Dennis Basso and the Art of Entertaining

NYTimes.com consults Dennis Basso, a fashion design who specializes in couture furs, in an article about coat hangers and the art of storage. Storing coats is clearly no laughing matter for Basso, whose own designs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when you have a luxurious, beautiful coat like that, you don’t hang it on any old drag coat hanger. He recommends, if you are storing coats for months at a time (during summer storage and whatnot) to put them on specialized coat hangers that maintain their shape and don’t stretch, whether you have a multi-thousand dollar coat or a $200 one from Target. For the daily life of the coat though, in the throes of winter where you barely seem to take it off, Dennis Basso recommends the coat rack, which he considers superior to the ultimate sin, for him: throwing coats over the furniture.

Basso’s criteria for picking out a coat rack fitting of his coats:

1. Has to be sturdy and durable: the base of the coat rack must be heavy and wide enough so it won’t tip over with multiple coats on it.

2. Coat racks should be objects of art on their own terms: even without coats on them, they should still brighten up the room.

3. Look for coat racks that have bulbs or orbs at the end, and not hooks. Hooks can damage the fabric is left on the coat rack for too long–if you are using a hooked coat rack, always use the small loop of fabric at the neck of the coat to hang it up.

Wooden Coatrack from SchoolOutfitters.com: $81.99
wood coat rack
Cherry Oak Coat Rack from Officefurniture.com: $395 (brought down from $510)
cherry coat rack