Photo by David Michael Miller

Furnish the Love

Furnishings are the most fun way to change up the look of your home. Lavy, the owner of Paris Envy, suggests juxtaposing ornamental items beside simplistic ones for a look of modern romance. Like Miller, she shuns the “over-the-top cottage look.”

“I like the mixture of something ornate in a more simple setting around it,” she says.

Her business partner, Jason, crafts furniture in the French Provencal style. One of his most dramatic pieces was an eight-foot mirror with crown molding and faux glass. (“It was a staple at the store. We wondered if we should sell it at all.”) Lavy suggests pairing a stunner like that with a simple chair or console table, or using it as a backdrop for a set of furniture with white denim slipcovers.

Vintage inspired furniture, whether it’s actually vintage or not, adds real romance to any room, Lavy adds. Her partner makes beautiful armoires and brings in used ones, as well, all of them harking another time.

Another romantic décor trick? Bring garden statues indoors.

“It’s great to find vintage ones, or if they are newer, sometimes we’ll faux them ourselves to give them that aged look,” Lavy says. “They have a romantic look without being frilly.”

She’s also been experimenting with wrought iron tables and scroll lamps, which can give a romantic room more of a masculine edge.

Amorous Accessories

Some of the best accessories are artifacts – or even trinkets – that recall a specific time or place, whether that be the streets of gay Paris or the jungles of mysterious Africa. Either way, we tend to romanticize foreign places, which can make us feel a touch exotic every time we see them on the coffee table.

“I like using accessories from other cultures, other times, because they take on an abstract quality,” Miller says.

On his home dining room table, he keeps two galvanized steel seed spreaders from an agricultural machine. They have a beautiful patina on them and serve as plant holders. At his office, two terra cotta fragments of a 19th-century building sit on his coffee table as pieces of art.

“East Asia, Africa, France – I love having artifacts from other cultures,” he says. “It has an identity, has a soul to it.”

Of course, few places are considered to be more romantic than Paris. That’s something Lavy’s home décor shop (Paris Envy) counts on.

The last time she found herself in the city of love, she stocked up on souvenirs for her customers.

“Anything Paris is very popular, it really is,” she says. “I brought back tons of souvenir stuff because it’s really tough to get that little Eiffel Tower. I filled bags with them at all the tourist places. Year round, people want Paris.”

It must be love.