How to Judge A Person By Their Coffee Table

You know every designer on Style.com alphabetically and backwards. The Bergdorfs shoe department is your church and Industrie is your bible. Here’s what every fashion obsessive needs on their table: an intellectual-y, pseudo-educational, historical perspective—‘cause everyone needs a textbook. And then you need the fashion editor life and times, Carine Roitfeld: Irreverent, say, or one of the many books on Diana Vreeland, which is all kind of like having a miniature panel of the best in your living room. 

You lived in Williamsburg long before rents were comparable to those across the bridge and you consider Benjamin great before-bed reading. Your studio apartment is filled with Nan Goldin’s rarer, but most critically lauded work (her infamous photo essay of then adolescent model James King is child’s play), stacked on ‘50s anti-establishment depictions of a not-so-Stepford country and Jusy Chicago’s feminist reading of Frida Kahlo. And you’re in intellectual love with Ryan McGinley.

Forget Condé Nast’s much lauded stable of photographers—your favorites are the legends and their lesser known works. Your biggest dream is to hang a Mapplethorpe on your wall and you consider Richard Avedon’s tour of the west way more impressive than his celebrated fashion shots. Diane Arbus is your kindred spirit.

Your closet is filled with Carolina Herrera and Tory Burch and you consider the New York Times wedding announcements required reading. Your status on the social register is dependent on the fact that multiple volumes of Silm Aarons greatest books are prominently on show, along with decoration advice from Valentino and portraiture by fellow blue bloods like Claiborne Swanson Frank and Lord Snowden.

You have an expansive catalogue of film noir and your style icons range from the Hepburns (Audrey and Katherine) to Johnny Depp. At your annual Oscar party (complete with Best Picture-inspired libations), you proudly display Wes Anderson’s anthology as well as your recently purchased collection of Juilian Wasser’s snapshots of Hollywood’s midcentury golden age.

You scoff of 50 Shades of Grey and its second rate mainstreaming of fetish. Guys, this is art we’re dealing with here, especially when dealt with by the genius minds that are Ellen von Unwerth, Guy Bourdain and the undisputed king of provocatively rendered kink: Helmut Newton.

You’re all about getting inside: into the VIP box, behind the red rope, into the back room. You know everyone and everyone knows you, so it only makes sense that you’re reading reflects that you’re in with the cool kids, whether that’s with the collegiate elite, inside Max’s Kansas City or through Ron Gelella’s lens.

The only city you’d even consider purchasing new chairs for your dining room table is Copenhagen. You think Ai Weiwei should win the Noble Peace Prize (proven by the fact that you purchased his Taschen collector's edition for $1,500. You regularly take yourself (and anyone else you can drag along) on architecture tours of your hometown. Books chronically the triumphs of Nieymeyer and Gehry populate your coffee table beside volumes on Bauhaus and Eames.