Veranda May/June 2021

DESIGNER COREY DAMEN JENKINS 1 posed this rhetorical question during an interview for our “Designer Confidential” feature (pg. 73) in which more than a dozen top designers divulge their deepest professional secrets—think design fantasies, biggest mistakes, and the occupational hazards that drain their wallets (and fill their shelves). The most important question we asked: What do you wish your clients knew? Jenkins’s answer might as well be a tagline for this issue, our first-ever “designer issue.” After more than a year of adapting to new realities, routines, worries, and worldviews, why not live as beautifully as we can, while we can? The wisdom, humor, and reflection shared by designers featured in this issue deliver inspiration for living more beautifully in every sense. There’s the beloved author and philanthropist who knows the…

Call it Bauhaus Nouveau: Boston artist Liz Roache’s Nepalese-made rugs reveal the raw beauty of hand-cut forms. In her Optimism collection for Maison Pierre Frey, silk geometrics on wool are assembled in colors culled from the Museum of Modern Art, where she once taught, and give exuberant voice to the abstract. WATCHES BY ALLIE HOLLOWAY, STYLING BY MEGUMI EMOTO; BEDROOM, SIMON BROWN; LIZ ROACHE PORTRAIT COURTESY OF PIERRE FREY.…

Layers of Color & Pattern AFTER A YEAR AT HOME, I think people are craving a lot more color. They are more open to the vividness of the world and paying attention to the hues and imagery that make them happy. And a happy host is the single best way to transform a table and transport guests. Sure, sometimes I wonder if I have too much going on, but it always delights me. —LULU POWERS, Los Angeles, CA Classic White NOTHING IS MORE beautiful than crisp white 100 percent linen and candlelight. I love doing pretty piping or roping at the bottom of a tablecloth for texture or a fine embroidery for delicate color. Adding old silver and garden-cut flowers is a look so classic, it never falls out of style. It sets a…

Van Cleef & Arpels’s new Sous Les Étoiles collection twines astronomy and art in 150 pieces that shimmer like a celestial atlas. Some are figurative (majestic Saturn rendered in hammered gold and diamonds) and others poetic (gemstone spheres marking true planetary time in miniature orbits on the opulent Planétarium watch). All are heavenly MAIN IMAGE BY LAUREY W. GLENN, STYLING BY SARA CLARK; LAVENDER FIELD, GETTY IMAGES.…

ENGLISH DECORATING visionary John Fowler’s earliest memories are of arriving at glamorous parties swaddled comfortably in a rug inside his carriage. Later, as an unhappy teenager at boarding school, he would escape to watch Reverend Conrad Noel, vicar of Thaxted, replace the parish church’s dark and dusty furnishings with vibrant tapestries, flags, and carpeting in shades of red and seafoam. The process enthralled him, a spark, perhaps, to ignite his legacy of bestowing gutsy grandeur on old English homes for clients from Queen Elizabeth and Laurence Olivier to the Duchess of Devonshire. But Fowler had a particular—and now famous—gift for dress curtains. Wildly fanciful, he swathed windows in elaborate swoops and tails and monumental pelmets. (At one point, his orders alone reportedly kept passementerie firm B.A. Clarke Ltd. in business.) He…

JOHN FOWLER COURTESY OF COLEFAX AND FOWLER (2); MARIO BUATTA, SCOTT FRANCES/OTTO; MILES REDD, DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN; CHIQUI WOOLWORTH, ANNIE SCHLECHTE; ALESSANDRA BRANCA, THOMAS LOOF. ALEX PAPACHRISTIDIS, TRIA GIOVAN; KATIE RIDDER, THOMAS LOOF; JIM HOWARD, MAX KIM-BEE; MEG BRAFF, ANNIE SCHLECHTER; MILES REDD, THOMAS LOOF.…