All grown up

Lindsey Gladstone

As the host of The Shopping Detective, the television show that premiered last month on the Fine Living Network, Lindsey Gladstone is constantly on the case to give viewers strategies to become savvy shoppers. (Think ideas on finding the perfect jeans, or the five pairs of shoes you should always have in your closet.) The show may be new, but Gladstone has been using her own advice for years, especially when she made her first grown-up purchase about ten years ago: this custom-made white sofa from Crate and Barrel.

“It was my first introduction to really thinking about how to buy a piece of furniture,” she says. “With a couch, a lot of people measure the size of their room to make sure it fits in the space, but they don’t consider the doorway that the couch has to go through to get in that room.” And anyone who’s ever moved into an old Chicago apartment building has experienced firsthand the fact that many of the doorways aren’t very sofa friendly. Gladstone got a deal on the couch—$1,500 off the original price—because the people who ordered it couldn’t get it into their apartment. “Someone else’s mistake was actually my bounty!” she says.

Gladstone, who spent a couple of years as an editor for DailyCandy.com, also offers clues on other things to keep in mind when shopping for big pieces, like a table or a couch. “You should stick to something pretty neutral because as you move into new spaces, you’re going to want to create a room,” she says. “I like it because it’s a pretty versatile piece. It’s nice not to be tied down to one pattern.”

Even though it’s no longer the pièce de résistance of her furniture collection (the now off-white sofa has moved with Gladstone six times and resides in the library of the new Wicker Park condo she just bought with her husband, Ben), it’s a purchase Gladstone is still sentimental about. “It was a pretty big investment at the time, and it made me feel like an adult,” she says.