Table of Contents: The Velvet Underground

In this week’s Velvet Underground issue at Remodelista, we’re dodging the winter doldrums by celebrating–and sourcing–stealth luxury of all sorts, from grandmotherly crystal (now starting to resurface and look astonishingly fresh) to wildly patterned marble bathrooms, black glass lights, metallic paints, and a just-opened French-style Greenwich Village hotel with the tagline, “Honey, I shrunk the Ritz.”

N.B.: Table of Contents is a new Monday column to fill you in on what’s what every week at Remodelista. (If you’re a subscriber, note that our posts go up a day before they get emailed.)

• Today we’ll be inspecting The Apartment, a fully furnished Soho loft in which everything, down to the bedside slippers, happens to be for sale. And don’t miss Michelle’s Domestic Dispatches column (this week she hunts down the perfect brass and marble coffee table).
• On Tuesday, you’ll find not exactly your grandmother’s cut crystal. Shown here, vintage vases with vegetable arrangements at Babylonstoren in Cape Town, South Africa. Also look for our weekly Steal This Look, which runs first thing every Tuesday.
• Is dramatically patterned marble (known around here as ugly marble) due for a comeback? Alexa explores bathrooms with memorable marble, including this Annabelle Selldorf design. And we’ll be featuring velvet sofas, luxe edition, in our weekly 10 Easy Pieces feature.
• New York’s new gentility: wood paneling, leather-upholstered armchairs, and a blazing fire at Sean MacPherson’s splendid if diminutive Marlton Hotel in Greenwich Village. And in our weekly Remodeling 101, Christine will be investigating the ins and outs of roller blinds.
• Rest easy–we end the week with a roundup of silky (but sleaze-free) pillowcase (shown above, a stack of slips from Sferra). And for our Style Counsel column, Alexa checks in with Parisian designer Christophe Lemaire (if you don’t recognize his name, you will soon).