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Hello Campos' glasses collection is stashed in one of her closets, along with designer shoes, gowns and the other bits and bobs of daily dressing. Her closets are made to withstand hurricanes.
Some closets have clout. Pinecrest, Fla., resident Hello Campos (above) has two-story closets. |
By KATHRYN WEXLER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
It certainly wasn't what Virginia Woolf had in mind.
When the writer coined the famous phrase, "A room of one's own," in a lecture at Cambridge in 1928, she was addressing a woman's need for space if her intellectual life was to flourish.
Well, Ginny, we got the room, all right--though it's usually just a cubical.
Today we need a new type of room of our own. A place for quiet reflection and self-actualization before we log on to a hyper-connected world.
Hello, closet!
A closet is where lovers aren't welcome, where children shouldn't play and where even maids have very little business. It's a place to hide secrets, savor flimsy, lovely things or unhook a work-a-day uniform.
It's a sacred space.
Hello Campos went one better. When she built her Miami house, she turned her closet into a fortress.
"It's a hurricane shelter," said Campos, perched on the moving ladder she uses to reach the second story of her walk-in closet--one of two, actually. "It's all concrete."
The upper tier is where she keeps formal gowns and luggage. It's also where she stores the mink, fox and chinchilla, cooled by an air-conditioning vent a few inches away.
Down below are the gossamer blouses, the Dolce & Gabbana getups.
"I'm very proud of my closet because I feel happy when I look for things," said Campos, originally from Brazil.
As it turns out, bad weather has never caused her to hunker down among her beloved boots and bags. But sometimes she takes shelter there anyway.
"If I'm a little blue, hours and hours. I try things on, I put them here," she said, gesturing to a shelf. "I try other things "
The closet off Saskia Galliano-Touret's bedroom can't honestly be called a closet.
Really it's a boudoir, a place meant for primping, bathing and basking in the cherry-hued light that stained glass windows throw across the Opera Fantastico marble floor.
But it wasn't for glory that Touret built the space.
"It's supposed to be a nice, cozy, little place," said Touret. "My husband has his office. My office is my bathroom. It's where I keep my sanity."
Black blouses go on the top rack. Below are skirts and jeans. The drawers of her custom-built oak dressers are each devoted to a particular item: strappy shoes, whimsical hair clips, African beaded jewelry
Simply entering the space is itself a reprieve, said Touret, a former manager at L'Oreal.
Turning a closet into a sanctuary doesn't require running water or skilled labor.
"I always rent," said Catalina Rojas. "So I pick up what's already there and adopt it."
Rojas thinks her fondness for the space comes from tender memories of her grandmother's armoire in Chile.
"It was the like the treasure place in her bedroom. You could hide in there. It was small, but she had things like chocolates in there," she said.
Through the years, she has used her closets as work spaces, housing her desk and computer, and stationery tools. At one time she found it to be the perfect, quiet place for her napping infant.
Closets lend themselves to intimate personalization that other areas of the home might not, said Rosalyn Cherry, a professional organizer for 11 years in New York City. "If you share a space with someone, it has to be more of a combined imprint," she said.
Of course, closet organizers hate clutter. They want you to pitch anything you can't wear right now or don't want to. For Rojas, though, it's exactly the things that aren't practical that make her closet feel so special.
"I keep in there the things, if I ever had to leave, the things I would take with me. Photos when I was little. My earrings. Hidden things," she said.
TIPS To make your closet more personal, try some touches that have worked for others: Hang photos. Keep perfumes there so the space smells like you. Display items at the front of your closet because you love them, not necessarily because you wear them. Paint the interior a whimsical color. Keep your under-garments and pj's in your closet so you can get fully dressed inside. ORGANIZATION If all you really want is to streamline your closet, Lisa Lennard, project development manager for the franchise California Closets, which customizes closets, has these tips: "Go through the closet and get rid of everything that doesn't have to be there," she said. "The first step to feeling comfortable is getting rid of the clutter. You have to be tough with yourself." Organize space according to categories; dress pants in one area--jeans in another. Put bulkier items like jackets or vests on the bottom rack of a double-decker section, and slimmer items like slacks on top. "It sometimes seems opposite to how you would wear them, but it opens up the space." Hang hats on hooks attached to the wall. |
