Meet the Judges

When we heard style muse Lawren Howell had recently designed a new home office for herself—complete with three fabulous walls of built-in, wraparound bookshelves—we had to reach out to her for details. We learned that it’s not just her office that’s filled with books. Indeed, beautiful books cover nearly every surface of her eclectically furnished home and get heavy use as sources of inspiration. Here’s how the 2024 Booktique Awards Judge weaves books into her busy daily life as a creative powerhouse and mom of three.

We love imagining you in your new office, bringing style visions to life in the presence of your book collection. How do you interact with the books in your office during a typical workday? I’ve always had books throughout my home, but here in my office I notice that I’m interacting with them in a whole new way. Like if I’m in between tasks, I’ll give myself a little treat by going to my shelves and opening a random book – usually an art book or a book on interior design or lifestyle. It’s like lighting a candle, just an inspiring moment for myself. Or if I’m in the middle of a task and need to look for something specific, I’ll go to a book that doesn’t actually relate, just to get unexpected inspiration. I’m a visual person, so I’ll just stop at a page and marvel at the colors or a random quote, and I’ll find clarity or a new way of thinking.

Work aside, what’s your favorite type of coffee table book to enjoy in your downtime? I get so much inspiration from cookbooks. My mom does too—I remember she would have cookbooks on her bedside table and flip through them before bed. For me, they are such an escape. Sometimes I’ll have these moments where I’m in my kitchen, and my kids have just left for school, and there’s a big mess to clean up, but I’ll just take a moment to myself and open a cookbook and escape for a bit. Cookbooks especially do that for me.

What’s on your coffee table right now, book or otherwise? We actually have two coffee tables and two large dining tables all covered with books. Some of my favorites are Cabana Anthology, Irving Penn’s Platinum Prints, a gorgeous Caravaggio book from Phaidon, and Robert Polidori’s amazing photography book Parcours Museologique Revisite which documents 25-years of restorations at Versailles. I also love the French cooking and lifestyle book Provence: Food Trip Ensoleille en 100 Recettes which I picked up while living in France for a year with my family. It has an incredible design, with a cutout of a tree on the cover and these really pretty pictures inside of the farms where the food is grown for the book’s recipes. In our family room, we have beautiful oversized kids’ books, like Animalium and Zoo-ology, alongside board games and half-finished puzzles.

And how do you style the books throughout your home? I style them in neat stacks and loosely group them by category, though I mix interior design books with art books because they’re so tangential. Styled around the book stacks are all kinds of objects and mementos—travel souvenirs, unusual gifts from friends around the world, keepsakes made by our kids, finds from flea markets in France, and things from nature—feathers, dried flowers, treasures found on hikes here in Ojai or at the beach. And lots of framed family photos!

Moving onto the 2024 Booktique Awards—thank you for joining us this year as a judge! Of all the books you judged, which one really spoke to you and why? I was so impressed with Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion. I didn’t realize there was such a history of personal style in the NBA! What I also love about this book is that it’s so niche. It explores one area of artistic expression—fashion—within the context of a totally different one—sports. It takes a really deep dive into artistic expression in a very nuanced way.

Was there a specific part of any of these books that you’d like to point out to our readers? In Fly, the photos of Lew Alcindor and Julius Erving in the 1960s-70s (page 54, 58-59) really drew me in from a fashion perspective. These players are just so striking with their height, their physiques, and their attitude on the court, and hairstyles! The way they wear clothes—it’s like they’re professional fashion models. There is such rad personal style exhibited in these pages!

At Booktique, we say “Read Beautifully” and we invite each person in our community to define it however they choose. What comes to mind when you think “Read Beautifully”? A place? A favorite person? A time of day? A color? A certain type of imagery? A specific book? The first thing that comes to mind when I think “read beautifully” is the early morning. Every day I try to make a point of watching as the first daylight hits the Topatopa mountains outside my window. Having a cappuccino in hand, grabbing a design book and flipping through the beautiful imagery, ignoring my inbox and just getting a little visual inspiration before the day gets started—that’s “reading beautifully” for me.

If you had to choose... Words or pictures? Pictures. Matte or glossy? Matte. Serif or sans? Serif. Brights or greige? Brights. Marble or terrazzo? Marble. Music or silence? Music. Sweet or savory? Sweet and savory together, sorry! Coffee or cocktails? Both. (Too hard to choose!) Movie theater or museum? Museum. Tulips or Bird of Paradise? Tulips. Grand Canyon or Central Park? Central Park. Order or chaos? Order.