Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Yolanda Edwards - Building Collections Around The World With YOLO Journal Founder
1.4k Plays1 year ago
Yolanda Edwards should come as no surprise to all of you as my guest today. She, like her husband Matt Hranek, is the epitome of a collector. She cut her cloth working for Martha Stewart and eventually became the creative director for Conde Nast Traveler, but it’s safe to say her magazine, Yolo Journal, is exactly where she’s supposed to be. Yolanda and Matt have become the go to for a lot of things, but traveling advice has always been paramount. Whether it’s her writing or the photographers telling you the story, Yolo Journal and her newsletter answers all those questions you have about the hidden gems worth traveling to and where to treasure hunt while you’re there. Although she travels the world to experience familiar and new places, one thing has remained the same, and that is that no trip is complete without hunting for goods to add to her many collections. THAT, is the epitome of a collector. Alright, let’s get into it. Yolanda Edwards, for Collectors Gene Radio.
YOLO Journal - https://www.yolojournal.com/
Recommended
Transcript
The Joy of Travel and Curiosity
00:00:00
Speaker
Why travel is so powerful is because when you travel, you really are like, you're more alert. You're not in your like day to day. You're open your eyes more. You're more curious. You like look up at buildings and you take pictures of it because you're like, that's so cool. But meanwhile, like back in your hometown, you might also have very cool buildings that you never look up and take pictures of. So it's just like, I feel like that feeling that we get when we go somewhere new
00:00:29
Speaker
is something that is actually, you have that inside you all the time. You just have to learn how to harness it so that it's not just like, if I make it to the Amalfi Coast, I'll have that feeling. It's like, no, no, you could get that feeling if you put yourself in the right frame of mind, even in your backyard.
Introduction to Yolanda Edwards and Collecting
00:00:52
Speaker
What's going on everybody and welcome to collector's gene radio. This is all about diving into the nuances of collecting and ultimately finding out whether or not our guests have what we like to call the collector's gene. If you have the time, please subscribe and leave a review. It truly helps. Thanks a bunch for listening and please enjoy today's guest on collector's gene radio.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yolanda Edwards should come as no surprise to all of you as my guest today. She, like her husband, Matt Ranek, is the epitome of a collector. She cut her cloth working for Martha Stewart and a few other publications and eventually became the creative director for Conde Nast Traveler. But it's safe to say her magazine, Yolo Journal, is exactly where she's supposed to be. Yolanda and Matt have become the go-to for a lot of things, but traveling advice has always been paramount.
00:01:45
Speaker
Whether it's her writing or the photographers telling you the story, Yellow Journal and her newsletter answers all those questions you have about the hidden gems worth traveling to and where to treasure hunt while you're there. Now, although she travels the world to experience familiar and new places, one thing has remained the same, and that is that no trip is complete without hunting for goods to add to her many collections. That is the epitome of a collector.
00:02:11
Speaker
All right, let's get into it. Yolanda Edwards for Collectors Gene Radio.
Yolanda's Journey and Work History
00:02:16
Speaker
Yolanda, welcome to Collectors Gene Radio. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you. My pleasure. I want to know where you're calling in from today because it's hard to keep up with all your Matt's travels.
00:02:31
Speaker
So today I'm calling in from Brooklyn. I've been sort of in and out of Brooklyn, but back in the States for about a month and heading off to Europe on Monday, we'll be there. It's looking like through the whole summer. That doesn't suck.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, doesn't suck. But you know, it's that kind of thing where like absence truly makes the heart grow fonder wherever you are. So it's like Brooklyn is really, it's looking really great right now. It's home base, it's home base for sure. Yeah. What was the last trip that you took?
00:03:05
Speaker
So we just came back about a week ago from the Napa Valley. I do some consulting for a wine company and I was out there doing a big annual event where I bring in all these kind of interesting designers and bring in press and influencers and it's a super fun weekend. And so I was out there for about 10 days and yeah, so Napa Valley and now Brooklyn and then Rome on Monday. I love Rome.
00:03:35
Speaker
Oh, so good. Can't wait. Yeah. So when I had Matt on the podcast, I always had this idea of doing something with the both of you, which I think we will for sure, but I'm excited to just chat with you today. And I want to get my listeners a little more acclimated to know more about you first. So, um, you've worn a lot of hats specifically, you know, creative director, and most people know you now for your magazine, yellow journal, and as the counterpart to W M Brown magazine, but.
00:04:02
Speaker
Let's take a step back because there's other publications where you cut your cloth like Martha Stewart and Conde Nast. We're a big part of your career. So I want to make sure that we touch on that. Great. Okay. Where do you want me to start? Wherever you feel is the best place to take us back to.
00:04:18
Speaker
Okay, well, I can, I can go, you know, Matt says I have a very, I'm, I'm the most detoured conversationalist ever. So I won't go as far back as I might, because we would be here several hours, which I could do. But, but I would say
00:04:35
Speaker
My career really seems like the best place it started was at Conde Nast Traveler in the 90s.
Behind the Scenes of Magazine Publishing
00:04:44
Speaker
I had just met Matt and moved to New York and I needed to get a job and through a friend, I started doing this freelance, kind of filling in for somebody on maternity leave.
00:04:55
Speaker
at Conde Nast Traveler as a photo editor. And I was like, what is a photo editor? I have no idea what that is. And they said, well, you know how to do production. And you've worked on creating photo shoots and past jobs. So it's basically that.
00:05:12
Speaker
And what I learned was that, yes, it was producing photo shoots for photographers that were going off to do assignments in faraway lands. But there was this other part of it where there were these kind of the younger photographers or the photographers who hadn't quite made it yet, who would come in with their portfolios to try and maybe convince somebody who worked at the magazine to give them a chance on a job.
00:05:40
Speaker
And since I was the low person on the totem pole in the photo department, I was the one who would meet with them because this is really like back in the days when nobody had websites. The only way to show your work was to have a portfolio. And sometimes they would, you know, FedEx them in from far away.
00:06:00
Speaker
and sometimes they would bring them personally in. So I would sit there with these photographers and it'd be like on a Wednesday afternoon, there was open portfolio drop-off day. And I didn't really know anything about photography
00:06:17
Speaker
So I felt like such a fraud. And I would just like talk to them about like, oh, tell me about where this is and tell me about where you shot that. And oh, what is that in that photograph? And just making small talk around the subjects that were in the photographs because I knew I couldn't speak to anything about like what kind of lens or film or, you know, nothing, nothing that actually required like I knew they thought I was like I actually understood photography, but I didn't.
00:06:47
Speaker
And then so we kind of go from those meetings where these photographers would tell me about all these interesting places they'd seen and I'd be like, God, I've never heard of that. And I always was like a person who was really fascinated with
00:07:03
Speaker
collecting travel ideas and kind of always was the person that people would come to and say like, oh, I'm going to X, Y and Z, like where should I go? And it wasn't that I had traveled there, but it's that I had always collected like articles and clippings and put them in files. And so I had, I'd always been that person since I was like in junior high school, I collected articles and made files about places that I would go someday.
00:07:32
Speaker
And so I go from those meetings super inspired and walk into these editorial meetings with editors who say like, oh, you know, we're going to do a story about this new hotel that's opening up in Miami. And so we're going to need somebody who can go there and shoot a picture of like the fake set up room, like a room.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah, and basically, I'd say, wait, we're going to do a story about a hotel that nobody at the magazine has actually even gone to. How do we know it's good? And they're like, oh, well, the publicist is great and blah, blah, blah. And we know it's this great designer and this and that. And I was like, OK, but I heard about this really cool hotel that somebody went to in Paris. And they'd be like, yeah, but it
00:08:24
Speaker
it didn't matter if it sounded cool because it was coming from somebody that they didn't know and they just wanted things that were new, not necessarily charming and had been there for a hundred years and none of them knew about. And so I just started back then kind of noticing this disconnect between the way magazine stories come in to being. And I think like people in the style world
00:08:51
Speaker
for sure know that that is sort of like the un, you know, the thing that's super disappointing about a lot of media is that it's whoever has the dollars, you know, it's the, it's the produce of the world that will get the cover of GQ, because it's pay to play. And it's not going to be like, if there is some super young, interesting designer, they're going to maybe like, get a tiny little
00:09:21
Speaker
something quite small, but they're not going to get anything, you know, substantial and certainly never covered.
The Birth of Yolo Journal
00:09:28
Speaker
So I think like I was very naive then, and it became this thing where I was like, oh, I understand, I see how the system works now. But I always thought that that was wrong. That it didn't speak to the way that people actually live their life, much like fashion, where you're like,
00:09:48
Speaker
Most people don't dress the way that people look in fashion shows or what you see in fashion magazines. And so we all sort of feel like, oh, well, until you find your confidence, you kind of feel like, well, someday I should be able to afford those things, but I can't. So I'll just wear these things and feel like I'm inferior.
00:10:12
Speaker
And I feel like that for me is sort of where I kind of always felt that way about travel. So fast forward, I evolved into being a travel editor at a parenting magazine.
00:10:27
Speaker
called Cookie, and then that was Conde Nast's publication. Then from there, I went to Martha Stewart where I also covered a lot of travel. Then I ended up back at Traveler in 2013, so some 15 years later. This time I was the creative director, so I now had the big job. It's a big gig.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, it was a big gig. I really was like, did they make a mistake? Did they mean it to be me? Is there another Yolanda? So it was really a pinch me moment for pretty much the whole time I was there.
00:11:06
Speaker
But still you know there was it got better the the system of how we told stories did get better primarily because we had less money. And when you have less money you actually have to start getting scrappy and finding stories.
00:11:24
Speaker
from people who have already been somewhere and you trust their taste and maybe they have great photography of the place they want and then you can use that in your magazine instead of the classic way of assigning a story that you see in a magazine is like, find the right photographer that you think is gonna make the best pictures of this place, send a writer, send the photographer,
00:11:48
Speaker
you're looking at some sometimes like I'd say a cheap shoot would be on the 30,000, I mean for the whole thing. It could be up to you know in the 75s when I was there in the 90s and we were working with Helmut Newton
00:12:06
Speaker
you're looking at a whole other level. So at Traveler on my second stint, we started working with people who were great storytellers and photographers. So we'd kind of started combining them. And so I loved that we got to evolve it to that place. But when I lost my job in 2018,
00:12:28
Speaker
I was like, okay, I can either just kind of go figure out a totally different career or I can try and do that magazine that I felt like I always wanted and I haven't seen yet.
00:12:45
Speaker
So I decided, okay, I'm just going to give yellow a try and see how it goes. And so the beginning was, even though I knew like print was not necessarily going to
00:13:00
Speaker
I mean, print is a very specific thing, as we all know. But there are some people who love it and I was like, I'll start with print and then I'll move into digital, but I can't start with digital because I just don't have the bandwidth and the manpower.
00:13:17
Speaker
But I do know how to make a printed magazine. So we started with, and that was the same thing. We started with William Brown first in the fall of 2018, and then YOLO in the spring of 2019. And it was super well received. And basically, I'm coming up on my 13th issue now. And so I do it three times a year. Next year, I'm actually going to just do it two times a year because we've
00:13:44
Speaker
really taking on the newsletter, I think is like the best way to be communicating about travel. I feel like I want to see beautiful imagery in the magazine, but I don't want to see a lot of information in the magazine because information, if it's really good, is dense and it's not pretty. So
00:14:06
Speaker
I've kind of, you know, sort of two years into YOLO, started a sub stack, which basically comes out every week. And we cover everything from doing deep dives on cities. So we'll have, you know, black books on different places. And then we do travel planners where we say, hey, we're going to talk about Portugal in a couple weeks. So send us your questions or Italy, France, Greece, you name it.
00:14:34
Speaker
And then we also have a free newsletter that comes out every other week. So anybody who's a Substack subscriber doesn't have to pay anything. They just get this in their inbox. And it's just sort of like hotels we've been to recently that we love. It's interviews with different travel experts who really know certain places really well. So you kind of get to meet like travel
00:15:00
Speaker
They call themselves travel designers or experts. Nobody says travel agent anymore, which is kind of too bad because it's kind of a good word. And then we do packing stories. And sometimes if we've been somewhere and we've had an incredible aperitivo, we'll get the recipe. So it's this kind of nice hodgepodge of travel intel
00:15:26
Speaker
that is fun to put out there. And I think it's important that we always have something that is free because we, you know, that's sort of my, my whole thing is like, I don't want travel to be like it is,
00:15:43
Speaker
about going somewhere very far away or going somewhere that you have to be rich to go to or like, I think it's really important that people understand that travel is so much it's why travel so powerful is because when you travel,
00:16:00
Speaker
you really are like, you're more alert. You're not in your like day to day. You're open your eyes more. You're more curious. You like look up at buildings and you take pictures of it because you're like, that's so cool. But meanwhile, like back in your hometown,
Content and Evolution of Yolo Journal
00:16:14
Speaker
you might also have very cool buildings that you never look up and take pictures of. So it's just like, I feel like that feeling that we get when we go somewhere new
00:16:25
Speaker
is something that is actually, you have that inside you all the time, you just have to learn how to harness it so that it's not just like, if I make it to the Amalfi Coast, I'll have that feeling. It's like, no, no, you could get that feeling if you put yourself in the right frame of mind, even in your backyard. So it's always been my thing with YOLO is like,
00:16:51
Speaker
I know I get to go to a lot of really nice places and people see that on Instagram and a big part of that is also like those really nice places usually have budgets to pay for editors rooms or you know like I don't take free flights or whatever but like I get a lot of things like given to me and I and also in the being able to
00:17:17
Speaker
stay in nice places. I also see that sometimes the places that are the most simple actually are the most charming. So I feel like it's my duty to make people who can't afford it but want it. It's great, but also everything is great. It's all in your head.
00:17:37
Speaker
Right there's some of my favorite emails to get and there's some of my favorite magazines and prints to to have and Yolo journal really seems like like a breath and Culmination of all the work that you've done at various publications. So I would have to imagine It's kind of exactly where you want to be and probably the work you're most proud of yeah, I mean I feel like I
00:17:59
Speaker
It's so nice when all, you know, people will say like, I went to this place, you made it so much better because like you sort of like told me exactly what to order or whatever, like the level of specificity and so much of it is like, it's not that I'm the person who came up with the information, but
00:18:20
Speaker
like because obviously I can't be everywhere all over the world and there are huge huge holes in my you know knowledge of places and also like places change so even if I know Rome really well like a restaurant could have
00:18:38
Speaker
management change and could be terrible when you go there. So, so I really rely on talking to people a lot. And I have a really nice small team who are always reaching out to people who are not like your sort of usual suspect, like experts on a place like I try and create the information in the way that you would have a dinner party like
00:19:04
Speaker
there's the cool shop owner and the kind of interesting artist and there's the person who's really into style and somebody who knows food. Where you have all these people who have shared interests but they also know one thing really well and it's just the best kind of dinner party and there's somebody who's rich and there's someone who's poor and they really like each other because they
00:19:30
Speaker
you know, whatever, like, that's the, that's what I try and do is like, find different types of people. It's not all like, highfalutin fashion designers, but there are some in there sometimes. And sometimes those, you know, fashion designers actually like a monastery to stay in and, and it's like, they're not, they're actually the opposite of what you think they might be.
00:19:57
Speaker
they want just like solitude and quiet and they don't want to go to the, you know, the meekinosis of the world that you might imagine. So I'm just trying to put information out there that feels personal and emotional and comes from
00:20:15
Speaker
a broad group of people that like, even if you're like, I don't really love what Yolanda loves. I know she likes old world hotels and I like really minimalist, like whatever. There is always going to be somebody in there that you can relate to.
Collecting Stories and Antiques
00:20:32
Speaker
For sure. And that's kind of what I love about it, right? Like the content is it's raw, it's personable. And a lot of times you actually give the photographers a chance to kind of tell the story, which is really nice. Right. Right. Right. Right. I'm glad you like it.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, it was nice to stumble upon in the Amex lounges in some airports recently. So that was pretty fun. Oh, that's so great. Yeah, it's really nice to have it in these lounges and then it's just such a different audience than like the people who find it in like the kind of cool store. Because we don't have a really, I mean, we're very homemade. We don't really have this distribution network. We really kind of handle everything from our
00:21:16
Speaker
our Brooklyn home office. Well, let's start collecting for a bit. And I think a great place for us to start is something that's a little bit maybe out of left field that most people wouldn't realize they collect. And that's stories. And you're a serial story collector. And I'm curious how you would say that that relates to Yolo and then subsequently you, Yolanda. Story collector.
00:21:46
Speaker
I said earlier like I have like weird files.
00:21:51
Speaker
I think Harriet the Spy might have been my favorite book when I was a kid. And I still think about Harriet the Spy and I feel like I'm a little bit her. I also love tomato sandwiches with mayonnaise. And I do think there's something about that kind of collecting stories. I love to study people and study
00:22:18
Speaker
What do they like? What do they want? I like to know when I meet them, where do they go? I'm the most curious person. I think both Matt and I would say, we're like,
00:22:30
Speaker
the most curious people in the room. I don't need to talk about myself. I like to hear other people talk, even though I'm talking about myself a lot right now. Well, that's only because I asked you to. Okay. But I would say the other thing I like is I do have this fascination with storytelling of I have a folder.
00:22:53
Speaker
I had this idea that I was going to pitch a whole story about like, you know, the sort of dirty side of making things beautiful in magazines. And I had this idea for a show called Pretty. And I still have that folder. And I have a lot of ideas about lots of shows. I mean, there's like super interesting stories that I collect on everything from like,
00:23:23
Speaker
the intrigue of humanity, I guess. Well, it's no secret that you love antiques and vintage hunting and it's a big part of yours and Matt's life. I mean, everywhere you two go, you're hitting the antique shops of the world and hunting for treasures that you find exciting and you share them with us, which is great. But I'm curious to know, has it always been this way? Has it always been something that you two loved and collected and always made a part of trips and traveling?
00:23:52
Speaker
We have always loved this, like actually, it was a couple, maybe about a month ago, a friend of ours had sent us all of these video tapes he'd made from back in like late 90s.
00:24:07
Speaker
He had this idea that we should have a travel show and so we went to palm springs. Which is where my night had gone on like our first week and we spent together and then. That's where we got married and so we went we spent this weekend with her friend doing next is a great photographer and.
00:24:26
Speaker
director and he was videoing us going around Palm Springs making this kind of test for a future travel show that never happened or maybe was the precursor in a bad show alternate group.
00:24:42
Speaker
But in this show, we are going around, antiquing, and then thrift store shopping, car shopping. And I was like, oh my God, I just, I guess we've always done that. It's like, that's what we do. We get somewhere, we like, it used in the 90s, it was like, look at the class of hides, he's got a garage sale.
00:25:08
Speaker
flea markets, wherever we go, like, and, you know, up, up to today, it's like, when I'm thinking about
00:25:17
Speaker
what day should we leave this town to go to this other place we need to go? I'm like, well, I can't leave until Sunday night because I need to hit the Rome flea market Sunday morning. But then like, you know, so everything is so timed. Like, I've, of course, like sometimes I can't make it happen. But like, I really, it is just a part of this scheduling is like,
00:25:41
Speaker
Oh, well, yeah, of course we'll go visit Matt's mom on a Sunday for lunch because in the summertime we can hit the great market up there Sunday morning and you know, so it's always built into our life.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I think that I was somebody who got into the idea of like used clothes, because when I was a kid, my parents had no money. But I had this idea of like the way I wanted to dress and how I wanted to look. And so I went to Salvation Army. And like, that's how I
00:26:20
Speaker
I was able to sort of like establish my style was by finding things cheap and vintage. And then I had some friends whose parents were super into antiquing and they used to take me to this flea market in Sausalito, which doesn't exist anymore.
00:26:39
Speaker
But we used to go there and I was like just sort of I always found people that I surrounded I surrounded myself often with friends parents who taught me a lot because My parents are great at many things, but they're not as seats at all
00:27:01
Speaker
My dad's a piano teacher. He's an incredible musician. My mom is a great writer. She's super into her garden, but they don't care about material things at all or travel.
Current Collecting Interests
00:27:18
Speaker
What are some specific antiques that you collect that you're always on the lookout for? Every place you go to, you're always looking for at least something to add to a specific collection.
00:27:30
Speaker
So it's often things that usually it's more smalls because that is, you know, it also is like what project do we have going on? So right now we're like redoing our barn in upstate. So it's going to be the William Brown barn with this really cool new loft space that Matt will be doing a lot of cooking and perhaps workshops in and that sort of thing.
00:27:54
Speaker
And so now we're actually looking for really interesting lamps. Maybe it's from the 70s, ceramic-based lamps. And I think we're looking for more of this 1970s vibe, things that we never would have looked for before. For our house that we have at Upstate, which is much more minimalist and
00:28:21
Speaker
I would say more Scandinavian than anything, we're always looking at Danish, anything in the scandal world, and definitely it'd be like Arabia plates, but we also like Heath plates, and it feels like Heath is very much in that same kind of world, or we love Bennington pottery, all of that from that sort of 60s, 70s period.
00:28:50
Speaker
whenever we see something, even if we're not looking for it, we'll be like, okay, well, we don't know when we're going to need that. But it looks like we may need it. Yeah. Then when we're in Europe, it's more like Rome, it's definitely small. I often find like I got in ashtrays and all that stuff. Yeah. Or like incredible linens. There's a lot of great souvenir kind of things like all of those,
00:29:20
Speaker
1950s and 60s kind of souvenir books that, you know, they used to, because people didn't take photos the way that they did later. And so like you would go somewhere and instead of taking pictures, you would buy like the little small little photo souvenir books.
00:29:40
Speaker
So I collect all of that sort of thing. It just is like from such a period of time. I always loved the graphics and I just love the idea of like what that meant. And then I'm, you know, a huge postcard collector. I mean, pretty much everything that has incredible graphics and beautiful photography or is printed in a really beautiful way. Like I always get it.
00:30:08
Speaker
Is there something that you collect that Matt doesn't necessarily care for and vice versa? Are you guys just always in unison?
00:30:18
Speaker
No, let me think. There is something. I just have to think what it is. It's like there's sometimes like he likes certain things like some Fornicetti things that he likes. I'm like, that is weird. Like he just got this tray yesterday that I was like, what is that? It's like a huge tiger on a tray. And he's like, it's an incredibly rare Fornicetti. And I'm like, OK.
00:30:46
Speaker
I'll go with it but like I never would have like been attracted to it or he's really really into ceramics and he likes weird abstract ceramics like I mean I like Valerice from the 60s and 70s we have so much of that in the France house and we agree on that but like
00:31:09
Speaker
He'll also find something that's like this Sicilian ceramicist, too. I like it, but it's a little weird for me. Like, I go with it. I'm not like, oh, that's so ugly. But I'm a little like, okay, like maybe you are seeing something I'm not seeing here. Or maybe you're just off, but only time will tell.
00:31:34
Speaker
You also love cookbooks and it's something that I feel a lot of folks collect, but they don't necessarily realize that they're collecting them. So I'm curious to know, you know, what's your method for collecting these and how are you using them? Are they decorative? Are you pulling recipes out? Cause I feel like it's so nuanced and there's something so nuanced about grabbing a cookbook and choosing a recipe to make out of it, right? It's such like a thing of the past.
00:31:59
Speaker
Right. Well, I've always loved cookbooks, even though I don't really cook. I mean, if I wasn't married to Matt, I would cook. I used to cook before him, but he's like,
00:32:11
Speaker
He's so much better and he's quick and decisive in the kitchen. And as he has just become the cook in the house, like it's also muscle that I don't exercise anymore.
New House Project in France
00:32:25
Speaker
And especially with your daughter now in college, it's like, he used to travel so much more and I would be at home with her and I would cook for her. Now that she's not around, I'm like, I barely, barely ever cook.
00:32:39
Speaker
But I always collected cookbooks because I just I loved the graphics and I like looking at how information is organized and so I feel like organizing information in a cookbook is something like there's always you have to be very strategic about how
00:32:59
Speaker
how you lay it out and how many photos or does it have any or whatever so we've kind of always loved having them as objects but also Matt definitely cooks from them like we have a huge collection of them upstate and he always is cooking from them always like he may cross check something with like okay I'm just gonna look online because I don't have this ingredient and see like
00:33:29
Speaker
does somebody else have a substitute? But he really cooks from them. And then he actually has a cookbook coming out in September, which is really exciting. But yeah, so their inspiration, literally in the, you know, what to cook from and also just in the kind of graphic and photographic way.
00:33:52
Speaker
Being at Martha for all those, you know, it wasn't all those years actually. It was really only two years, but it seemed like forever because it was a very challenging place to work. I used a lot of the thinking about how to photograph food came from a lot of those cookbooks. That's great. I asked Matt this question and I'm curious to know how you feel about it.
00:34:15
Speaker
Where do you draw the line between mixing vintage and new? Cause Matt was like, I love a new toilet. I mean, I think Matt likes new more than I do. We actually have a new house project.
00:34:30
Speaker
It's like, I haven't put it on Instagram yet, so it's like, it's not real if it's not on Instagram, but it is real. And it's a very exciting new house project in France in the next town over from our house that we have now. And it's like a sort of small, like a mini chateau that we've driven by ever since we've been going to that area.
00:34:58
Speaker
And I always have said like, oh my God, that's my dream house. It's just, it's perfect. It's got this incredible walled garden and it's like something out of like a fairy tale and the price was right. And basically we're closing on it at the end of this month.
00:35:18
Speaker
Congratulations. Thank you. But this is a house that like is not going to have like the house that we did that we call Maison Medoc.
00:35:31
Speaker
that house was like two houses combined into one. We opened up a lot of walls in the back to create a lot of light. And it was really like this kind of very cool mix of new and old. And we brought in our modernist architect friend Oscar, who did our house in upstate and he's a real minimalist and
00:35:55
Speaker
we had a lot of modern elements that work really well in that house. And this house, I feel like, I'm like, no, this is going to be much more of a period piece. Like, yes, of course we'll have like some things that are modern, but like, I don't want it to feel like a museum, but I think that this will be the first time we have something where we really are
00:36:22
Speaker
The house rules on this one.
Mindset: Collecting vs. Minimalism
00:36:28
Speaker
We need to kind of restore it, but restore it to what it was. And that I think will be mostly old with just a tiny bit of new.
00:36:41
Speaker
I'm always going to be like, I like clawfoot tub. I don't want like, I don't like modern. When I see some of the tubs that people put in that are sort of like a modern variation on that, it's like, yeah, it might be more comfortable than the clawfoot, but the clawfoot's just cooler. Yeah, a lot more charm. Yeah. So are you guys moving to this, the new Chateau, or are you going to keep your other place still?
00:37:06
Speaker
I think the idea is that we will fix this new one and then ultimately sell Mizumidak at some point. Yeah. Don't need two houses and two towns. Landlords and rent out, but that's also a possibility, but it seems like a pain. Who knows, but probably not. Is buying a home in Europe
00:37:32
Speaker
Was it a huge difficulty and a lot of hoops to jump through to be able to do that? I'm sure that's a question a lot of people ask you. It is, um, we've only done it in France and this will be our second time. And it is, I think surprisingly, at least in France, easier than you would imagine. Like the trick is that you have to get your funding from the States.
00:37:59
Speaker
like you're not going to find a bank in France that's going to lend you the money. So if you have something in the States that you can basically like either of you just have disposable income, and there's so many great value things there that like, you'd be shocked about what you can get for, you know, what's what would buy you like not even maybe it would buy you like a
00:38:29
Speaker
one bedroom by JFK in an apartment building, could buy you a beautiful house that, yes, you'll have to put the same amount of money. 300,000 can buy you something. 800,000 can buy you something really insane. It's just like a different market.
00:38:51
Speaker
you know, what we have done is sort of borrowed against our place upstate, which thank God for the pandemic, what it did for raising prices in places that were otherwise like, I mean, we were upstate for 20 years, and it seemed like the real estate was just always the same, and now it's like quadrupled, so that's the place.
00:39:19
Speaker
One last question before we wrap it up with the collector's dream rundown is so appreciating things like old ceramics and ceramic ashtrays and cookbooks and postcards. It's something really not for everybody. In fact, I would say most people probably overlook all these great things, but these are also really great places for people to start collecting. Um,
00:39:44
Speaker
People don't collect things like they used to though, which is, I find so interesting and I'm curious to know why you think that is.
00:39:51
Speaker
I mean, I do think that there's definitely so many, I feel like the Marie Kondo effect is for sure a real thing. I think like it is interesting to see how, like for some people, they just look at it as like, it is this albatross, like, I mean, well, I don't feel like I can,
00:40:17
Speaker
I can't be free if I have all this stuff around me. And I totally understand that and appreciate it and maybe even jealous of people who can do that. My brother, he moved four years ago to Copenhagen with his family.
00:40:33
Speaker
and basically shed so many things because they had a house in the Bay Area and they just were like, we're not going to pay for storage. We're just going to unload things. And then they moved to Copenhagen and now they've moved back. And he's like, so we've now gone through a shedding process twice. And I realized, even though we have stuff in storage,
00:40:54
Speaker
I mean, stuff in a ship and it'll be here in a couple of weeks. Like, I don't even miss it. Like, I don't even remember what's in it. And I know when it gets here, I'll be like, Oh, I love that thing. But like, there's that freedom for that, that period of time when you don't have the thing around you that you're like, Oh, yeah, I don't need that. So
00:41:15
Speaker
I think there are people who are free of things and then there are people who are in love with the things.
00:41:25
Speaker
you know, you're one or the other and I feel like the collecting thing can happen where you're like, I've just moved into an apartment. I want to feel like it feels like me and it feels a little generic. And so like, what can I do in an inexpensive way to make it feel more like it has some soulfulness. And so I always feel like
00:41:51
Speaker
getting things that are old and already have some sort of story and life to them is an instant way of kind of bringing some character into a space.
Personal Reflections and Future Endeavors
00:42:02
Speaker
So I would say for a starter person, like the reason to begin collecting is maybe for that, like, so maybe you just got an apartment, you're like, I want a bar cart, I think that's cool. And then it's like, actually, I want to start collecting flasks, because they look good on the bar
00:42:21
Speaker
So I think it can start all, it's sort of like whatever you're into and then maybe picking one thing. It is a fun thing to do and if you decide like you at some point are moving and you want to shed it, it's not so hard to sell those things too.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yes are you on a let's wrap it up here with the collectors you run down so you can answer these questions based on. Any of the collections that you have stories cookbooks postcards any of them right all right what's the one that got away. The one that got away i would say.
00:43:00
Speaker
a car. Like Matt and I do both love collecting cars. I know this is a big one, but there was a Mercedes that back in 1998, we were looking at the video of this car. Matt would have to give us specifics on exactly what the model was, but it was this incredible Mercedes and it was
00:43:21
Speaker
$34,000 then. And it was between buying that or putting a down payment on the house upstate. And we didn't buy the car and that car today, Matt said is worth something like 800,000. Oh my goodness. Unreal. That got away. I think cars and watches are always where it's like, yeah, the value of it is crazy.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a tough one for sure. Yeah. How about the on deck circle? So is there anything that you have your eye on anything you're looking to add to a property or? You know, I just was on the Upper East Side today and I wandered into some store because it had like.
00:44:05
Speaker
you know the scallamandra, the kind of red background with zebras on it that Gina's restaurant used to have here in New York. And they had like a waste bin and a little like Kleenex tissue holder thing. So I walked in there and they had this mix of like old and new and they had these really cool
00:44:29
Speaker
like stacking little benches that were like mid-century Italian leather with like brass, kind of almost like bamboo legs. And I was like, oh my God, those are so good. Like must put on the list, you know? So I feel like I'm always looking like I don't do eBay. If I do look for something, then I go down this rabbit hole and I do end up doing eBay, but I kind of stay away from it.
00:44:58
Speaker
because I do enjoy finding it out in real life on my own. How about the unobtainable? One, you can't have it's maybe in a museum or a private collection or it's just too expensive.
00:45:17
Speaker
I love a fabric wall, like, and every time I see like a, I mean, this is kind of less collecting and more like interiors, but like, whenever I go into these kind of like, you know, if you're in Versailles or you're at like a museum and there's this one museum in Rome that I love,
00:45:38
Speaker
the doria pinfili and it always has like these incredible couches that are with this like perfectly distressed velvet and they're kind of like simple they're not like ornately designed but like the shape is quite simple but like the red velvet is just i don't know i just like love i love that look and it just seems absolutely out of range
00:46:06
Speaker
Yeah, especially when it's in the place like Versailles. Yeah, exactly. The page one rewrite, so money no object. If you could collect anything besides all your current collections, what would it be? Anything, let's say. I would say like gold.
00:46:27
Speaker
jewelry. I think like that is like wearable. I mean, I do wear that and I collect it, but more like Matt buys it for me when we see something. But I feel like that would be something that like, if I had only started collecting that like from when I started going to flea markets, I'd have the most incredible collection of it.
00:46:56
Speaker
Love it. How about the goat? So who do you look up to in the collecting world? I would say John Darien. He's, I just think he's incredible. Like I love, I love the way he puts his house together in Provincetown. I just love everything about like, I think he just has such an eye and it's like, nothing is like,
00:47:22
Speaker
fancy, it's just soulful. I don't know. He's somebody who can go find a branch and put it in a vase that's from some garage sale and he just makes it look perfect. The hunt or the ownership? The hunt. That seems to be fairly unanimous. Yeah. Once I have it, I'm like, really? Yeah. Yeah. It's all about the finding.
00:47:53
Speaker
Most importantly, do you feel that you were born with the collector's gene? I think I was. I actually, recently, my mom has been going through all of these notebooks and boxes of things that were her moms and her grandmothers. My mom found these notebooks that were basically like scrapbooks that my grandma made, and they are just like mine.
00:48:22
Speaker
there's like all of these other things that she's found that my grandma collected that are just like what I collect you know stationary postcards and so I was like okay I think I mean it skipped over my mom but it definitely I think it's it was yeah I think I got it I got the gene
00:48:44
Speaker
There we go. Yolanda, so great to chat with you, and thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I know you guys have a lot going on on your end, so it's always a pleasure to catch up and hear about all the adventures that you guys have coming up. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed talking to you. You got it. Take care. Take care. Bye. All right, that does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to Collector's Gene Radio.