Loving Liberty... Liberty of London available now at Target

A classic Liberty floral print: cheery and yet elegant at the same time

Stylish organization aides from the Liberty of London for Target collection

Practical pretties from this collection for our home and stationary too

The pretty but not-really-my-style Liberty of London for Target dress I put back on the rack, sigh...

This afternoon I headed over to Target to see the much-awaited Liberty of London for Target collection and was completely charmed by the offerings. I have been a big fan of all-things-Liberty for years and so when Mother and I were touring around London a few years ago on a Scotland/England jaunt, we made sure to set aside some time to get ourselves over to its iconic Tudor-styled building. We happily spent quite awhile there at the Liberty store and I still enjoy my couple of purchases... and also enjoy the memories of being with my late mother there doing her favorite thing in life besides playing the piano, shopping of course. Good times!

We also spent hours in the Victoria and Albert Museum where we ensconced ourselves within its incredible visual presentations of decorative arts throughout the centuries with my favorite thing there being the amazing Morris room. Men like Arthur Liberty and William Morris nurtured the Art Nouveau movement which, if you've read some of my Postcards from Paris posts, you know is a style that resonnates strongly with me. I prefer elements of this design movement in small doses with a lot of space, light and actual nature surrounding its highly stylistic presentation. Similar to how it is presented within the terrific Musee' d'Orsay of Paris where James and I spent a lot of time around last week. A little does indeed go a long way...

In our nearest Target, on the gateway towards Hilton Head Island, you could certainly tell that all of the Liberty of London areas in the store had been heavily shopped however, I was able to pick up a few items of this brand which are both pretty and practical. One of my column checks had arrived earlier in the mail and that's my totally-fun-money so it was off to see some Liberty in-person in the good ole' US of A today after a meeting and errands...um, yes indeed.

As you can see in the pictures above, I purchased very "usable" items such as stationary, picture frames (one of which already has a picture in it from our Paris trip) and one of those heavy plastic platters I always seem to be taking loaded down with baked goods or a cheese, cracker and fruit assortment either to friends' houses, our church's various events or some oyster roast, dock party or picnic going on around here year-round. I also picked up a neat file box organizer and coordinating clip board to use for the fashion shows and events I produce for a national retailor I work with: they're both elegant and will be easy to keep track of as well.

I tried on but put back the dress pictured above. Absolutely LOVE the print of it but the style is a bit more on the "cute n' flirty" side whereas I'm more of a classic-romantic typa' gal. I knew that ultimately a dress like this would see a whole lot more hanger-time than wearing-time so even though I didn't want to pass on it, I did. Over a decade ago, James and I divested our household of about 2/3rds of its furniture n' things with purposefully jumping off of the acquiring and upscaling cultural bandwagon to march to a different, and much more satisfying to us, tune. We simplified down to where what we have around us now is authentic to us and meaningful as well as useful. Hence we're really strict about having just "stuff" for stuff's sake and this dress, as pretty as it is, would just be really another bit of stuff hanging around.

(As well, for the men, there are neat Liberty of London ties and boxer shorts that I saw today at Target. I don't think that I could get James wearing floral prints but it could be a neat look for other guys and the ties, in my opinion, would be so lovely for Easter Sunday dressing-up.)

But practical items that are Liberty-of-London-pretty which I'll be putting to good use, oh, that's a whole 'nother thing isn't it? Ah, so perfect for spring and the whole year through...