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.
I am writing this in the Hearst Tower, happy to be back after the annual design world pilgrimage to Milan known as Salone del Mobile. Elle Decor was there in full force, witnessing the future (it might be cork; see our story on David Rockwell’s installation at elledecor.com), analyzing trends (I noted what I call “work/life balance,” with sofas you can really sink into alongside chairman-of-the-board-level desks and tables; you can see our full list of Salone-inspired ideas on the site, too). While in Milan we took a few hours to celebrate our April issue cover star at Bamboo Bar in the Armani Hotel with molto Negroskis and a visit from Mr. Armani himself. We showed him the article about his historic Upper West Side apartment, and he liked it,…
One of the things I love most about my job is working with people who can create something completely unique for a room. I’m not one for designing everything from scratch, but I do love brainstorming with artisans to come up with something no one else has. I came back from Venice last year having visited Amadi Bruno, a tiny shop that sells handmade glass animals, vegetables, and flowers. The owner, Signor Amadi, makes everything himself—craft doyenne Deborah Needleman led me there—and I left with glass peas and a butterfly for my daughter. These are the sorts of small things that carry a story and a cherished memory. Sometimes it is, in fact, the little things. But there are, of course, also the big things. On a larger scale, Vanderhurd…
There is always a message in the medium. Designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello has attracted acclaim in the global design community over the last few years for a practice that relies as heavily on his expansive interior universe as it does on a sophisticated and ecologically conscious selection of materials. (Case in point: his bamboo pavilion for the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial.) Born and bred in Lagos, Nigeria, Marcus-Bello drew on his country’s centuries-old legacy of artistic metalsmithing and cultural affnity for innovation to create his series Oríkì. In three acts, Marcus-Bello tackled bronze, aluminum, and copper, the last of which was shown at Marta Gallery in Los Angeles earlier this year. “I was thinking of how Africa can play a role in the refinement of its own materials and the layers…
Following the Sputnik launch in 1957 and Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon 12 years later, jewelers looked to the sky for inspiration. A new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, “Cosmic Splendors: Jewelry from the Collections of Van Cleef & Arpels” (through January 4), explores how space exploration impacted our collective creative spirit. All 70 gems included were pulled from the VanCleef & Arpels archives for a celestial reason, whether mythological or scientific. On view will be a full moon in yellow gold with rubies dating back to 1969, alongside topaz star clips to scatter across a lapel. Astrological signs grace pendants that span the 1970s and find their modern counterparts in the brand’s current Zodiaque collection. If fate is in the stars, best…
Flying high requires more than a plane ticket. Patek Philippe knows this better than anyone, as evidenced by the decades of cultish fervor surrounding its World Time watches. Ever since the release of the reference 515 HU in 1937—the Swiss brand’s earliest known watch based on Louis Cottier’s groundbreaking movement, which allowed for tracking time zones around the world—it has been highly sought after by collectors, both on the primary market and at auction. (One of the three known 515s was sold at Christie’s in 2011 for nearly $500,000.) Last year the handsome new 5330G became haute horlogerie’s latest chunk of coveted unobtainium. For the uninitiated, what makes the World Time so ingenious is its ability to display international time zones at a glance—the world on your wrist, so to…
Architect Shigeru Ban, fashion designer Iris van Herpen, and actor Jeremy Irons walk into a farm. They are there, in southwestern Ireland, it turns out, for an annual gathering devoted to craft and design called Making In, the brainchild of Joseph Walsh, a furniture designer whose family has cultivated this pastoral property in County Cork since the 18th century. The self-taught woodworker started making furniture here two decades ago, when he was in his early twenties. Before long his sculptural designs in wood and resin caught the eye of collectors like the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who in 2017 commissioned two dozen of Walsh’s Enignum chairs for their home at Chatsworth House. The same year, Walsh founded Making In, which is open to the public (the next one is…
