It's the most wonderful time of the year. That is, unless you're still searching for a unique, thoughtful gift for a special someone in your life. Well, last minute shoppers, you're in luck: a new book out this fall about the meaning of home, called Home: A Celebration (Rizzoli, 2021), checks every box for a perfect gift for pretty much anyone, from art lovers and bookworms to foodies and design aficionados.
Edited by designer and philanthropist Charlotte Moss, the book features over 100 reflections from notable voices, including celebrated artists, photographers, writers, actors, and activists, on the meaning of home. At times funny, at times serious, the book is filled with deeply personal, poignant answers to that most fundamental of questions: What does home mean to you?
One such luminary with a particularly resonant reply is designer and style icon Iris Apfel, who confesses her preference for idiosyncratic imperfection at home in a conversation with fellow designer Hutton Wilkinson. “I’d rather have an apartment that has some mistakes in it than something that is so damn perfect. I’m very much for personality and expressing yourself.”
Like so many of us, Apfel acknowledges she found comfort in her collections—antiques, jewelry, even Mickey Mouse ephemera, all acquired during a lifetime of travel for her interior design and Old World Weavers textiles business—while sheltering at home since March 2020. When asked by Wilkinson what makes a house a home, Apfel, who celebrated her 100th birthday August 29 of this year, responds with an eye toward a personal past. “Everybody has a history,” she says. “And I think you should have bits and pieces of where you were and what you did and what you bought.”
As if these meditations on the meaning of home, like the conversation between Wilkinson and Apfel, weren't moving enough, consider the book's purpose: raising funds for children who live in food-insecure homes.
A portion of the proceeds from HOME: A Celebration will benefit No Kid Hungry, which works to feed more than 11 million children in the United States who live in food-insecure homes. It's a cause close to Moss' heart: the designer has been a long-time supporter and has used her Instagram platform to raise money for NKH and other hunger-related organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moss' inspiration for HOME: A Celebration was Edith Wharton's The Book of the Homeless (1916), a collection of essays, poetry, and art published as a fundraising effort to support children and other refugees displaced during World War I. We can think of no better way to show loved ones how much they mean to us than with a gift that gives back like this one.
