We introduce to you our first issue of Fort Worth HOME, our quarterly luxury shelter publication that will bring you spaces large and small, experts popular and unknown, and products sourced far and wide.
I cannot get the song “Be Our Guest” from “Beauty and the Beast” out of my head right now – the original version, not the reboot. If I could sing through the computer (or sing at all) that is exactly the message I would want you to receive. The publishers and editors behind Fort Worth Magazine have launched a home magazine and we want you to be our guest.
The writing has been on the wallpapered walls for many years. About 17 years ago Fort Worth Magazine started a Dream Home series, partnering with area builders and industry professionals annually to build a home on spec. The response from the public was and always is overwhelming. Readers and industry professionals flood in for a grand opening party, home enthusiasts and those with an eye for design tour the home for months, and subscribers read the issue cover to cover to get all the design details.
The success of that series, along with our Inside Design features profiling Fort Worth-area homes, proved that there was a niche in our city that needed to be filled. Our city was begging for a home magazine to showcase well-designed spaces, the professionals who create them and the Fort Worthians who inhabit them.
So, we introduce to you our first issue of Fort Worth HOME. This quarterly luxury shelter publication will bring you spaces large and small, experts popular and unknown, and products sourced far and wide.
When you design and decorate a home, there are certain rules – choose the right white, don't fight the architecture, always mix textures, etc. But the best rule of all is this: just buy things you truly love. The great part about creating a magazine is you can do that with abandon. When you design a home magazine, most rules fly out the window. Instead, you can just show all of the pretty things.
On our journey to do that, we figured this magazine would make us fall in love with homes and design all over again, but instead it made us fall in love with Fort Worth all over again. Through this process, we've met furniture makers, interior designers, home builders, store owners and countless lovely homeowners who have reaffirmed our admiration for the people of this city.
Two of those lovely homeowners are Whitney and Chris Cotten. I made myself at home in their Spanish Transitional on a few different occasions and had the pleasure of meeting their children each time. They were sweet and kind and, perhaps most importantly, calm. As I'm attempting to rear a similarly mannered child, I thought to myself, How did they do that? Create two sweet and calm children, who are toddlers nonetheless? And then I looked around the house. It was always clean, not too busy, had the perfect decimal of music playing, and things were well put-together, calm and serene. It's no wonder. Their children are clearly a reflection of the beautiful home that was built for them.
For our other feature in our premiere issue, we took a leap to a similarly sweet family in a dramatically different home – Allisen and Kevin Prigel's saltbox colonial in the Near Southside. The home perfectly balances fancy, historic, eclectic and fun while accurately reflecting the family. At one point, I was talking to Allisen as she leaned against one of her burlwood doorways and noticed that her light blue floral shirt matched the paneling on her wall almost exactly. And when I commented on the fluke, she reminded me that it wasn't an accident at all. People's homes are a reflection of them.
As someone who has an only partially furnished home, with outdoor furniture in my living room, a wobbly dining table, and a litter box in the middle of my closet, it was a sobering realization. But that's another issue.
In our first creation of this publication we also took a closer look at the woman responsible for taking Allisen's taste and bringing it to life, Grace Mitchell. The local designer is another one of the gems of a human that we met while penning this pub. We're just hoping she will take us along for the ride as she starts her journey as TV star.
And we hope you enjoy each journey through the pages of our magazine and the Fort Worth HOME website.
Go on, unfold your menu [magazine]
Take a glance and then you'll
Be our guest oui, our guest
Be our guest
Please, be our guest.
- Kendall Louis