her team working together two and a half days to hang the Cairo paper in my guest room, mainly due to my insistence that all exposed surfaces — ceilings, doors, and molding from floor to ceiling — be covered. I know from wallpaper hangers — my mother’s family’s business was interior design, with a focus on wall and floor covering. At one time, my childhood home had more than 20 patterns in it (in two situations, my mother mixed five or more prints in a single room — eat your heart out, Baldwin). Unlike Tony Loftis, my mother’s wallpaper hanger nemesis during the year-plus renovation of her dream home back in 1978, Debbie’s team did an incredible job, aligning the print to flow up the back wall, across the ceiling and down the other three, while perfectly lining up the returns.

Eventually, I’ll make my print-all-over dream come true. In the meantime, “Andra’s Room” is still a stand-out, I suspect for its audacity as much as its ability to serve as a blackout room. Indeed, when you close the curtains, the room turns into the chicest of caves, perfect for those who love to sleep in.

A Case for Meeting Your Idols

When I moved to New York in 1995, it was to attend grad school in NYC. I got my masters in Cultural Criticism & Reporting, a concentration within New York University’s journalism school.

The CRC major was kind of like an American studies program for journalists. I read lots of theory — lots of Foucault, Sontag, a little Derrida — and lots of criticism, natch. Of course, everyone in the program had to take basic reporting classes, too.

I can’t remember the class, the assignment, or the professor — or who I talked to, for that matter — but for one class during our first semester we were assigned to interview a working journalist that we admired.

My friend Nadine — a smart, sexy Brit who hit on and broke a few hearts of some the guys in my clique — had a mad love for Gay Talese, the natty practitioner of the New Journalism (aka literary journalism) whose stories for Esquire in the ‘60s are required reading. (His feature about Frank Sinatra, called “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” is one of the best examples of New Journalism out there.)

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Anyway. Nadine did something amazing: she found Talese’s number (was it in the phone book? That’s how you found people back then), called him up, and asked for an interview. He was more than happy to oblige. (Related: I had a college friend who loved the writer Ken Kesey. Kesey’s name was listed in the Pleasant Hill, Oregon, phone book. So my pal dialed him up and they talked about writing for hours.)

Not only did Talese spend several hours at his apartment with Nadine, talking about his work, the next night he took her to Elaine’s, the famous Upper East Side restaurant that was a draw for writers and other creatives, as well as being his regular Sunday night hang. (I went a few times with Post people; once, Martin Scorsese, another regular, was at the next table, which was a bit of an “only in New York” moment for me.)

I remembered this story randomly last week, while I was enjoying a list of “Things Gay Talese Loves/Things Gay Talese Hates” in the Instagram feed of Dream Baby Press, a “literary entertainment company focused on literature and poetry.” I’m not sure how I was fed their feed, but all I can say is thank you, weird Meta algorithm, for bringing this Instagram handle into my life. (How often can you say that?)

Gay Talese is now 93 years old, and as you can tell from his answers to DBP, is still enjoying life. As well he should.

Spend some time on the Dream Baby Press website or Instagram. It’s a kick.

I’ve been *trying* to pare down my furniture collection lately, getting rid of the rote and the OK in favor of pieces that are necessary, delight-sparking or both, which is always the goal.

There are a few pieces I own whose provenance I’m curious about. While doing some online sleuthing, I happened upon a pretty handy service offered by some classic design companies. To say I got a kick out of the results is an understatement. My story starts below.

I found this killer bentwood chair five or so years ago at an antique mall south of Indianapolis (great vintage shopping there, as is the case in most of the Midwest). It was far from perfect shape, having been defaced with black marker by someone with a think for stars. I love the chair’s shape and would have bought it no mater what condition it was in (the lines are just so good), the real reason I pulled the trigger is those stars. They give it major mojo.

While I knew I’d never find out who painted the stars or why, I did want to know more about the design, which I had been calling a Thonet with absolutely no authority. So I did a little internet sleuthing and confirmed that in its original sans-star condition, it was at the very least a fabulous facsimile of the Danish company’s chair model No. 17. (Here’s a link to some No. 17’s on 1st Dibs, which also provides some history about the style.) I flipped it over and checked out the bottom’s structural nooks and crannies for stamps, tags or signatures (Google can tell you what to look for in these situations). Nada. I left it at that.

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Earlier this year, during the dregs of winter, I picked up the thread again and went poking around Thonet’s website, looking for their authentication tips. I was more than delighted to find a page of directions that explained how to date and verify the provenance of their chairs via email. I sent them a note explaining my history with the chair, as well as multiple photos of it, shot from different angles.

Ten days later, this arrived in my inbox:

Dear Libby

Thank you very much for your inquiry and interest in an evaluation. This model was copied very often. When there are no labels or stamps, we need to concentrate on the details. Based on the screws and the construction of the seat frame, it is most likely a Thonet Model 17, produced between 1866 and 1880.

I hope this was helpful.

Kind Regards,

Helen Thonet

Confirmation from a family member! If this isn’t brilliant customer service, I’m not sure what is.

Today, I got a marketing email from Fornasetti, a classic Italian design company that has a special way with trompe l’oeil. I have a small but (hopefully) expanding collection of their vintage pieces, including these two standouts:

A few years ago, I found a lamp base in a Georgia antique store that I’ve been calling Fornasetti but that I’ve never actually confirmed is legit. Inspired by my experience with Thonet, I sleuthed around their site and found a link for authentication questions.

Today I zipped Team Fornasetti an email to find out if my lamp is, in fact, legit. I can’t find another one online with the same Levanzo del Tempio Itella Concordia pattern that decorates mine (below), so I’ll be curious to know the truth. Stay tuned!

FOOD AND FASHION: WHERE APPETITE MEETS AESTHETICS

Saturday, March 1, 2025
4:00–5:00 p.m. CST

Frist Art Museum Auditorium
919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203

This Saturday, March 1, I have the honor of welcoming my dear friend Kerry Diamond to Nashville to join me on stage for the debut of Callaway Conversations at the Frist, my new series of talks taking place at the Frist Art Museum (there are two more in 2025). We’re talking about food and fashion, tied to the museum’s great new exhibit, Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism.

Kerry and I have known each other since the late ‘90s, when we were both working as fashion journalists in New York City. She eventually switched over to PR (like the best of us…) and spent several years in the late aughts opening restaurants in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens. During that time, she noticed and experienced firsthand the lack of exposure, support and resources for women in the food industry. In 2013, Kerry launched a magazine to provide just that.

Today, Cherry Bombe is much more than just a magazine. It’s a freaking movement, with robust coast-to-coast programming; a killer podcast, Radio Cherry Bombe (when does Kerry sleep?!); and a rapturously attended spring conference, called Jubilee (get it?). It’s currently the largest annual gathering of women in the food and beverage industry in the country.

Obviously, I’m enormously proud of Kerry and what she’s accomplished. So there was no question who I was going to cast as my expert for this talk. Thanks to her deep experience in both fashion and food, she really knows what she’s talking about.

Please join me in welcoming Kerry to Nashville and to the Frist this Saturday, March 1. Our talk, Food and Fashion: Where Appetite Meets Aesthetics, starts at 4 PM and is free with museum admission. Those who cant’t make it to Nashville or can’t make it down to the museum can join us virtually via this link. There will be a Q&A so come with questions!

I’ll close with the official spiel from the program. (I also included Kerry’s bio below, so you can read about all of the cool things she’s accomplished - and her pic, because she’s gorgeous.) See you on Saturday!

Libby

FOOD AND FASHION: WHERE APPETITE MEETS AESTHETICS

The worlds of food and fashion are more intertwined than ever before. Food imagery is gracing the runways of brands from Loewe to Chanel, and renowned fashion houses like Hermès and Prada are collaborating with chefs and pastry artists, blurring the lines between culinary and couture artistry. Beyond aesthetics, food has emerged as a powerful identity signifier—much like fashion and music—communicating values and social belonging. Fashionable creatives are embracing food as a medium of expression, using it to tell stories, challenge norms, and push the boundaries of both taste and style.

This talk will explore how these two dynamic industries are influencing one another, creating a vibrant and delicious intersection. In this first edition of Callaway Conversations at the Frist, Nashville creative consultant Libby Callaway talks to Kerry Diamond, the founder of Cherry Bombe, a media company that’s all about women and food.

About Kerry Diamond

Kerry Diamond is the founder of Cherry Bombe, a media company that celebrates women in and around the world of food. Kerry hosts Radio Cherry Bombe, the #1 podcast in the U.S. about women and food, and has interviewed hundreds of notable guests, including Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, Padma Lakshmi, Sofia Coppola, and Nigella Lawson. Kerry also hosted the HBO Max companion podcast for Julia, the series inspired by the life of Julia Child. She is the author of The Cherry Bombe Cookbook, which features recipes from 100+ culinary creatives, and is editor-in-chief of Cherry Bombe’s print magazine.

It wasn’t a total wash. I’m lucky, I know. There was joy, there was fun, there were pyramids in the sun.

In no particular order, three big 2024 highlights:

I became a cat lady. I welcomed George (named after my maternal great grandfather) and Thomas (for my paternal great-great-great-great grandfather) from under my HVAC and into my home in late August and it’s been a non-stop snuggle fest since. I was not prepared for how their love and mere physical presence would change my life. Yes, my house is 70% messier than it was pre-kitten, I’m spending way too much on fancy cat food (only the best for my #fancyboys), my arms are often marred by red scratches, my clothes constantly get hung up on the double-sided sticky stuff that keeps G&T from destroying my furniture, and my verbal default is now baby (cat) talk. Screw it. Cats rule. I should have done this years ago.

I went to Egypt. This bucket list trip with dear friends was my first time in both Africa and the Middle East. We went during low season, so no lines, but oy, the heat: we topped out at 116 in Aswan. But the majesty of that country, its people and its landmarks (I finally got to see the Sphinx!) is something not even the heat can beat. There is so much more to say about this trip that I can’t even begin to now. Soon.

I saw Joni Mitchell at the Hollywood Bowl. Another bucket list item — two, actually — checked. I’d never been to the Bowl, and it was an incredible night to do it. Joni still sounds amazing (the vibrato I love is still there) and ruled the stage in royal purple, a gold-topped cane in hand. And she made my night (my clear, dark, star-filled night, that is) by playing “Coyote.” And my sister Millie and I weren’t the only East Nashvillians in the house: friends Jess Wolfe Katz of Lucius and the inimitable Allison Russell played in Joni’s band.

Live music runner-up: T Bone Burnett at the CMA Theater in Nashville back in May. He’s such a badass.

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See? It wasn’t so bad.

2025, as I mentioned, is off to a terrifying start (I can’t fathom what Los Angeles is going through right now; please help however you can). But I’m still in glass half-full mode. Despite all of the horrifying news, I feel positive. We are going to learn to live and work together through this mess and come out stronger on the other side. I hope.

To do it, we have to finally break free from the comfort of the isolation many of us have been drifting in and out of since Covid ended (sorta kinda) and really engage to make it happen. Smart people I know are feeling deeply introspective right now, thinking about what changes they can make to improve our collective social, cultural and physical communities. Through this, I hope we’ll all learn to work creatively, venture outside of our silos more freely, and begin to really think and act locally, because that’s where we can really make real change happen. Small is big.

With this in mind, I’m relaunching this newsletter, without a solid content plan and any expectations for what its going to look like in, say, three months. I’m going to riff for a while and see what sticks when I free-style. I’m a professional over-thinker so this is going to be a bit of an experiment in habit-breaking. I’ve given it a lot of thought (SEE?), and I get into trouble when I launch into personal projects with too much structure and too many expectations in place. Yes, it’s great to be ambitious and have a plan, but you can end up building your own cage that way. And I’m feeling free. And, after a long time, I feel like sharing again. I hope you’ll follow along.

WHAT I’M INTO RIGHT NOW

MY PERSONAL COLLECTION OF VINTAGE SHOPPING BOOKS

I have a pretty special stash and I’ve been digging them out lately for inspiration — what, I’m not sure of. But it’s been fun. I especially love this one:

I thrifted a first-edition copy of this 1975 gem at the old Music City Thrift store in Madison almost 20 years ago. (A fun, very unrelated story about MCT: an acquaintance of mine once found a circa 1820 copy of the Declaration of Independence there for $2.48, one of 200 commissioned by John Quincy Adams. No shit.) Cheap Chic was written by former fashion journalists Carol Troy and photographer Caterine Milinaire, and despite its age, the book is pretty thorough in its scope and depth, packed with history and how-tos, as well as interviews with devoted “rag store” shoppers of the era and style icons like Diana Vreeland (a three-page monologue about her ideas about personal style and life post-Vogue), Zandra Rhodes and Fran Lebowitz. But Cheap Chic’s biggest strength is its mission, which posits that we should buy less and invest more in our clothes.

“We’ve become spoiled in America,” Troy writes. “Surrounded by mass manufacturing and mass marketing, we stuff out closets with masses of mistakes. Fashion seduces us from Sears to Saks in a dizzying array of styles, prices, fabrics and colors. We end up with far too many clothes, without stopping to consciously work out our own personal style and gather together the basic elements we need to get it going.” Guys, this was written 50 year ago. Will we ever learn?

You can find OG copies of Cheap Chic on re-sale sites and the 2015 40th anniversary re-issue online. Worth it.

LAUREN SHERMAN’S PUCK COLUMN

If you’re even slightly interested in how the fashion business works, you must subscribe to Puck to get access to ace journalist Lauren Sherman’s terrific column about the subject. Lauren is someone I’ve known for almost 15 years, having brought her to Nashville several times in the past when she was working for Fashionista and then Business of Fashion (also a must for fashion business followers who really like to get in the weeds). She’s one of the most informed fashion reporters out there, with an unpretentious approach that’s rooted on old-school reporting chops, hard-earned contacts, and a quick wit. It’s a must — especially if you want to get the behind the scenes info (and great goss) about the upcoming international Fashion Week carousel and award show dressing over the next few months.

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BUTTERLAMP BREAD & BEVERAGE

This incredibly cozy new addition to the East Nashville culinary ecosystem opened last fall, and since the new year, I’ve made it part of my weekly repertoire. I really have no excuse for waiting to do so: Butterlamp was on my radar after it was featured in last fall’s New York Times roundup of top Nashville restaurants (we can thank the great Ellen Fort for that) and is literally a block from my house. Like, out the door, turn right, walk 100 yards, turn left, quick right and I’m picking up the best bread I’ve eaten in Nashville. From 2 until 10 PM, Thursday through Monday, they do carry out: I pick up loaves of the O.G. and Konbu sourdoughs every two weeks, cut them and keep the slices in my freezer for easy access (don’t worry: I eat it fresh, too). But the real magic happens in-house, where there’s a small kitchen in one corner and a tall, mirror-backed bar near the entrance. The menu is built for snacking: oysters, deviled eggs, a small selection of salads, pork fat fries, and bbcc cookies to wrap it up (that’s brown butter chocolate chip: I asked). And the wine list — including many NA offerings — is clutch. Another reason I love Butterlamp: they don’t take reservations or allow kids. Yay for adult time!

MIUCCIA PRADA’S SOCKS AND SANDALS GAME

Prada’s FW 2025 men’s show was great — a hodgepodge of unstructured suiting, faux fur vests, and cold-weather outerwear layered over candy-colored pants and Western boots, styled in a layered thrift store chic that I’m crazy about (see the show here). That said, the men’s outfits weren’t the highlight for me. I’m obsessed with the purple ribbed knit socks that namesake designer Miuccia Prada (who since 2020 has designed the collection with Raf Simons) wore with open-toed T-strap sandals for their bow.

It’s not the socks-and-sandals thing that struck me — that’s a classic Prada styling hack. It’s the color of said socks (maybe they’re tights but for some reason I doubt it), which Miuccia wore under a loose white silk dress tamed by a gray V-neck sweater. It’s very specific shade of purple and I’m having a bit of trouble finding a solid dupe: everything I’ve come across so far has too much brown and not quite enough blue, both of which are critical to nailing the shade. I’ll let you know what I find as I try to recreate the look myself.

MEN’S FASHION WEEKS IN GENERAL

I covered fashion shows for the New York Post for seven years, and 98% of them were womenswear. The Post didn’t really care about men’s fashion shows (no boobs, duh), but I still made it my business to go to as many as I could in New York, because I really dug the vibe. Later in my career, I worked for two heritage fashion brands that skew predominately male (imogene + willie and Billy Reid) and it was a revelation: men’s fashion is way more fun than women’s.

This is a broad generalization, of course. But I’ve found that the men’s side of the industry is less pretentious and more organic and creative than women’s. There’s less drama and more fun, not to mention some really spot-on layering and suiting. The fashion guys I know who love clothes really love clothes. They do their research, seek out what they love with stealth and precision, and respect the labor and workmanship that went into their favorite pieces. It’s inspiring. And so much fun to watch them all in peacock mode.

I’ve been tracking all of the men’s shows in Europe this month, starting with the Pitti Uomo trade show in Florence, which I’ve always wanted to attend. If I never attend a women’s fashion show again, I’ll be fine (with a few major exceptions, most of them in Paris). But I would jump at the chance to get to hit a men’s fashion week again. If anyone wants to invite me, I’m game.

Until sometime,

Libby

In the late aughts, I wrote a story for Elle about Nashville style. It was part of a package about how people dressed in different U.S. cities across several geographic regions. My assignment was to identify the style that distinguishes Nashville women from their American peers. 

I quickly realized that my piece was going to be less about what Nashville style is and more about what it isn’t.  

Early in the writing process, I had a revelation: Nashville is the only city in the United States whose mention conjures a universally recognized image: the cowboy.

I can’t think of another city that elicits this immediate response. Not even the big metropolises of Texas, a state where folks are much more prone to wear traditional Western garb regularly and for legitimate work purposes, can say this. Neither can New York City and Los Angeles: with all of their fashion heft, neither has a specific fashion stereotype. And let’s face it — that’s what this whole Nashville cowboy thing is. 

Of course, the hats-and-boots description doesn’t apply to everyone in town. Wide-brimmed Western hats within the city limits are generally relegated to Lower Broadway, where they’re often rendered in hot pink with faux ostrich feather trim as part of what is the unofficial cosplay uniform of Nashville bachelorettes. And only a few of my friends have Western boots in constant rotation, save for some of the country musicians I know.

That brings up an important point. The reason this city has this deep association with the cowboy is because of the country music industry. The Western look we’re known for didn’t even originate here: it was imported from its sister scene in Southern California. There, the rhinestone cowboy look was created in a Frankenstein kind of way, borrowing silhouettes and design details that originated with a variety of references, including real cowboys, the glamorous costumes of Old Hollywood, and the cultures of Native Americans and Mexico. A dash of hillbilly practicality was added to the mix once it made its way to Tennessee.

(Note: This is a very superficial analysis, I know. The story of country music style is much richer, diverse, and more historically and culturally important than I can communicate in this forum. To explore this world in greater detail and specificity, check out the books of country music style expert Holly George Warren, who has long been the go-to source on the subject. Or stop by the Country Music Hall of Fame, a fabulous museum with an incredible collection of authentic stagewear. More on that below.)

I started thinking about all of this last weekend, after I finally sat down to listen to Cowboy Carter. Musically, the album is a totally original take on country music and other Southern music genres. Visually, the cover art (check it at the top) and videos incorporate a bonanza of Western tropes — hat, boots, chaps, yoked shirt, even a horse. 

As someone who used to create newspaper content around celebrity fashion phenomena — a Beyonce specialty — I can confidently tell you that we’re about to be inundated by Western-focused style coverage that refers to Nashville as the epicenter of cowboy couture. (Case in point: I just fielded the first interview request from a national magazine writing about fashion in Nashville, inspired by Bey’s latest incarnation. It won’t be the last.) 

If the look that we’re known for isn’t native to our city, what really is Nashville’s style? I have a story that puts it in context.

In my past career as a fashion editor, I was lucky enough to become friendly with fashion designer Michael Kors — a kind, lovely gem of a man who deserves every bit of the massive success he’s had in the years since I met him.

I owe Michael a lot, because he gave me the anecdote of all Nashville style anecdotes. It’s so good, so telling, that I share it a lot.

When he was a young designer in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, introducing his namesake collection across the country, Michael would come to Nashville to do trunk shows at Jamie, the gone but not forgotten luxury atelier that kept tony Belle Meade in designer dresses for decades.

If you’re not familiar, trunk shows entail a brand bringing a collection of usually not-yet-released clothing samples to a location where shoppers can try them on and place advance orders. For designers, this process can be a blur — an endless parade of shoppers asking the same questions.

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But there was one woman Michael met on one of these early trips to Nashville that he never forgot. She was so memorable, in fact, he could recall her look head to toe almost two decades later: Gray cashmere turtleneck, smart camel-colored wool trousers, a Birkin hooked in the crook of her arm, and a stylish turban on her head. Chic.

After watching the mystery woman from afar, Michael turned to the store’s proprietress, Jamie Stream, and whispered, “Who is that?” Jamie smiled at him and whispered back, “Her name is Sarah Cannon, but you’ll know her as Minnie Pearl.”

“And that’s when I understood Nashville,” he said. 

Nashville is a city with an image based on artifice. It’s a false front. Hang up the spangly costumes, shit-kicker boots, and other meme-making icons of the stereotype — Minnie’s straw hillbilly hat with its dangling $1.98 tag and her gingham square-dance dresses, for example — and you’re left with something that’s elegant, thoughtful, and innately cool. 

(To put a finer point on it, while the Minnie of Hee Haw was a sweet, jokester hillbilly from rural Grinder’s Switch, Sarah was a well-educated debutante from a prosperous family, whose last home was next door to the Tennessee Governor's mansion. (Before she died in 1991, following a long battle with breast cancer, Sarah founded the Minnie Pearl Cancer Foundation. Today multiple cancer treatment centers here and in the UK bear her name. A true class act.)

The Nashville women I know have much more in common with Sarah than Minnie. They care a lot about what they wear. They keep up with fashion trends, have their go-to designers and brands, and put effort into looking chic, unique, and appropriate. They invest in their wardrobes smartly and approach shopping with the same vigor and excitement as women in any other big city. They may have cowboy kickers in their footwear repertoire, but they’re much more likely to be seen in a pair of go-with-everything ankle boots. Sure, they wear blue jeans a lot, even to some dressy events. But that’s everywhere, not just Nashville.

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This isn’t to say that no one incorporates Western pieces into their outfits; they do. But it’s never head-to-toe. A belt buckle here, a pearl-snapped something there, maybe a fringed jacket if they’re really going for it. But never full-on “Nashville drag,” which is what that look amounts to when it’s worn by anyone who doesn’t ranch or play honky-tonks for a living.

The thing that bothers me the most about Nashville fashion cliches is that they’re one-dimensional, lacking sophistication and modernity. And it doesn’t stop with fashion. A music business friend recently told me about a West Coast artist coming to town to record an album who told him, “I’ve always wanted to ride a horse to the studio.” (He swears the guy wasn’t kidding.) 

Actually, this kind of thing doesn’t even end at the Davidson County line. I’ve been dealing with honestly jaw-dropping misconceptions about Tennessee since at least the mid-’90s, when I moved from the eastern part of the state to New York City. There, I was asked more than a few times if folks back home in Appalachia wore shoes. One guy even made a production of looking at my feet. It was my great pleasure to point to my Manolos and set him straight.

Now, almost 30 years later, I’m done busting up Southern fashion misnomers. I’ve come to accept that the fate of Nashville style, in particular, is to be perennially misunderstood, overshadowed by the cowboy culture that’s long been our calling card. Nashville will be associated with Western wear forever. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

The final paragraph in that Elle story includes my concession that Nashville should embrace its cowboy image, or at the very least learn to appreciate it. The image of Nashville style that lives in outsiders’ imaginations isn’t accurate, but at least our city has an image for them to get wrong.

Indianapolis can’t say that.

NASHVILLE, MEET THE MET (MAYBE?)

I’ve been saying this for years to whomever will listen, but it’s time to make it public: Nashville needs its own version of the Met Ball. 

For about a decade, I’ve been obsessed with the idea that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute will eventually choose country-Western as the theme of their annual Gala, one of the biggest U.S. fashion events of the year. Right now, post Cowboy Carter and Pharrell’s most recent menswear show for Louis Vuitton, it’s the perfect time for the Costume Institute to jump on it. And it will be a real bummer if they do so before the Country Music Hall of Fame does it first. 

It would be incredibly cool to celebrate the Hall’s enormous and historic collection of country-Western stage wear with the same kind of fanciful, celebratory, bordering-on-ostentatious spirit that the New York fashion cognoscenti do each year on the first Monday in May. Not only would it raise a lot of money for the institution, it would introduce a new national audience to the work of the Hall, which is an underrated Nashville treasure.

It would also give locals the chance to be creative — can you imagine the outfits? — and show their enthusiasm for fashion. Yes, what we need is a big old Western wear throw-down.

I don’t have a master plan for this, but I’d love to be involved in putting one together. To be continued.

As with all of my Substack posts, this story contains my personal observations and opinions. Not all of you guys are going to agree with me on everything I’ve written. And that’s absolutely fine, great even.

Let’s keep the conversation going. Leave a comment and I’ll respond in my next post.

Onward & upward,

Libby

I’ve known Todd Selby since the late ‘90s. He used to freelance for me as a street style photographer when I was the fashion editor at the New York Post.

Todd’s job was a fun one: identifying stylish women at parties, clubs and one in public and photographing them for a weekly trend page I edited called “Street Smart Style.” Danielle Levitt, my good friend and SSS collaborator (there’s a post about her and our work coming in the future), was Todd’s girlfriend at the time and she got him the gig.

Flash forward to the early aught-teens (is that a thing?), when Todd, by then known as The Selby, had positioned himself as one of the world’s foremost environmental style photographers, taking casual but politely revealing photos of culturally relevant folks in their private spaces.

The Selby, as a business, started relatively small. Todd’s posts were delivered in blog form and featured the homes of cool cats with a certain amount of indie cred across the country, though predominately in NYC and LA. While not everyone he shot was a public figure, most had a certain amount of indie cred. He launched the project in the US, but it quickly became international, including people in creative industries like fashion, art, design, food, and media.

While Todd’s MO is to shoot stylish people, not necessarily famous ones, occasionally the twain do meet, as in the case of Pharrell Williams and Michael Stipe (had to dig deep on his site for those). I particularly love it when he photographs famous maximalists of the fashion variety, like Dries Van Noten, J.J. Martin, Zandra Rhodes, Carla Sozzani, and the late Karl Lagerfeld. For me, getting to peek inside their homes and offices is like going on a mental vacation.

But mainly, Todd shoots regular people with interesting personal style. Sometimes he even shoots them twice.

Make that one time: I am proud to be the first subject on which he double-dipped.

Todd photographed my house for the first time in 2013. This was the Callaway Compound 1.0, pre-renovation. It was a great space, but honestly the main thing my home had going for it was that it was a showroom for my expansive closet and many, many collections. I still love the images from that shoot (on his site, they’re at the bottom of the page, below the new ones), but they’re from such a different time — a different era of me. I mean, so much has changed in my life since then, least of all my home design.

The second shoot was done almost a decade later, in 2022, when Todd came to town to photograph some of our cities grooviest families. Some of them are featured in his third book, The Selby Comes Home. You can preorder it here. (Note: Nashvillians might recognize the cover stars, the Ezell-Turner family, photographed in the kitchen of their downtown apartment.)

In celebration of this photographic reunion, I am going to post a series of stories about the things in and the inspiration behind the rooms in Todd’s photos. His post was just the nudge I needed to start writing about my home more in this forum.

This edition, I’m covering my primary bedroom. Stay turned for the rest of the house, as seen through Todd’s eyes, in future posts.

Things to know before we get started: My home is a 1948 not-quite-bungalow in East Nashville that I bought post-recession for an obnoxiously low price. It was a bit of a Frankenstein home when I got it, having been added on to at least four times by what must have been weekend warriors. (My line has always been that the former renovations had been done by someone with my skillset, and I don’t have a skillset.)

I knew from the start that I was going to remodel it eventually, which I did six years ago, largely on the equity that came with the ongoing gentrification of East Nashville. The 18-month makeover started in late September 2018; it finally got to move-in stage — and I am not kidding — a week before lockdown started in 2020, and mere days after a tornado destroyed a large swath of my neighborhood. My contractor tore down all of the shitty parts (walls were literally kicked down) and added 1,300 square-feet of new living space, including a primary bedroom, bath, dressing room, living room, and 22- x 3-foot closet that hides a multitude of crap. I gut renovated my kitchen and guest room, as well.

The Callaway Compound 2.0 has 2,300 square-feet of inside space, plus another 400 or so on the patio outside. It’s a luxurious amount of space for one person but I make it work. It’s blast to live in here and I stay at home as much as I can.

They look kind of bright here, but the walls of my bedroom are a so-blue-it’s-almost-black shade called Inkwell by Sherwin Williams. The same color is on the ceiling, which vaults to 15 feet (the entire space is 17x23). You can’t see it in these shots, but there’s a dramatic metal egg-shaped light fixture with “ivy” threaded through the cage design, a gift from Santa one year (he scored it at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store in Cleveland, TN — my hometown). You can’t see them in these photos either, but under the eaves on either end of the room, there are rose windows — at least that’s what I’m calling them: technically they’re just plain circles. Also unseen: my bed faces a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows divided by a pair of French doors that lead out to my patio. The whole thing is very Tony Duquette, and that’s absolutely intentional: he’s one of my main design inspirations.

The photo of me at the very top of this post was taken by Todd in my bedroom (man, I really need to paint that thermostat). There is a wonderful sitting area between my bed and the patio doors, featuring a black mid-century rattan couch set that is on somewhat of a permanent loan from my Aunt Jane. (I’ve had it for almost 30 years at this point, so does that make it mine under common law?)

The matching chairs on either side of the MCM dresser (from GasLamp Antique Mall) are from a set of eight discovered on Etsy by my pal Savannah Yarborough; she had two left over from a project, so I snagged them (still not sure if I’ve paid you, Sav) and had them covered in leopard print velvet by Braemore, whose sexy take on big cats I love. I mounted a red YSL monogram scarf, a Christmas gift from the company from my NY days, on stretchers to display as a work of art (I’ve been doing the “pop of red” thing long before it became a meme).

The lamps are a long-ago thrift find from Chattanooga. And, on the couch, the crazy quilt stuffed swan pillow (intentionally clashing with the antique crazy-quilt blanket covering the cushions) was made by my mom’s good friend, Benè Deacon. Fun fact: Miss Benè, as my sisters and I called her when we were little, had a very successful reproduction majolica company in my hometown called Majolica Wares. She sold to Neiman Marcus and Gump’s and all of those fancy guys. I buy her pieces whenever I see them (you’ll know them by the MW imprinted on the base) to add to my growing collection.

The brass canopy bed in the shot above is a showstopper. I found it at GasLamp pre-renovation and stored it, disassembled, until I could reconstruct it in my finished space. The frame ended up being too wide for the king-sized mattress I’d ordered, so I paid a guy named Bubba in Madison $125 to cut it down for me. (I share the price only to contrast it with the other quote I got, which was from an East Nashville metal design firm that was going to charge me over $1,600 and couldn’t get to it for six weeks, maybe longer. Bubba did it overnight. The moral of this story: don’t discount the good-old boys.)

A majority the furniture in the photo, and in my home, comes from thrift or second-hand stores and antique malls. The black chair is part of a pair by Pier One that I found years ago at a Nashville Goodwill. They have a great story attached to them. The first time Todd shot my house, the chairs were in my Florida room (RIP - but you can see a few shots of it at the bottom of his new post). A few months after the 2013 piece ran, I got an email from the design department for the 2014 Annie movie reboot. They came very close to renting them from me to use in Miss Hannigan’s office, but logistics got in the way.

The brass Mastercraft Greek key Parson’s table at the end of the bed is an incredible thrift score: I got it for $10 at the Berry Hill Goodwill. (An identical version is currently listed on 1st Dibs for $9,500 which is insane, but it’s definitely worth more than a ten-spot.) The little bentwood chair in front of it was mine when I was little. For decades, it lived at the cabin my grandfather built in the 1940s in the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee. The funky monkey sitting in it was a Nashville flea market find. He’s homemade and dressed in a tromp l’oil yellow and green polyester suit and matching hat with real mink trim. I replaced his plain button eyes with huge rhinestones, which give him the permanently delighted look of a cartoon character that just dropped acid.

This last shot is a bit of a tease. You can see the Chinese arch I incorporated into my design in this photo and the one at the top of the post. However, it’s technically part of my hallway, and it has a story significant enough to stand on its own. Which it will, in a post coming very soon.

Thanks so much for reading! Send me comments, questions, cries of outrage. Love to hear from you.

Libby