Designer Warning Labels

[muckefuck]

Last Sunday, monshu and I had a revelation while watching Changing Rooms: If you don't want a horrid, tacky, overdesigned room, then beware the double surnames!

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
Anna Ryder Richardson

And it works for the American version, too!

Hildy Santo Tomas

Elder Gods! Feathers! She is a menace and must be stopped. And the quote about how all the rooms in her home are white--bizarro truth (it would explain her complete absence of colour sense) or more chain-yanking from the Princess of Darkness?

Comments

[alfaboy.livejournal.com]

i think the only case where you're entitled to the use of a double-barrel name is when the marriage of your aristocratic parents has brought you into possession of twin peerages. But even Lord Haden-Guest has the decency to be plain ol' Christopher Guest. If a peer who's also a movie star can settle for one name, why can't a decorator?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"Entitled" according to whom? This is Amurrica, son, not Limeyland; we can call ourselves anything for almost any reason. I can change my name to Bubba Bubba Bubba or Jesus Christ Satan and the government has to demonstrate a compelling interest in order to stop me.

The Hispanic tradition appends both maternal and paternal surnames or--in the case of married women--maiden name and married name. I don't see what's bad about this (particularly when there are so many Sanchezes and Rivieras out there) and plenty of others don't either, since at least the latter custom is spreading.

[alfaboy.livejournal.com]

Let me rephrase that: "the only occasion for which might excuse that otherwise-insufferable affectation known as the double-barrel name...."

i always thought women adopting a hyphenated name after marriage reeked of anglophilic pretension. It got rolling in the '80s... a decade in which multitudes imagined themselves as the living embodiment of a ralph lauren ad.

anyway, i thought you were as annoyed by the tandem monikers as i am.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It's the not the monikers themselves I object to; it's the people they're attached to. There a warning sign, like a blue suede suit to Tom Waits. Note that "Santo Tomas" may not be the same kind of double-surname as "Ryder Richardson" or "Rodham-Clinton"; it looks more like a single name in two parts, like "St. John" or "De Beers".

Funny, but I also saw the maiden name-married name practice as feminist, not anglophilic. A compromise between resolutely keeping your own name and discarding it in favour of your husband's. We move in different social circles, however.

[alfaboy.livejournal.com]

i should think proper feminist practice would be *not* changing one's name after marriage... oh wait, that name was a patriarchal imposition, too... maybe they could just make up names for themselves... the way porn stars do...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Some do make up names. There isn't one kind of feminism, you know; there are feminist arguments to support a wide variety of naming practices.

Multiple names

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, Spanish tradition is that women never change their names. They are referred to in social situations as Senora de (husband's name), but their credit cards, bank accounts and work identities are the same paternal and maternal surnames (in that order) they were born with.

-e

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That's so awesome. The Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Gaelic-speaking Irish do the same. What is our problem here in the States?

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

I kinda liked the feathers, though I fear the cleaning of it and really hope no one in the house has allergies. The hay was over the top, though, and the records and wine labels looked a bit tacky.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Fear not: If they don't have allergies, they'll develop some. At least it didn't look as horrible as the fake flower heads. Looks like her next awful wall treatment is cardboard. While Vern finds oak planking for his clients, Hildy dumpster dives for hers.