My daughter & her roommate have chosen your fan floral bedding for their dorm room. They love it, but need a coordinating window treatment. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks! : )

From: Trish  [mailto:******@*****.net]
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2010 11:17 AM
To: AskADesigner

Hi Trish,

We’re so excited that your daughter and her roommate love the Fan Floral collection and chose it for their dorm room!  We like the idea of using a clean ivory drape that matches the color of the bedding and using a lime green trim or ribbon that matches the stems from the floral pattern as a tie back to add just a hint of color.  You could even find a lime fabric or trim and sew it on to the panel for that touch of color to become a more permanent fixture on the window treatment. 

Another suggestion (if you’re feeling a bit crafty) to have your windows match directly back to your bedding is to use the fabric from a second Fan Floral duvet to make your own coordinating window treatments.  You can either use the floral pattern or even the reverse of the duvet, which is a grey and white geometric pattern that could look REALLY cute! 

I hope these suggestions helped you.  Please send us pictures of the dorm room after it’s complete – we’d love to see how it turns out!  Have a great school year!

-Rebecca, Associate Home designer, Echo

Reply from Trish:

Thanks for the ideas! We will send pictures when we get them moved in & set up.  : )

If GPA means 'giggles per allowance' or 'geniuses promote accomplishment' we might venture to say Yes!   Whether you already graduated or if you're planning to move into your first dorm room in August, we all know how important a dorm room is.    It's your office, your library, party space and your oasis - all wrapped in one. Most likely your dorm room will be small and have concrete walls so due to the limited space, choose furniture and accessories that both represent your personality as well as serve an important function. Why have the dull, gray standard issue wastebasket when you can have bright yellow? Why sit on the cold hard floor when you can have a plush colorful rug?  This is your your place of refuge.  It's where your friends visit you, where you rest your head after a long day of higher learning. So choose colors that inspire you as well as calm you; use symmetry and geometrics to provide a feeling of order and control; organize and hide clutter to let you to focus on your projects and term papers.   We asked a few current college students for their input on what they think are the elements of a great dorm room.

From Haley:  To me, the most important thing about college living is making your dorm room feel as much like home as you possibly can. Personal accents can turn your boring and confided cinder block room into a fun and comfortable living space. Since the square footage of each room is usually less than ideal(ha!) its all about working with what you have and adding small details that don’t take up much room. Personally, I like to fill my room with pictures of my friends and family in really cute picture frames. Its also really important to me to always have a yummy smelling room fragrance masking the dorm room odor of stale pizza and spilled beer. Having a comfortable bed is the MOST IMPORTANT part of creating an awesome room. A college dorm room bed serves many purposes- not only do you sleep in it, but it is also the place where you end up doing a lot of your homework, hanging out with friends and just plain relaxing. Its crucial to have bedding that’s cute, but also practical (machine washable, durable fabric). In conclusion, great bed= great dorm room!! 
Haley's pick:  Echo’s Jaipur bedding looks ideal for a dorm room bed because its lively and energetic. I love it’s bright paisleys and ethnic feel.

From Jenni: To me the things that make my dorm room great are the pictures of my friends and family and lots of color. Dorm rooms are usually very plain when you first move in and to me, bright and bold colors are the best way to make it feel less sanitary and more like a home. I would love to have the Echo That '70s Floral sheets and duvet cover for my room because green is my favorite color and that bright green really pops against the black. It would also be great because it’s dark enough that it won’t look dirty (as I do everything on my bed- eat, watch tv, study, sleep) and it would be so fun and easy to accessorize the rest of the room around those colors. Bedding is such an easy way to have fun with color and patterns in a, most likely, small dorm room. After that I think it is super important to decorate your walls. I usually have a whole section of photos and then posters of my favorite movies, sports teams and famous paintings. Boring walls are too depressing especially when winter hits and outside the window is gray and boring too.

Allure Magazine's August 2010 issue featured a great, quick and easy guide on how to wear this summer's colorful silk headscarves.  Thanks for the great mention, Allure!  A head scarf is a simple yet chic way to add color or a casual glamour to any outfit.  Be sure to clip this 'how-to' and post it inside your closet door or tuck it into your dorm mirror for quick inspiration!

Echo is proud to congratulate Nadia Klionsky-Olidort for receiving the Florence and Irwin Zlowe Memorial Award for her painting "Reflections."  The award was given by the The National Association of Women Artists which was founded in 1889 and is the oldest professional women's fine art organization in the United States. Nadia has been a studio artist at Echo for 9 years working with our designers by painting and preparing artwork for Echo's scarf collections.

This painting “Reflections” is oil on canvas, as most of her other works are.  While traveling through Maine and the greater New England some years ago, Nadia said "I was struck by the remarkable similarity between Cathedral woods on Monhegan Island and the Russian countryside where I spent many summer growing up. I'm engrained in this reminiscence, this reminder of the relativity of time that I try to convey."

Nadia was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she began her art training at a school affiliated with the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. After immigrating with her family to the United States she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where she continued her studies with an emphasis on landscape painting. Nadia said "As far back as I can remember, I have been fascinated by nature- its majesty, mystery, and above all else, the absolute sense of timelessness. I have been enchanted by atmospheric conditions that produce fog and haze, evoking the still mood of tranquility. I have been drawn to scenes that convey the passage of time, such as twilight, sunsets and sunrises. What is important to me the most is not just a rendition of a realistic landscape, but the feeling, mood, and emotions that it inspires. I am most interested in capturing the poetry of these moments, and in this sense, my point of view is similar to the "Tonalist" school of painters." Tonalist is a 19th century American art movement that includes James Whistler, Frederic Church and George Inness. Nadia's work is represented by 2 galleries in Maine, in Kennebunkport and in Portland.

"Reflections" by Nadia Klionsky-Olidort