SHABBY CHIC:Inspiration & Beautiful Spaces

Welcome to Rachel Ashwell's world: as beautiful as it is comfortable, as inspiring and spontaneous as it is practical and personal. Here Rachel shares her inspirations and her humor, celebrates the charm of the old and battered, and demonstrates time and again how interiors touched with Rachel's magic transcend fashionable trends, extending a calming personal welcome to all.

In this, her seventh book, Rachel takes us on a tour of twelve homes. In the US she shows us her own beach house on Malibu's oceanfront and her newly acquired ranch on the wide, open prairie in Texas. Rachel also introduces us to a one-room shabby shack hidden in the wooded hills of the Catskills. In the UK we visit the homes of designers who share the same values as Rachel, including a houseboat moored on a London canal, and see how Rachel transformed a rented apartment into her own gloriously shabby and chic temporary retreat. We also take a glimpse into Sharon Osbourne's house in Los Angeles and designer Pearl Lowe's family home deep in the English countryside.

All the homes, regardless of their size or location, embody Rachel's values and share the same qualities: a respect for beautiful objects from the past, an extravagant sense of comfort , an eye for the unexpected, and that signature touch of bling. All are inviting, artistic, soulful, inspired and inspiring, and in their own way, perfectly imperfect.