It wasn't an aesthetic statement, really.

February 1, 2013 4:00 PM

"American Pastoral" inadvertently reveals Brooks and Halard to be deeply insecure, crass noveau riche, lowballing their renovations by hiring desperate, dirt-cheap Chinese laborers, and whining about maids who can't get to work on time, just because Hurricane Sandy knocked out train service. Where's the Vogue-style profiles of those poor souls?

In the pantheon of repulsive celebrations of New York's most precious resource—the idle rich—Vogue's "American Pastoral" spread is a Mona Lisa snarl, a Gucci jackboot, everything smug, evil and cruel about the one percent, distilled, bottled and sprayed in your eyes. It's not enough anymore to be fabulously rich; the hoi polloi must have some faint awareness that there exist people with rooftop Elizabethan gardens and 40 feet of "unfinished 300-year-old white oak" for a kitchen counter.

posted by Alterity (75 comments total)

And while the reactions are still pouring in, this whirlwind jaunt through a mansion stuffed to the rafters with Moroccan rugs, ponies and wonderful people has seemed to provoke one common reaction: readers want to smash all the windows out with bricks, throw dynamite in the furnace, and guillotine Miranda and Bastien in Prospect Park.

Please, don't be ridiculous. Union Square holds crowds better and has historic significance.
posted by The Whelk at 4:06 PM on February 1 [16 favorites]

“We said, ‘We’re going to Brooklyn, so let’s just pretend we’re moving to the country.’

The whole thing is amazing. Just brilliant. I laughed out loud three or four times, you literally couldn't invent these people if you tried.
posted by atrazine at 4:12 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

To his professional credit, Peter and Bun Bun’s [rabbit] hutch withstood Hurricane Sandy, though Halard noticed the next morning that the bunnies themselves did look rather windswept.

They left them out there during Sandy? UFB.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:13 PM on February 1 [6 favorites]

I thought "Whale Week" on the Curbed sites had inured me to this sort of thing, but no: this article makes me want to hurt these people very badly. But I'm a reasonable sort, so I'll restrict myself to saying "tax the mother-effers up the wazzoo, and give the money to their stranded housekeeper's kids for college".

Is the tide turning finally? Are people finally getting tired of having their noses rubbed in it? I know I am. I make a pretty decent income (not by Boerum Hill's standards, apparently) but every year for the past five my check has gotten smaller, because of health care. And my patience with these people and their nationality-themed floors is wearing very thin.
posted by Fnarf at 4:20 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

Really, all you'd have to do is find away to radicalize the Doormen.
posted by The Whelk at 4:22 PM on February 1 [5 favorites]

Why do their houses always look so uncomfortable? They never have a couch you'd actually WANT to lie on and eat bon bons- all those bare wood armrests!
posted by small_ruminant at 4:22 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Why do their houses always look so uncomfortable? They never have a couch you'd actually WANT to lie on and eat bon bons- all those bare wood armrests!

Unnecessary discomfort is a mark of class.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:24 PM on February 1 [5 favorites]

"Poppy," and, "Violette Grey." Insufferable from the womb in this family.
posted by cmoj at 4:27 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

This is what happens when the generation that grew up reading Plum Sykes start to write Vogue articles of their own.
posted by fshgrl at 4:27 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

The revolution can't come soon enough.
posted by Mcable at 4:35 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

I try not to judge people on little information, but there's something about the names Miranda Brooks and Bastien Halard that screams "I will not like this couple." Each name is okay individually but all together...yikes.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:36 PM on February 1

In the pantheon of repulsive celebrations of New York's most precious resource—the idle rich

To be fair, both of them appear to have jobs.
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:40 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Bastien Halard's Twitter feed is fucking hilarious.
posted by brundlefly at 4:41 PM on February 1 [13 favorites]

(If it's satire, it's brilliant.)
posted by brundlefly at 4:42 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

Meh. As "oh my god, such unbelievable conspicuous consumption!!!" stories go, this is pretty underwhelming. Yeah, they're rich, but it's not exactly mega-mansion stuff, is it? I'm not sure what, exactly, I'm supposed to be so wildly outraged about here.

Also:

the hoi polloi must have some faint awareness that there exist people with rooftop Elizabethan gardens and 40 feet of "unfinished 300-year-old white oak" for a kitchen counter

Vogue is targeted at the hoi polloi now?
posted by yoink at 4:43 PM on February 1

argh brundlefly, why did I look at that, I just made a rustic farmer's vomelette in my mouth
posted by en forme de poire at 4:43 PM on February 1 [9 favorites]

"There's something about the names Miranda Brooks and Bastien Halard that screams "I will not like this couple."

At first I thought my mental associations with the name Bastien (arrogant, cruel, aryan, good looking) were from the fact that it's a homophone for "bastion." But then I realized that on top of that, it's a shortened form of the name Sebastian. Which is basically a romance novel villain name, to me anyway.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 4:43 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

The result in spring, with the garden blooming, is a lush Arcadia worlds away from the dense Jenga towers of the Gowanus Houses across the street

Shockingly, the mansion that has its own separate fucking carriage house seems somehow different than the fucking projects. How'd you figure that one out, Einstein?
posted by dersins at 4:43 PM on February 1

it is brilliant, though. "We're thinking about summering on Roosevelt Island," lollll.
posted by en forme de poire at 4:45 PM on February 1

From the Twitter feed: "'Waves of ressentiment break over Brooklyn like bathwater playfully splashed out of an antique tub.'--Overheard at MOMA"

Oh, man.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:45 PM on February 1 [4 favorites]

I don't get it. Do you have to be a New Yorker to work up a frothy rage over this?
posted by indubitable at 4:47 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Alas, you can see the dense Jenga towers of the Gowanus Houses from our antique tub. #YouCantHaveEverything

Ok now I don't like them.
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:47 PM on February 1

> (If it's satire, it's brilliant.)

It's satire. The account was created two days ago, all the tweets contain details from the Vogue story… yeah, satire.

I'd bet the standard Romney amount of $10,000 on it, thereby clumsily highlighting that I am a person of means, someone out of touch with the struggles of the median American wage-earner.
posted by savetheclocktower at 4:49 PM on February 1 [5 favorites]

Which is basically a romance novel villain name, to me anyway.

Suddenly I'm having a mental image of Sarah Michelle Gellar getting all vampy and pouty.

(The Twitter feed is definitely satirical but even so it kind of raised my blood pressure)
posted by en forme de poire at 4:50 PM on February 1

She's a landscape architect and he's an architect. What's the big deal? Some blogger is distressed because Vogue profiles people who have money and nice houses?
posted by Ideefixe at 4:52 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Come on, guys. President Mobutu is just fomenting class warfare here.
posted by lowest east side at 4:52 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Vogue is targeted at the hoi polloi now?

Uh, yes? Aspirational media and all. The people in Vougue don't read Vogue, they read those big glossy oversized magazines with names like FERMENT and SNUH with expensive rounded corners and ads for brands you've never heard of that you find under the Japanese fashion magazine in the stack at the salon when you're getting your highlights touched up.
posted by The Whelk at 4:54 PM on February 1 [26 favorites]

Next you'll tell me the men in Armani ads don't read Esquire.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:56 PM on February 1

savetheclocktower: "It's satire. The account was created two days ago, all the tweets contain details from the Vogue story… yeah, satire."

Yeesh. In retrospect, I'm not sure how I thought it could have possibly been real.
posted by brundlefly at 4:59 PM on February 1

Yeah, I'm not allowed to talk about it because of an NDA, but my internship at SNUH was a hell of a thing to experience.
posted by emjaybee at 5:02 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

She's a landscape architect and he's an architect. What's the big deal? Some blogger is distressed because Vogue profiles people who have money and nice houses?

If those are their jobs, the odds are that they come from money to begin with. Architecture can pay decently, but is generally not a road to riches for those not at the heads of famous firms.
posted by LionIndex at 5:03 PM on February 1

Uh, yes? Aspirational media and all. The people in Vougue don't read Vogue

Yeah, Vogue is "aspirational" but it's hardly pitched at the "hoi polloi." Its a small-circulation magazine that is read, largely, by highly educated, high-paid people (it has pretty much the same circulation as the New Yorker. Here's a breakdown of its readership. It's not a mass-circulation mag like People. Actually, the people profiled in this piece are closer to Vogue's target readership than they are to the really "aspirational" end of the high-fashion world. They're not jet-setting idle-rich, they're highly paid professionals. They didn't inherit Mummy and Daddy's huge estate in Connecticut or the Hamptons or what have you--they've bought a brownstone in a not particularly ritzy part of Brooklyn and done it up.

I dunno--if I want to get all "first up against the wall when the revolution comes" I guess it's the Paris Hiltons of this world that do it for me--the ones with the fuck-you money who've done nothing to earn it. These guys seem pretty small beer comparatively.
posted by yoink at 5:07 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Don't worry, guys. Sooner or later, they'll have to bag and box each and every one of the twee items photographed for that article, because they're going to get bedbugs just like everyone else.

Well, just like everyone else, except for the fact that they own four stories and a carriage house's worth of shit.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 5:10 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

What's objectionable is not the wealth but the tone, the over-the-top fabulousness of every square millimeter of it. When everything from your toilet roll holder to your children is a rare and precious design object, and is described in rococo prose, hackles will be raised.

Consequently I think I'd rather see the author of the piece just ahead of them in line for the chop.
posted by Fnarf at 5:13 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

I dunno--if I want to get all "first up against the wall when the revolution comes" I guess it's the Paris Hiltons of this world that do it for me--the ones with the fuck-you money who've done nothing to earn it. These guys seem pretty small beer comparatively.

Well, yes good point, it's always important to remember that inter class bickering ( no matter how fun it is!) is mostly a distraction from the real causes of inequality, the masters of the universe types who can spend money to influence actual law making and that no matter how much fun it is to launch a volley at the more monied, the 99% pretty much encapsulates anyone who makes up to like 400k a year because yes, even if you make that much you do not make as much as a handful of people who make twenty thousand dollars a minute and who can and do do everything to warp the world around them to make sure no one< else can get close and this plays into thier hands.

Soildarity is hard you guys.
posted by The Whelk at 5:14 PM on February 1 [10 favorites]

When everything from your toilet roll holder to your children is a rare and precious design object, and is described in rococo prose

Yeah, it's a bit gushy and breathless, but that a magazine devoted to design should be interested in the design decisions of two architects/designers hardly seems worth much comment, does it?

I mean, if you're not interested in music, an article on how some guitarist sets up his rig in Guitar Player magazine is going to seem ludicrously over the top, isn't it? But if you're not interested in music, why the hell are you reading the magazine? The same seems to apply here. If you're not interested in fashion/design, why the hell are you reading about this couple in Vogue?
posted by yoink at 5:23 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

And if I think about it I'd rather have people invested in a local alderman election and on top of thier police force's actions then wound up about some foofy townhouse owner's interior decor.
posted by The Whelk at 5:27 PM on February 1

And o.k., while I seem to have decided to White Knight for this couple (hey, it beats working)--can I just say that this part is really grossly unfair: whining about maids who can't get to work on time, just because Hurricane Sandy knocked out train service.

Here's what this is based on:

Brooks apologizes as she leads the way up the stairs to the second floor. “I’m sorry; it is really bad,” she says of the mess. Her housekeeper lives on Long Island and has been stranded without rail service since Hurricane Sandy.

I dunno. If you have to tell bald-faced lies about the piece to whip up the outrage, it probably wasn't all that outrageous to begin with.
posted by yoink at 5:29 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

>they've bought a brownstone in a not particularly ritzy part of Brooklyn and done it up.

Whelp, how much are brownstones these days?

I'm sorry if 300-500k/yr is not "aspirational", but in these class-warfare days I'd put that into "upper class". They're not getting invited to Davos, but they're not really relatable, you know?
posted by pmv at 5:32 PM on February 1

I mean, if you're not interested in music, an article on how some guitarist sets up his rig in Guitar Player magazine is going to seem ludicrously over the top, isn't it?

I'm really, really interested in music, but an article about a guitarist's "rig" is going to seem over the top to me, too. It's the last thing I care about, honestly. God, it's bad enough that we even have to HAVE guitarists....
posted by Fnarf at 5:33 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

They're still closer to you then the people up in Davos, don't alienate allies, we are all in this together, etc.
posted by The Whelk at 5:34 PM on February 1

Is the tide turning finally? Are people finally getting tired of having their noses rubbed in it? I know I am. I make a pretty decent income (not by Boerum Hill's standards, apparently) but every year for the past five my check has gotten smaller, because of health care. And my patience with these people and their nationality-themed floors is wearing very thin.

The thing is, these people don't even know how ridiculous they sound. For them, this is normal, everyday life. All their friends live this way, they assume it's normal

It's like this kid interviewed at the inauguration, she was being interviewed by Soledad O'Brien about why she decided to come and mentioned offhand that her dad got a private jet because she was "really interested in politics". She obviously had no idea that wasn't just a normal thing people do.

the masters of the universe types who can spend money to influence actual law making and that no matter how much fun it is to launch a volley at the more monied, the 99% pretty much encapsulates anyone who makes up to like 400k a year

Looking at this the cutoff is around $350k, but that's for households, not individuals. Not that the exact cutoff matters that much.

We don't really know anything about how these people got their money, it's possible they inherited their wealth, and it's possible they've just done really well. It might not be a case of people who are idly rich but rather people who are trying to appeal the idly rich in order to sell them landscaping and design services. The article sounds like typical PR.
posted by delmoi at 5:41 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

how much are brownstones these days?

Prices vary, but checking the real estate listings I'd be very surprised if they paid less than $2 mil, probably 3 -- and a hell of a lot on renovation (exposing beams and all that) and decorating. Good god, the decorating.
posted by Fnarf at 5:41 PM on February 1

Why the hell are you reading about this couple in Vogue?
Sometimes it's interesting to read about how the other half lives, eight blocks from where I do, in a home that cost $1.4 million before renovation.

The article appears to be deliberately provocative. It didn't have to mention that the family rarely engages with their surroundings; that they're across the street from NYCHA housing; that the visit occurred during an emergency that left said NYCHA housing without power, heat, and water for ten days; that the housekeeper had been stranded by Sandy; or that unskilled and underpaid Chinese labor was used in the renovation. And all but identify the address in the process.

The article may have been ripe for parody because it was already parodic.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 5:41 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

Characters like these are created to make people who are not rich more comfortable with their own lives and less envious of the rich by portraying the rich as hopeless and pathetic contemptible (yet harmless) bumblers that no one in their right mind would want to be like, and to make us feel better by encouraging us to have a good laugh a their expense-- and that's about the only thing we're going to get at their expense if we allow ourselves to be sucked in by this garbage.

In England, the 'upper class twit' serves the same end.

Meanwhile, the actual rich become inexorably more competent at dismantling the lives of everyone else and selling off the pieces for scrap.
posted by jamjam at 5:42 PM on February 1 [5 favorites]

$1.4 million

I stand corrected.
posted by Fnarf at 5:43 PM on February 1

Can I get two subscriptions to SNUH please?

Have the butler bring them around.
posted by DU at 5:50 PM on February 1

It might not be a case of people who are idly rich but rather people who are trying to appeal the idly rich in order to sell them landscaping and design services.

I think it goes pretty much without saying that if you buy a $1.4 million fixer-upper in Brooklyn across the road from NYCHA housing, you're not in anybody in NY's definition of the "idle rich." Sure, you're obscenely rich by comparison with the genuinely poor. But I'm not sure that there's many of us participating in this conversation who aren't obscenely rich compared to somebody out there.

A short stroll along 5th Ave by Central Park is going to take you past literally hundreds of people who could buy and sell these two twenty times over. I just don't get what makes them particularly noteworthy.
posted by yoink at 5:54 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]

The result in spring, with the garden blooming, is a lush Arcadia worlds away from the dense Jenga towers of the Gowanus Houses across the street and the hurtling F train two blocks away.

Where are they, Wyckoff street maybe? There are some really nice 2-3 story houses over there that aging hippies and wierdos of all stripe have been buying for the last 30 years. I guess this article means the area is respectable now?

Obviously this article is right in my wheelhouse, gentrification of Brooklyn being my main hobby-horse. But whatever, I'm glad they got a nice house for their kids to grow up in. for 1.4m they could maybe get a 2br in Manhattan. I mean there is always someone richer pushing you down the ladder.The kids will have their pick of Brooklyn Friends, Packer or St. Ann's.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:56 PM on February 1

Hey leave Sebastian alone. He's suffering from accelerated decrepitude, have you no empathy?
posted by Brocktoon at 6:00 PM on February 1

She did this place in CT, which must have been a decent commission. It's not like she's pretending.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:11 PM on February 1

I just love Destructo's writing and his outrage.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:25 PM on February 1

Brooks apologizes as she leads the way up the stairs to the second floor. “I’m sorry; it is really bad,” she says of the mess. Her housekeeper lives on Long Island and has been stranded without rail service since Hurricane Sandy.

Sorry, either don't apologize, or get the kids to pick up their crap and run the fucking dust mop around already.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:20 PM on February 1

Just saw the pony picture. Wow.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 7:32 PM on February 1

Well....this is kinda funny to me. Is this what wealth looks like in the States? I kinda thought it would look more glossy, more gilded, more marbled.

The style they've decorated in looks so much like that of friends who were savvy enough to buy big run-down houses when they were cheap and will never really finish doing them up because they work in creative industries and don't make much money. Hence hand-made furniture, stripped beams, hand-decorated wallpaper, bare wood floors and reclaimed architectural features salvaged from building sites. The friends I know with this type of house tend to do their mural-painting and woodworking (and ironworking and paint-stripping and knocking walls down) themselves or with the help of friends. They tend to have lodgers, threadbare (but genuine all-wool) carpets and do a lot of their shopping in junk shops.

I mean, look how the little girl's Alice costume is accessorised with sturdy button-up boots! I feel all discombobulated, I'm not used to associating this style with loads-a-money, only with people who are incredibly cash-poor but well-educated and thrifty and drive old cars but somehow manage to holiday in a farmhouse in France ...who used to be members of the Labour party but tore up their cards after Britain joined the Iraq war.... who ride bicycles and are staunch members of the local parent-teachers association. Oh, and who generally appreciate living inner-city for the culture and the grocers and the liveliness.

Of course I'm not going to read the article, I think I might pop a vein in my head.
posted by glasseyes at 8:19 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

I really don't get all the hate. If you can look past all the silly words, its really a lovely house.
posted by msali at 8:32 PM on February 1

Their place is beautiful and I'd live in there in a heartbeat, and so would you. I think it's the writer who has mostly caused offense here; the style is so over the top, so willfully precious, that it's unbearable to read.
posted by jokeefe at 8:39 PM on February 1 [4 favorites]

Of course, using the unskilled and badly paid Chinese workers does in fact make them evil (or at least exploitative assholes). So there's that.
posted by jokeefe at 8:45 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Well, reading the Vogue article after watching "Dark Days" frames the contrasts in an unsettling way.
posted by shinyshiny at 9:16 PM on February 1

There will always be yuppies.
posted by gjc at 9:20 PM on February 1

i hope a rat crawls up the side of their house and eats those rabbits.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 9:40 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

*Herschel Rich
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:06 AM on February 2

Is this what wealth looks like in the States?

It's what some kinds of wealth looks like in some parts of the U.S., sure. I could google up some photos of Rich People Houses in Los Altos or Woodside (California; lots of Silicon Valley rich people live there) that would look completely different. Those places are both less urban than Brooklyn, so that accounts for some of the difference, but still. Different people gonna be different, even if they're all rich. And, of course, there's different kinds and levels of rich.

/Didn't read the article, just looked at the pictures. Looks like a nice enough place.
posted by rtha at 8:23 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

Is this what wealth looks like in the States?

I don't think either of them are actually American (he's French, she seems to be British), but in the Northeast? Very often, yes, this is what the educated wealthy go for.
posted by oinopaponton at 8:51 AM on February 2

Yea I'm just imagining how nice it must be to grow up in that house or even be the grownups who live there. It's beautiful.
posted by dame at 9:15 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

Also glasseyes, if you knew what those places look like before the Reno, especially since most have been carved up into apartments, you see it's pretty different money wise than where you are and that's just the housing stock.
posted by dame at 9:16 AM on February 2

Their place is beautiful and I'd live in there in a heartbeat, and so would you.

Only if it didn't come with any of their styleless crap. And if I got to refinish the twee interior walls. So, yes, if I got to remodel like they did.
posted by cmoj at 10:04 AM on February 2

Is this what wealth looks like in the States?

The couple in question comprises an architect and an interior designer.* The article was probably supposed to showcase their services, which provide the wealthy with homes that, on move-in, make them look like well-educated individuals who generally appreciate living inner-city for the culture and the grocers and the liveliness, and spent years of work building out their space with their hands. Why spend years being and doing that, when you can buy it?

*Interestingly, the author, daughter of Candace Bergen and Louis Malle, grew up on Central Park South, and documents fashion and socialite life for Vogue. Which is to say, her tax bracket might not be all that different from that of the couple she profiled. I'm stlll intrigued as to why her portrayal is so withering, and what her intent may have been. Perhaps, for a moment, in the midst of an unfolding disaster, the carefully chosen trimmings seemed wan and trifling to Ms. Malle. Looking at her Twitter, she seems to have been entirely preoccupied with the storm and the election between October 23rd ("Heiresses in diamonds, oh my!") and November 9th ("Earthly delights! A Luncheon to Honor Livia Firth").
posted by evidenceofabsence at 10:40 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]

I feel all discombobulated, I'm not used to associating this style with loads-a-money

There's always been a place of overlap between wealth and bohemia, as well as those who have made very good livings from wealthy people who want to convey a bohemian sophistication and will pay for the trappings.

I have a feeling, though I don't read Vogue, that this piece isn't written that differently that their usual style-- it's just like the Weddings section of the NY Times, the same tone, the same "you gotta be kidding me" content.

Also, the daughter of Candace Bergen and Louis Malle likely is several tax brackets higher than this couple at the very least.
posted by jokeefe at 3:30 PM on February 2

yeah, it's a kind European peasant/bohemian style, but tidied up a lot.
posted by glasseyes at 7:08 PM on February 2

"Don't worry, guys. Sooner or later, they'll have to bag and box each and every one of the twee items photographed for that article, because they're going to get bedbugs just like everyone else. "

Is there a way to start a bounty pool for poor people to give rich ones bed bugs? I would pay into that.
posted by klangklangston at 2:58 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]

They are big fans of Staubitz [the butcher]; Halard messengers the lamb to Muriel Brandolini on the Upper East Side.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 8:45 AM on February 5

I'm always up for a good round of "eat the rich", but this doesn't strike me as all that egregious.

If you need a quick fix of class rage, just spend more than 10 seconds on Rich Kids Of Instagram
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 12:20 PM on February 5

UB: RKOI should come in a pill for people with low blood pressure
posted by en forme de poire at 5:18 PM on February 5

I'd forgotten RKOI for a while, and now I'm laughing my ass off.

You make more in a month doing nothing than I would make in twenty years working in a warehouse, and you're eating Captain Crunch
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:16 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]