Eddie Ross, Mon Amour

It started innocently enough. I was reading the Washington Post Thursday Style section online. Back in the day, when I was a features writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Style was my Bible. Even today, the Post always has great articles about interior design. They pick a blog of the week, and that week, it was Katiedid, written by a young designer in Sacramento, Cal. I checked it out, loved it, and subscribed to her blogfeed. Next, I checked out the “favorites” on her blogroll. It was like discovering a new kind of chocolate/cocaine/crack. I found Cote de Texas, written by a designer in Houston. Mrs. Blandings, who writes about her Kansas City dream home, and Vintage Rescue Squad, where a Washington DC graphic designer documents her weekly junking jaunts. VRS, by the way, is snarky and truly hilarious. Truly. And then came Eddie Ross. Oh my. He had me at helloooo. Eddie is a man with a portfolio. He’s a senior style editor at the high church: Martha Stewart Living. Currently he’s a contestant on Bravo’s Top Design. We all knew an Eddie Ross in grade school. He’s that campy cut-up in the back row of the class picture, the one whose mother dressed him a little too twee–bowties and hair gel. He’s the first kid you ever realized was gay–and you didn’t care because he was so much fun. Little Eddie grew up and eventually traded in his Easy-Bake oven for a career as a caterer before he came to Martha’s attention and became the it-boy of design blogland—and Bravo TV. I was doing all right before Eddie. Sneaking a peek at those design blogs occasionally. I was maintaining, you know? And then, I think it was Mrs. Blandings who wrote about Eddie. I checked him out. Beeg mistake. Every day I check my email to see what Eddie’s up to. And he’s up to a lot. This man has the golden touch. He takes a ratty mahogany secretary, paints it french vanilla and replaces the glass doors with mirrors. Buys deli flowers and turns them into floral masterpieces. He runs into a thrift store and comes out with 19th century French sterling cranberry servers. He finds a whole set of German Bakelite at the Knights of Columbus flea market for fifty friggin’ cents apiece. He finds silverplated trophies from 1928 at the Goodwill for crying out loud. Me? I drop into my Salvation Army and find dogeared Danielle Steele novels and Pflaltzgraf coffee mugs. The Washington Post ran a piece about Eddie and his fabulous NYC apartment last week—I practically took a magnifying glass to the photos just to take in all the details. The picture above is from that article. Now I’m hooked. I’ve watched Top Design two weeks in a row, just to see what Eddie would do. This week he mugged for the camera and declared “I never get enough of me.” Me neither, Eddie. In my sad little fantasy world, Eddie calls me up, and I fly up to New York for the weekend, and we stroll off, arm in arm, into the sunset of the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. And there’s homemade popovers served on vintage transferware plates. And Bakelite. And sterling silver bowling trophies.