Think Outside of the Box

Design idea.

Oh how I love beautiful packaging. A beautifully packaged item in the window of a store will stop me mid-sentence and full stride as I walk down the busiest streets of Manhattan. What can I say? I'm a marketing team's dream.

Which brings me to something that happened in my household last year. As my husband and I were receiving our wedding and shower gifts in the mail, we were pleasantly surprised by some wonderful packaging. When we picked our Nambe flatware set, we had just seen it in a case at Bloomingdales. We had no idea that each set would be packaged in a lovely, hinged box. As each set came in the mail, we stacked up the empty boxes because we just couldn't stomach throwing them out.

And then I remembered a few pages that I had pulled from past Domino Magazine issues (RIP). First, is this office with piles and piles of books and Hermes boxes (too bad I don't have a stockpile of those). This is way too messy for me, but I like the concept.



And then there is this apartment, where the designer neatly stacked an odd array of coffee table books to make impromptu side tables. We're getting closer...


And so we ended up with this. My beautiful, modern Nambe boxes made the perfect side table. And the best part is that each box contains things that I was hopelessly trying to organize in my very small space (playbills and tickets, birth announcements, memorable greeting cards, etc).

So for those of you that are receiving wedding or housewarming gifts, think outside of the box. You might be able to put that beautiful packaging to work in your home too.