I had a simple goal today: buy some boxes to put my junk in and look for a good Italian cookbook. I had bought Giada de Laurentiss’ Everyday Italian and was really disappointed by the gruel-like dishes that resulted. My itinerary included stops at The Cookbook Store in Yorkville and Solutions (organizing solutions for small spaces) at Yonge & Eglinton. Of course, along the way I got distracted and spent the good part of an hour wafting around the new Anthropologie, indulging in their French Provincial/Gilmour Grls/East Coast Bohemian fantasy of clothes, accessories and décor.

I stopped at a display consisting of a wireframe dressed in a retro apron, surrounded by cupcake cookbooks, and if you are too lazy; candles that smell like you’ve been baking all day. I sniffed the candles for five minutes, imagining an apartment smelling of sickly sweet vanilla and cinnamon. I was trying to decide if it was a yummy or puerile scent, and whether it was worth $16 when I heard two women snorting with laughter at another apron display. One was standing in an apron and giggling while the other yelled, “So you’re gonna wear this apron all Mad Men style while… cooking a roast for your husband? HAHA”

OK. So the fantasy isn’t entirely impervious to reality. And it got me thinking of the importance of lifestyle, and the business of marketing lifestyle. My interest in style started with fashion and graphic design, and is slowly evolving to include my apartment, cooking, and entertaining. Most women view their apartments as extensions of themselves; I was a little late to the party because I’m just not domesticated. My philosophy of lifestyle was always that one’s apartment should be cheap enough to afford a social life outside of one’s apartment.

But as I mature, I’m appreciating the importance of a well-maintained home and life. Your day to day routines, the space that you live in, and what you eat make up who you are. But what to do if you don’t have the Martha Stewart Living budget and consumerist zeal? Until it folded, Domino magazine filled the gap between student dorm and four bedroom house. Currently; I turn to Etsy and blogs like Apartment Therapy and Bohemian Hellhole for inspiration on fashionable, DIY, crafty and affordable approaches to living. You could call this trend Lifestyle Design.

An observation from the Helvetica film I recently reviewed applies to the trend of Lifestyle Design: a designer was talking about young people using the web and choosing a font to represent themselves, whereas twenty years ago, fonts had little significance to the average person. In the same way; there is a trend towards self-representation in various media that was once the domain of the “expert”. Household management; cooking, cleaning, and decorating has morphed from the fifties good housewife model to our postmodern mélange of influences and philosophy of sustainability.

But I sometimes wonder, after I’ve spent $29.95 on a cookbook and $30 on ingredients and an evening chopping and sautéing something only barely edible; is this emphasis on fine living just another time and money sinkhole and exercise in feeling inadequate? Aren’t there better things I could do with my time? Like… running for office or writing the Great Canadian Novel? Or maybe I should be re-beading vintage lamps, knitting ironic scarves, cooking organic pot roasts AND running for office WHILE writing the Great Canadian Novel?

When I start having these thoughts I remember something I love about Toronto. We have excellent take-out, and it gets here as fast as it takes to download a movie.

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