All the home staging in the world won't sell an over-priced home.

“All the home staging in the world won’t sell an over-priced home.”

That’s what Nairn Friemann, a great New York home stager, told us during my first day of home staging training back in 2007. I was reminded of those words today as I went out to preview homes for sale here in Montreal’s West Island and saw a beautiful home that’s just come on the market. The home is gorgeous: not too country and not too modern, a well-renovated kitchen, nice lot, no loud colours to turn off buyers, no disproportionately large furniture eating up entire rooms, stylish accessories, lovely art and lots of light. But it’s over-priced…by quite a bit. And the agent knows it.

The owners of this home have undoubtedly heard from all of their friends that their house is absolutely stunning. And it is. But friends don’t tell you that the windows need replacing, that the garage floor is a wreck, that the roof is at the end of its life, that the low ceiling in the basement will be a problem for many buyers, and that the bathroom hasn’t been updated. (In the case of the bathroom, friends are impressed that you’ve actually managed to do so much with so little!).

But these are things that a real estate agent will consider and point out, especially a buyer’s agent.

Now, I'm both a Montreal home stager and a Montreal West Island real estate broker. So I loudly sing the praises of home staging and what it can do to help homeowners sell their home more quickly and for top dollar.

But what staging won't do is sell an over-priced listing. So sellers, when pricing your home, listen to your agent, not your friends – because all the staging in the world won’t sell an over-priced home.

Property Wire Canada

Jean Paul Gaultier - Fall 2011 Couture

Vogue
By Hamish Bowles

The hypnotic instructions of a ballet mistress and a ballet master to their classes, and the demand of the demonic choreographer in Black Swan to his hapless ballerina to embody the qualities of both the Black Swan and the White Swan, at the opening of Jean Paul Gaultier’s show, signaled the designer’s intention to explore a dark side of the fairy-tale world of tutus and feathered headdresses.

The jacket of his opening number—cut like a trench over a suave pantsuit—was given an explosion of tutu ruffles to create a bustled peplum, and romantic ballet-length skirts in sturdy tweeds had the unexpected embellishment of feathers at the hem that evoked the headdresses of ballet’s traditional swans. Gaultier used feathers with great imagination throughout the collections—tufts of multicolored marabou simulating camouflage prints or an Icelandic sweater; a feathered cockerel embellishing the sleeve of a black evening coat; and the bands of iridescent pheasant plumes streaking a full tulle skirt—with a bodice elaborately embroidered to simulate those feathers. Sadly, many of these refined effects are lost in the designer’s madcap and fast-paced show that made one long for a leisurely salon presentation.

And Gaultier continued to ring the changes on the iconic pieces that he loves. Trench coats were reenvisioned in liquid jersey, draped like the magnificent Madame Grès dresses currently on display at the Musée Bourdelle, and his biker jackets were transformed into masterpieces of elegantly tailored sobriety.

The smoky-eyed ghosts of Nijinsky and Nureyev also haunted the runway as Gaultier showed men’s couture for the fearless few—a Grès-draped white jersey cummerbund that cinched a tuxedo pant, for instance, or the sweeping capes that are emerging as a strong statement this couture season.

For a finale piece, Gaultier sent the flame-haired French pop icon Mylene Farmer, wearing a biker jacket with an exuberantly feathered and bustled net skirt that evoked the fantasy costumes that Gaultier’s idol Yves Saint Laurent created for the gamine French dancer Zizi Jeanmaire in the early sixties, out to the strains of Jeanmaire’s hit song “Mon Truc en Plumes.”