Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2024 i MILIEU

Spring is here, and we are thrilled to share the latest edition of MILIEU with you. Filled with novel ideas in design, as well as stories that will pique your curiosity as much as they do ours, this Spring 2024 publication is definitely one to celebrate. One of my favorite aspects of putting together each issue is collaborating with Katrin Cargill, our European Style Editor, on what we feature in the front of the magazine (and in this case, on our cover, too). Because springtime represents a fresh start in all areas of our lives, I wanted to clear away those metaphorical cobwebs and think of an unconventional spin on some of my favorite things. Anyone who knows me even just a little bit understands my love of antiques and…

Bagging It Camille Albertine makes it possible for a woman to carry a bouquet of flowers that never wilts. As a maker of handbags that assume the shapes of bouquets and hearts and pillboxes, her bestseller remains a grouping of stemmed roses seemingly wrapped in paper. Made of silk and sewn by Albertine’s own hands, her creations are as fashionable and whimsical as they are practical and commodious, and, as she says from her New York City work studio, “able to fit a phone inside,” a not unimportant detail. Her idea to make such accessories came in 2019, though she had long been making clothes for her own wardrobe after having studied fashion design and fine arts in Montreal. “I needed a little something for a canopy flower dress I…

Inhee Ma spends her days in a constant dialogue. Every time she begins the process of sculpting a ceramic and firing it in her studio in Bourgogne, France, she enters into a conversation between craftsmanship, art, and nature. “My work is centered around the creation of decorative pieces. and I like to play with the functionality of the object and its materialization, whether in terms of texture or form.” So dedicated, too, is Ma to the idea of “slowing down the production process” that she herself makes every vase, teapot, bowl, and plate. Her preferred raw material is chamotte clay, itself a combination of finely ground and crushed pots. The resulting pieces are characterized by a natural raw texture that she preserves on the outside, though she applies a glossy…

New York’s Hudson River Valley, my home for decades, has become a destination and a brand as hip as Brooklyn. Just 90 minutes north of New York City, visitors here enjoy excellent hiking, shopping, inns, museums, and historic sites, though much of the beauty and charm of our region is deeply rooted in the earth around us—earth now being worked by a new generation of farmers. Many of the young people who’ve made an exodus from the city to the country upstate have chosen the farm life to provide “a grounded upbringing for their children, and the joy of immediately seeing their efforts contribute to the close communities where they live.” So says writer and renowned photographer Pieter Estersohn in his new book, Back to the Land: A New Way…

In MILIEU, every story captures the look and feel, the mood and character, the style of a place—its milieu. The milieu that defines a beautiful home or garden, the places to which we travel, the art and culture we experience, the creative people who inspire us—these are the elements of MILIEU. When you subscribe to MILIEU, you receive seasonal issues delivered to your mailbox. Our team of editors are experienced designers with a discerning eye, and on a mission to share only the best with our readers. Become a MILIEU subscriber today milieu-mag.com…

JUST AS THE WALLS WERE coming down inside her Houston home and the floor plan was being reconfigured, Cynthia Davis and her architect husband, Issac Preminger, wrote out their individual wish lists. “When you remodel your house with your husband, who’s the architect for it all no less, you need to make your wishes known,” says Davis, the proprietor and founder of Indulge Décor + Fashion, a Houston destination filled with fine and distinctive European goods. “We weren’t allowed to scratch off anything from each other’s wish list.” Included on his list was a Lacanche range in the kitchen, since, as Davis claims, “he loves to cook and I love to boil water and scramble eggs,” while one of her must-have items was a marble fireplace mantel in their bedroom.…

STÉPHANE OLIVIER, A NOTED Parisbased antiques dealer and interior designer, had been looking for a refuge in Normandy for a long time. As if it had been waiting for him, he found a house in the heart of the region’s Pays d’Auge, near the town of Lisieux. The five-hectare (12-acre) estate was surrounded by meadows and apple trees. He discovered presses in the property’s outbuildings that could be revved up to produce cider. It was a house dedicated to its site and the countryside in which it had sat for centuries. The house is situated in a place known as “Les Poteries,” a reference to a time when the region was populated by skilled potters who, in the 18th century, provided the royal courts with their goods. Upon purchasing the…

“The moment I come to the design table with a client, I have on my ‘expert’ hat, and I think they then know they’re working with the right person.”—RANDY HELLER “Going Back & Forth” p. 112 “I’m not overtly trying to create houses that feel like the past — it’s more about creating spaces that remind you of the house you grew up in.”—DIDIER GOMEZ with JEAN-PIERRE TORTIL “French Revolution” p. 120 “When a couple remodels their home, both people should have a say in everything that changes.”—CYNTHIA DAVIS with ISSAC PREMINGER “House of Their Dreams” p. 130 “We worked with local designers and artisans to develop unique and functional new custom furnishings.”—ALLISON BURKE “In The Now” p. 142 “This project was about a meticulous restoration of what had been.”—STÉPHANE…

One of Anna Karlin’s favorite materials for her designs is light. She sees that intangible source of energy as something to shape—and as one that also has the ability to shape the objects in which it is contained. “I think of all of my lighting fixtures as sculpture,” she says from her workshop/studio in New York City’s Chinatown. “In fact, I think of all furniture as sculpture.” When conceiving her lighting objects (though she also makes fine jewelry, textiles, and furniture), she begins with a shape in mind, and then decides on the materials to use. “The shape of something tells me what it’s to be made of.” The “Lantern Stack” (shown here) is one of her already iconic creations, an actual stacking of organically shaped fiberglass forms on a…

Paolo Moschino, Philip Vergeylen, and Bunny Williams all cite their longtime friendship as the basis for their successful business partnership. In speaking of the newly forged collaboration between Paolo Moschino Ltd and Bunny Williams Home, Moschino says, “We have known and admired Bunny for many years and feel that our styles are compatible. The fact that we will be marketing and selling her collection in Europe is an extension of previous collaborations.” As specific signs of the goodwill that exists between the trio, Moschino and his partner, Vergeylen, refer to the foreword that Williams wrote for their latest book, An Entertaining Life: Designing Town and Country (Vendome Press); they also mention a client in Paris whom Williams generously recommended to Vergeylen for design work. “That indicated to me a level…

RANDY HELLER begins every design project by asking the client to select a favorite object they feel they can’t live without. “I then work the entire project around that single thing,” says Heller from her home in Highland Park, Illinois, a bucolic lakefront suburb north of Chicago. “I did that with my own home and also with my separate design studio. When you start with something you love, it’s possible to have it become ‘best friends’ with any other objects you put in a room.” Heller thinks much about the meaning of interior design—not just the specific elements that define rooms, but also about the very place where a designer needs to practice her profession. It was while she was working on a project in her home that the noise…

WHEN THE CURRENT owners purchased this charming 1937 Tudor-inspired bungalow in the historic Pemberton Heights neighborhood of Austin, their plan was to give the residence a simple cosmetic makeover to make it more comfortable for their growing family. After interviewing a few local designers, the young couple (with two small girls and another child on the way) enlisted Austin-based designer Allison Burke to help them adapt the home to suit their evolving lifestyle. “Their mandate to me was to do what they called ‘a lipstick remodel’ with updated surfaces,” says Burke. The good news was that many aspects of the original structure—oak floors, arched passageways between rooms, and crystal door hardware—offered character-enriching features worth preserving and celebrating. Yet, even though the home had been expanded over the years with an…

COVER Produced by: Katrin Cargill Photography: Simon Upton, simonupton.com Antique wing chair, HOWE LONDON, howelondon.com, covered in Toile Stripe, Pink, 05, TITLEY AND MARR, titleyandmarr.co.uk, rosettes in Devon Stripe, Pink, IAN MANKIN AT WELLS ABBOTT, wellsabbott.com. Background, Almora Stripe, Pink, J976F-05, JANE CHURCHILL at COWTAN & TOUT, cowtan.com. LOOKING BACK Page 17 Spring 2014, Produced by Shannon Bowers, Styled and Photographed by Maxine Helfman. Page 18 Spring 2022, Interior design by Cathy Kincaid, Photographed by Tria Giovan. Page 19 Spring 2019, Interior design by Kathryn M. Ireland, Photographed by Tim Beddow; Spring 2016, Photography by Peter Vitale; Spring 2017, Interior design by Isabel López-Quesada, Produced by Loreto López-Quesada, Photographed by Miguel Flores-Vianna. Page 20 Spring 2017, Garden design by Will Massie, Landscape architecture by Charles Stick, Produced by Shannon Bowers,…

Since it was first published in 2001, Rose Tarlow’s The Private House has developed a cult following among collectors of interior design books—despite the fact that its author doesn’t even think of herself as a decorator. “I don’t really do a lot of design work. I might have had five clients in my life,” insists the antiques dealer and home furnishings designer behind L.A.’s legendary Melrose House. Still, when that list of decorating clients includes names like Geffen, Springsteen, and Winfrey, it’s safe to say you get a lot of repeat business. (One client hired Tarlow to decorate six different homes.) The Private House was originally published by Clarkson Potter in a diminutive format that doesn’t suggest “coffee table book” so much as “bedside reading.” (“I made it small because…

DIDIER GOMEZ STARTED playing piano at the age of four, and still practices for three hours every day. “Music is very important to me—it’s part of my life,” says the interior designer, whose ebony baby grand anchors the living room of the Paris apartment he shares with his husband, home furnishings designer Jean-Pierre Tortil. The décor strikes a harmonious note, as well, layering classical themes with contemporary counterpoints in a melodious marriage that suggests Mozart by way of Philip Glass. Located in a 1790s building in Paris’s posh 1st Arrondissement—steps from the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, and the Louvre—the apartment blends 18thcentury flourishes with spindly mid-century lighting and contemporary furnishings from Tortil’s company, Atelier Tortil. “It is classical but, at the same time, minimalist. We wanted to have…