Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2024 i MILIEU

As we continue to celebrate our 10th anniversary with this Winter issue, I think of the people who inspired me and helped MILIEU become what it has over this last decade. And of all of the extraordinary people I have met through the magazine, there are a few women whose visions, values, and support I hold dear. In this Winter edition, we’ve featured a tribute to Gilly Newberry, the late co-director of Bennison Fabrics, acknowledging the ongoing inspiration she provides in the world of design and the new fabric line named in her honor. As a designer, I had admired Gilly’s embrace of pattern, color, and texture. However, once I met with her in London when we were starting MILIEU, what resonated with me was her lesson of realizing professional…

Home Décor Just as a woman might fasten on a necklace or don a pair of earrings, so, too, can a room wear a piece of jewelry. Belgian jewelry designer and artisan Delphine Cordie fashions jewelry for homes. Her extravagantly-scaled necklaces and earrings are deliberately oversized (even whimsical) and way too heavy to wear on the body, but they work perfectly on the walls of a home. Using materials such as brass, wood, and stone, Cordie creates sculptural works that harken to traditional jewelry but become, instead, artworks integral to the décor of a home. “I am a jewelry designer, but I also want to create something timeless that a person can enjoy every day in their home,” says the Ghent-based Cordie. “I love interior design and, so, I create…

Most of us are unable to throw out anything of sentimental value. And, so, we should make no judgments on the celebrated English textiles designer and interior decorator Flora Soames, who admits, in her new book, The One Day Box: A Life-Changing Love of Home (Rizzoli): “The fact I still have my dachshund Enid’s whiskers in a pot on my mantelpiece from fifteen years ago probably tells you all you need to know.” What that admission tells us, and that is revealed in the pages, is that Soames has elevated the saving of personal items to an art form. “This is a story about my out-of-control collecting habit,” she writes. But what she collects and continues to amass—everything from antique damasks and chipped Lusterware—reflects her love of where she lives.…

EVERYONE NEEDS TO LIVE with a sense of practicality,” observes Chicagobased designer Wendy Labrum on the recent renovation of her own single-family home, a classic three-story, five-bedroom residence on Chicago’s North Side. Designing sophisticated modern interiors, Labrum and her team have earned a well-deserved reputation for realizing a balance between tailored refinement and cozy comfort. “We’ve definitely found a niche where we’re able to create these beautiful interiors, but also have them be very livable for families,” says Labrum. And she accomplished that very directive for her own family. This was the second time Labrum and her husband undertook a dramatic design transformation of their home, which they purchased as a speculative property and quickly renovated in 2010. “It was just us and one toddler then,” reminiscences Labrum. “We never…

LIKE MANY SEASONED DESIGNERS, Sarah Vanrenen sees things that others do not. She’s able to imagine an empty room or the ruinous exterior of a house or an overgrown backyard in a finished—and glorious—state. And she is able to realize that vision to completion. For instance, when she and her husband came upon a late 19th-century cottage in London’s Notting Hill, she looked beyond what she describes as a “rickety old thing, with wobbly walls and no doors.” At the threshold, faced with that unpromising structure, Vanrenen envisioned the completed three-bedroom house she now occupies when not in her other home/studio in Hungerford, a market town 60 miles west of London. “Essentially, we rebuilt it from scratch, knocking down everything behind the façade, and making enough structural changes to allow…

Widely regarded as “the mother of interior design,” Candace Wheeler (1827–1923) was a woman of the Victorian Age who fashioned for herself a life that merits re-examination a full 100 years after her death. Born in Delhi, New York, Wheeler (née Candace Thurber) embraced the stimulation of New York City, when she married, in 1844, Thomas Mason Wheeler, a “clever, progressive man” supportive of his young wife’s artistic inclinations. Though long drawn to pursuits that encompassed writing, needlework, and even rudimentary painting, it was not until Wheeler (seen in the ca. 1870 photograph at left) visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 and saw outstanding embroideries from London’s Royal School of Art Needlework that she became committed to the mission of helping women support themselves through their handwork. In 1877,…

“We like the shapes of nature and the very movements you find in the natural world.”—CHRIS COX with NICOLA COX “The Nature of Things” p. 96 “I think it’s become a bit of my calling card to marry sophistication, elegance, and practicality.”—WENDY LABRUM “Making Good Choices” p. 106 “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.”—HEIDI CAILLIER “Modern Vintage” p. 116 “The goal with this house was to make it feel casual, calm, and elegant, but filled with lots of life.”—RICHARD HALLBERG “Montecito Mellow” p. 126 “All the colors added by way of textiles and decorative accessories come together like paint on a palette.”—SARAH VANRENEN “In Full Color” p. 136…

In Umbria, fortified castle keeps are as common as Fiats. The building of castles seems to have been a habit of those papal states that girdled the areas of Lazio, Marche, Emilia-Romagna, and Umbria, and it’s lucky for us such a habit gained momentum over time. Reschio, the 11th-century castello that sits foursquare on a jutting hilltop above the valley of Pierle in ever-green Umbria, is the jewel in the crown of those former papal states. And how bright it glistens still. Indeed, the castle shimmers in the sunlight as we make our long winding way (not by Fiat) towards this extraordinary building and all that lies within and outside of it. The structure and the property embody the grandest style of the old Italian aristocracy—a geometric precision, fanciful turrets,…

MILIEU celebrated its 10th Anniversary at Atlanta Decorative Arts Center’s DISCOVER ADAC Fall Market 2023 with two interior designers who have been featured in the pages of MILIEU—Michael Del Piero, of Michael Del Piero Good Design, based in Chicago and the Hamptons; and Rozanne Jackson, of The Iron Gate in Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. Moderated by MILIEU’s Leslie Newsom Rascoe, the presentation focused on how these two designers create new yet timeless and natural interiors, manage their clientele and storefronts, and continue to evolve their own design styles. Following the presentation, a reception was hosted by Jerry Pair Leather and Jerry Pair’s Atlanta showroom for a meet-and-greet and book signing of Michael’s new book, Traveled and Textural. To see more photos from the event, visit MILIEU-MAG.COM/out-about/…

COVER Interior design: Nicola and Chris Cox, Cox London, coxlondon.com Flowers: Harald Altmaier, haraldaltmaierphotography.com Produced by: Katrin Cargill Photography: Simon Brown, simonbrown.london Wall color: Natural Cornish White specialty plaster with marble dust by Dan Dixon, THE PLASTER COLLECTIVE, theplastercollective.com. Drapery above bed: Custom Kuba cloth with abstract stitch from Joss Graham by Nicola Cox, COX LONDON, coxlondon.com. Picture rail: COX LONDON, coxlondon.com. Bed: Forest bed in forged iron, COX LONDON, coxlondon.com. Headboard fabric: Maroc, Cloud, DE LE CUONA, delacuona.com. Bed spread: RETROUVIUS, retrouvius.com. Side table: ROSE UNIACKE, roseuniacke.com. Lamp: Abstract guilt iron lamp by Chris Cox, COX LONDON, coxlondon.com. Pillowcases: LARUSI, larusi.com. LOOKING BACK Page 10 Winter 2015, Interior design by Shannon Bowers, Photography by Peter Vitale. Page 11 Winter 2014 Interior design by Don McDonald, Photography by Peter Vitale.…

Geoffrey Bennison’s antiques and decorating business was expanding, his reputation was growing, and new design commissions were taking him farther afield—all while a blizzard of paperwork in his London shop stacked up like so many fabric samples. It was 1979 and, desperate for help with his administrative mess, he hired Gillian Newberry to stem the paper tide and bring order to the chaos. A former fashion editor at British Vogue and studio manager for fashion and portrait photographer David Bailey, Gilly (“Jilly”) was gifted with organizational talents that soon turned Bennison’s office around. Their auspicious meeting—an introduction by mutual friends—would have far-reaching effects neither could have imagined, seeding what would one day become Bennison Fabrics, an English company specializing in hand-printed goods based on 18th- and 19th-century English and French…

IT WAS THE HOUSE IN TOWN THAT no one seemed to want. Not because it lacked curb appeal or was in the wrong neighborhood, but simply because it was actually hard to see, inside and out. “Everything was brown, brown, brown,” says interior designer Richard Hallberg, in speaking about the rooms of the 4-year-old spec dwelling in Montecito’s Golden Quadrangle prior to his transformation of the house for a couple interested in living there. “The rooms, the front entry area, all were very dark, with dark ceiling beams, floors that were nearly black. There was natural light all around the house, but little of it seemed to reach the inside.” The homeowners, Beth and George Wood, longtime residents of Montecito and active in local and national philanthropic causes, had faith…