A fashion-savvy home decorating magazine for the new generation of design professionals and consumers who know exactly what they want, ELLE DECOR covers fashionable and inspirational products that bring couture chic to every room of your home.
“LOS ANGELES,” MY FRIEND KONSTANTIN KAKANIAS WROTE IN an Instagram post in January, “is our city of dreams and failures, freedom and pain, creativity and magnificent nature.” As he wrote that, and as we were sending this issue to press, wildfires had torn through that city. Lives and homes—and dreams—were lost. We all called and texted our friends and contributors and members of our design community—so many with roots in L.A.—and we posted stories about how and where to help on elledecor.com. We also chronicled the legendary structures that fell victim to the fires, and the ones that were saved, and followed news from feeds like @saveiconicarchitecture religiously. We vow, as so many Angelenos have urged us to do, to continue to cover the city, and to visit, and to…
A house isn’t anything remarkable until the paintings are up. Until then you can decorate with all the most luxurious finishes, fabrics, and pieces of furniture available, but you will only have a showroom. I find this every time I install a project. To me the relationship between art and interiors is a dance, one that should be more Fred and Ginger than either Tom and Jerry or Gilbert and George. The art and the interior need to complement one another, not fight or match. It’s common to buy art around the same time that you are decorating a house, and it can be easy to find yourself buying to fit spaces. It’s more important, though, that the art connects with you, rather than just fitting the house. The place…
A marriage between two centers of Italian culture, history, and design, Milan and Venice, finding its purest expression in a jam jar? Stranger things have happened. The Milanese jewelry house Buccellati is synonymous with technique and tradition, and the pieces in its Murano glass collection—blown glass vessels with sterling silver lids sporting the house’s signature engraving—are a fanciful union of the two. So go ahead and dress your table with handcrafted objects inspired by the season. Who’s to say you can’t adorn a dinner setting with a butterfly brooch? When two great cities come together in the hands of Buccellati, anything is possible.…
Surviving the gelid gusts and gales of winter takes more than a vicuña coat and shearling earmuffs, and the watch designers at Van Cleef & Arpels understand this well. Last year they evoked the warmth and beauty of summer with the Lady Arpels Brise d’Eté. The 38mm timepiece, set on an emerald alligator strap, captures the feeling of a gentle summer breeze, blending the brand’s signature technical precision, elegance, and artistic ambition. Crafted in white gold, the Brise d’Eté features a mother-of-pearl dial beneath champlevé leaves and butterflies of plique-à-jour enamel. The enchanting winged insects, powered by a self-winding retrograde movement, serve as hour and minute markers. The effect adds fluidity and a beguiling touch of the uncanny to the overall look. The dial, which is surrounded by a gem-set…
In 1987 philanthropists Dominique and John de Menil opened their vast art collection, which includes pieces by René Magritte, Henri Matisse, and Mark Rothko, with a museum designed by Renzo Piano. Now art lovers can explore the Menil campus from a new hotel worthy of its surroundings, truly fertile terrain to inspire a design project. Who wouldn’t want to spend the night next door to the Menil Collection, the Cy Twombly Gallery, and the Drawing Institute? Visitors have their chance with the opening of Hotel Saint Augustine. Located across from the Menil complex, the 71-room hotel consists of five separate buildings that pay homage to the de Menils, whose lifetime of collecting made Houston, once synonymous with oil, into a destination for connoisseurs of painting and sculpture. “Dominique and John…
Every portrait by John Singer Sargent is a character study, conveyed in energetic and sensuous brushstrokes and incorporating the artist’s masterful use of color, light, and shadow. But as an upcoming landmark exhibition of his early paintings, “Sargent in Paris” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (April 27–August 3), shows, his settings were as important as his sitters. Covering the 10 years he spent in the French capital starting when he was 18, the show also explores the artist’s most experimental phase. “This decade in Paris lays the groundwork for his professional career,” says the show’s curator, Stephanie Herdrich. “It’s the foundation of his future success.” The show will include Sargent’s famous portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau (Madame X to most), along with several preparatory sketches of that painting—with her…
