Índex per May 2019 a ELLE DECOR

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I SAT IN THE PENTHOUSE that Renzo Mongiardino designed for Elsa Peretti’s father in Rome. Peretti and I were smoking Gauloises cigarettes and talking about astrology—an ex-lover of hers was a Scorpio, as am I—and more importantly travel, which she told me, looking back at her illustrious career at Tiffany & Co., had given her life more purpose. “At 27 years old, Tiffany gave me the opportunity to explore,” she said. She visited craftsmen in the Far East and Europe and, as a result, created some of her most renowned collections, including Bean, Open Heart, and Zodiac. I thought about that afternoon while putting this issue of ED together. I, too, love to travel, and like Peretti, the travel I do isn’t simply about wanderlust—I lost that…

It takes a keen eye—and a magnifying glass—to truly appreciate the pieces on display in “A Return to the Grand Tour: Micromosaic Jewels from the Collection of Elizabeth Locke.” The exhibition, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (April 27–September 2), focuses on micromosaics, an Italian art form characterized by extreme patience and steady hands that was sought out by visiting aristocrats in the 18th and 19th centuries. Virginia-based jeweler Elizabeth Locke began collecting these exquisite miniatures 30 years ago; they’ve been a source of delight and inspiration for her ever since. It’s a big show of tiny pendants and brooches, so before you go, don’t forget to clean your loupe. vmfa.museum…

Where to Shop L’Arabesque Designed by its decorator owner, Chichi Meroni, a sixth-generation Milanese, this high-style emporium and cult store just steps from the Duomo is at once a café, a seafood restaurant, a gallery, a bookshop, and a clothing shop. larabesque.net. Nilufar Depot Architect Massimiliano Locatelli transformed this former silverware factory into a theatrical exhibition space for gallery owner Nina Yashar’s extensive collection of gorgeous modern and contemporary design. nilufar.com Where to Drink and Dine Aimo e Nadia Bistro The restaurant is a collaboration between Milan’s doyenne of design, Rossana Orlandi, and the team behind the multi-starred restaurant Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia. Orlandi partnered with fashion brand Etro on the interiors. bistroaimoenadia.com. The Spirit A clubby London-style cocktail bar with cozy interiors by Venezuelan designer Juan Carlos…

THIS IS MAT TEO CIBIC’S YEAR. During Salone del Mobile, furniture, lighting, and rugs by the cheeky 35-year-old Italian designer (and nephew of Memphis Group cofounder Aldo Cibic) were all over town. The designer debuted his surrealistic new furniture for Editamateria/Delvis, launched Rajasthani-style floor-coverings for Jaipur Rugs, and unveiled sleek brass lighting for Il Fanale. And that’s only part of it: Cibic’s pieces also appeared in four Salone booths and several local venues, including L’Abbate, JCP, and the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia. matteocibicstudio.com…

WHEN IT COMES TO WATCHES, talking about trends is always a bit fraught. These are objects that are meant to last decades, not seasons. But despite the intended longevity of their creations, watchmakers are not immune to the culture around them, and this year we’re seeing a lot of play with light and color in new, exciting ways that draw inspiration from the world of architecture and design. A dazzling take on this approach is the Van Cleef & Arpels Lady Arpels Planétarium ($231,000; vancleefarpels.com). The watch has no conventional dial or hands to speak of, instead employing a series of nested aventurine rings and a set of tiny semiprecious spheres to show the orbit of the planets around the sun. There’s a shooting star and a set of rose-gold…

ADAM GLASSMAN, THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF O, The Oprah Magazine for the past 19 years, regularly dispenses style tips and fashion knowhow to readers via his popular monthly column, “Adam Says,” and has even helped the publication’s founder and editorial director, Oprah Winfrey, and editor at large, Gayle King, purge their wardrobes of clutter. Two and a half years ago, when he was downsizing his New York City lifestyle and purchasing a second home, Glassman realized that his own closets required a lead-by-example approach. “I’m finally taking my own advice,” he says. “I’m not going to tell people to pare down their closets and then be a hoarder myself.” “Adam has a unique eye and always seems to be ahead of everyone else.”GAYLE KING A self-described workaholic looking to decompress,…

Metro Urban Toilet A hand-welded, hand-finished stainless steel model lends a gleam to any bathroom. $3,660. neo-metro.com AT200 LS SpaLet Integrated Electronic Bidet Toilet Hands-free flushing and an automatic lid are just two of many luxe features on this toilet. $4,200. dxv.com Ceramic Urinal This not entirely serious Delft-like urinal is crafted from clay in the backyard of BDDW’s Philadelphia studio. And yes, it works. From $7,500. bddw.com Happy D.2 Toilet This wall-hung design, which uses Rimless flushing technology, comes in an eye-catching, easy-to-clean Anthracite Matte finish. From $775. duravit.us Universal High-Gloss Mahogany Round Watercloset Seat Mahogany confers a touch of tradition; metal handles are a hygienic added detail. $1,704 for seat. waterworks.com…

NETWORK AND STUDIO EXECUTIVES HEAR 500 pitches a year. Maybe a dozen make it to your screens. Those are terrible odds. But not for Darren Star. In 1990, he launched Beverly Hills, 90210, a prime-time soap opera about teenagers who create a kind of family. He followed that with Melrose Place, about another self-created family, this time of young adults. Then he introduced Sex and the City, the first series to showcase unmarried career women who lean on one another, not on men. Along the way, he became an icon: a writer who invented a genre. At first glance, Star’s longtime friend Lee F. Mindel has designed a Manhattan loft in a discreet building just off lower Fifth Avenue that looks more like an urban retreat for a monk than…

Each month, ELLE DECOR asks an artisan to create a unique item for us. At the end of the year, these pieces will be auctioned off to benefit the charity of each maker’s choice. The lost-wax process, or cire perdue, is a time-honored casting technique in which molten metal is poured into a mold formed by a wax model. Although it sounds simple, the process is painstaking and requires a highly skilled and patient artisan. The ancient Greeks employed it to cast large-scale statues; Auguste Rodin used it to sculpt his iconic Gates of Hell; and in a foundry on the outskirts of Milan, Madina Visconti di Modrone—a descendant of one of the legendary Italian houses of Visconti and daughter of the famed furniture and jewelry designer Osanna Visconti di…

LAST YEAR, DAVID ALHADEFF TURNED A midcentury-modern house in Beverly Hills, once owned by Elvis Presley, into a store called Casa Perfect (see ED, April 2018). Then, naturally, he moved in, and working from home has never been more chic. This month, he’s transformed a townhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village—built by David Chipperfield—into Casa Perfect’s new East Coast outpost. We recently found Alhadeff, who in 2003 established the pioneering Brooklyn contemporary-design shop the Future Perfect, kvelling in his highstyle Manhattan living room. “I get to live the dream and be bicoastal in a way I never imagined,” he says while reclining on a long Nos sofa designed by Christophe Delcourt. The intrepid Alhadeff, whose sales acumen catapulted the careers of such designers as Lindsey Adelman and Jason Miller, was…

Your new book is called A Romance of East and West (Monacelli). How far east and west are we talking? MH: Pretty far in both directions. I come from Beirut, but I moved to the U.S. when I was very young. Which direction do you look to more often for romance? MH: East, definitely, with its wealth of history and art, layering, and textiles. I like the modernity of the West, but I always turn to the East for that sense of romance. Has there been enough appreciation of Middle Eastern design in the United States? Do you think most people are aware that chintz is inspired by Moghul art, for instance? MH: Hardly. In Europe, it’s way more prevalent. Not in the States, though. What should Americans know about…

VENEZIA LAMP BY MARCEL WANDERS FOR LOUIS VUITTON 16• w. X 28• h., louisvuitton.com LUNA CHANDELIER BY GABRIEL SCOTT 58• w. X 27• h., gabriel-scott.com JUDD LAMPS BY DRAGA & AUREL 9• w. X 4• d. X 50• h., draga-aurel.com HALO LAMP BY BARBER & OSGERBY FOR HERMÈS 13• dia. X 15• h., hermes.com MINI LOGO LAMP BY GIORGIO ARMANI 15• w. X 15• d. X 24• h., armanicasa.com PAPILIO LAMP BY ARMANDO BRUNO & ALBERTO TORRES FOR MASIERO GROUP 27• dia. X 30• h., masierogroup.com MILANO PENDANT BY ARMANDO BRUNO & ALBERTO TORRES FOR VISIONNAIRE 9• w. X 9• d. X 54• h., visionnaire-home.com…

D.270.2 Chair On the 40th anniversary of Gio Ponti’s death, Molteni&C is reissuing the legendary architect and designer’s 1970 folding chair. With its minimalist and lightweight structure, the D.270.2 is furnishing the cafeteria at this year’s La Triennale di Milano design exhibition. 24• w. x 26.5• d. x 42• h., molteni.it Stool 60 For Artek’s FIN/JPN Friendship Collection, Japanese and Finnish craftsmen explore the relationship between their countries. Architect Jo Nagasaka created a new bright finish for the classic 1933 Alvar Aalto stool using a unique process he calls ColoRing, which is an amalgam of traditional Japanese wood techniques. 15• dia. x 17• h., artek.fi Barcelona Chair The 1929 chair’s scissor shape references ancient Roman seats of power; its proportions and lines reflect the signature restraint of its designer, Ludwig…

Since founding Studio Sofield in 1996, New York–based designer William Sofield has left an indelible—and very chic—mark on the retail landscape, creating elegant stores for names like Harry Winston, Bottega Veneta, and Tom Ford, with whom he has collaborated for decades. So there is a certain irony to Sofield’s admission that, as he puts it, “I would rather be battered and deep-fat fried than go shopping. And maybe that’s what I bring to the table.” A self-described modernist, he seems to have a knack for transforming spaces that are more stereotypically austere: He has also worked on all of the gyms for fitness pioneer David Barton. Sofield’s latest projects include the much-anticipated interiors for the Manhattan condominium at 111 West 57th Street (previously home to Steinway & Sons) and a…

TODAY’S TOILETS DO MUCH more than flush; they may even come with a remote control. The new smart toilets have options like heated seats, built-in speakers, night-lights, and a bidet function with a spray of water for cleansing followed by a drying burst of air. “Having an electronic bidet-seat toilet is like having an outdoor pizza oven or an in-wall coffee unit in your home,” says Timothy Schroeder, the president of Duravit USA, which now offers SensoWash shower-toilet seats on most of its line. “It’s an aha moment. You don’t need it, but once you have it, you won’t know how you lived without it.” The technology has been slow to take off in the U.S., but it was actually first developed here: Brooklyn inventor Arnold Cohen created the bidet-seat…

ALESSANDRA BRANCA OPERATES her A-List interior-design business from her studios in Chicago and New York. But for the Italian native, Rome will always be where her heart is. To that end, she and her husband maintain a four-bedroom duplex on the top floor of a 16th-century convent in the city’s Campo de’ Fiori district—complete with a terra-cotta-tile terrace overlooking the Vatican. “It’s a world where a sense of community still exists,” Branca says of this charming enclave. On one of her frequent trips to the city, she invited ED to tag along. When in town, Branca wakes up early and heads to the outdoor flower, fruit, and vegetable market just steps from her home. “I go every morning to buy food for the day. I like to have the freshest,…

THIS IS THE BEAUTY AND TRAGEDY of my life,” says Antonia Miletto. “When I am there I want to be here, and when I am here I want to be there.” If she and I were there—Venice, Italy—we would be having a coffee at Gelateria Paolin, a charming outdoor café on Campo Santo Stefano, not far from her jewelry shop. But we are here—New York City, where Miletto keeps an apartment and is in town for a month to take a jewelry-sketching class. We settle for Sant Ambroeus on Madison Avenue. Miletto wears, as she always does, a heavy gold chain ring with a vintage diamond at the center. The stone, she tells me, was her grandmother’s. On top of it is a newer design featuring a large black-glass intaglio…

Louis Vuitton collaborated with the designers Zanellato/Bortotto for this Mandala screen, made of the brand’s braided leather and inspired by the floral motif of its Monogram logo. 91• w. X 14• d. X 74• h., price upon request. louisvuitton.com Even an iconic design is open to reinterpretation: Rodolfo Dordoni has tweaked his famous 1997 Minotti Suitcase armchair for 2019 by recalibrating the piece’s center of gravity and removing its original chrome legs. The new version is called Suitcase Line. 29.5• w. X 33.5• d. X 25• h., available in other colors, from $9,450. minotti.com These clay-coated, screen-printed wallpapers from Los Angeles–based CW Stockwell (shown, from left, in Million Flowers and Remy) have the heady romance of freshly cut bouquets. 27• w., available in other colors, from $258 per five-yard roll.…

THIS YEAR, MILAN’S DESIGN cognoscenti are buzzing about Nada Debs, a Lebanese designer who is putting a new spin on an age-old Middle Eastern motif and applying it to everything from furniture to fashion. During Salone 2019, the admired Dilmos gallery (dilmos.it) drew attention to Debs with “Marquetry Mania,” an exhibition of the designer’s furniture made using the traditional method of marquetry inlaid in turned wood. “The starting point for us is always, ‘How far can we push the craft?’” Debs tells us from her studio in Beirut. “The marquetry strips are one to two millimeters thick and they curve, so we’re able to create a line that’s curvaceous and voluptuous.” And colorful. Debs, who spent her formative years in Kobe, Japan, chose vibrant hues—bubble-gum pink, cobalt, coral, turquoise, and…

JEWELRY AND CANDY HAVE enjoyed a happy exchange in American culture for decades. Children have played with—and snacked on—necklaces of pastel, sugary beads since 1958, and in the late 1970s, Frank Richards dreamed up the highly wearable and consumable Ring Pop (it has a fan in Mariah Carey, whom Nick Cannon proposed to in 2008 with a diamond ring hidden in a Ring Pop wrapper). Harry Winston, the gemologist who founded his eponymous jewelry house in 1932, often selected saturated stones reminiscent of sweets for his designs. Now the brand has debuted a new collection, Winston Candy, inspired by his approach and based on archival sketches from the 1950s and ’60s. Comprising one-of-a-kind cocktail rings that focus on brilliant color juxtapositions, the grouping includes combinations like an emerald-cut pink spinel…

1. DEKTON BERGEN FIREPLACE AND SILESTONE ETERNAL NOIR COFFEE TABLE Discover the latest innovations from Dekton and Silestone by Cosentino at cosentino.com. 2. ART LIGHTING, REIMAGINED Ketra and ELLE DECOR hosted a Light + Art cocktail reception to showcase how high-quality light can completely transform artwork. The theme was brought to life with a dynamic lighting demonstration shown against vibrant, contemporary paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Sebastian Vallejo. From left: Ed Blair, Exectuive Vice President of Lutron and Paker Bowie Larsen, Style Director of ELLE DECOR. For more information, visit ketra.com. 3. DEDON INTRODUCES CIRQL Designer Werner Aisslinger draws on DEDON’s unique handweaving heritage. The output: an unmistakably fresh and new outdoor collection. CIRQL manages to be both iconic and inviting. For more information, visit dedon.us. 4. SVEVA ARMCHAIR Designed by…

VERSACE HOME With its gold finish and iconic Medusa-head detail, the Superbe toilet brush lends bathroom chores a hint of glam. $1,124. amara.com THE LACQUER COMPANY Chinese red gloss meets bronze accents in this high-shine waste bin from the lacquer specialists. $475. thelacquercompany.com RH, RESTORATION HARDWARE This collection of cast-metal bath accessories has details inspired by French Art Deco. From $35 each. rh.com…

THE SURF CLUB OPENED ITS doors on New Year’s Eve, 1930, and from the outset, the Mediterranean Revival–style estate on Miami’s beachfront served as a celebratory oasis. Everyone from the Duchess of Windsor and Noël Coward to Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor could be found there lounging in the sun, sipping the club’s signature Mangareva cocktails, and enjoying poolside fashion shows, black-tie balls, and boxing matches. Today, a new generation of sophisticated sybarites is jetting to that fabled stretch of sand, which still retains the original clubhouse, thanks to a 21st-century vision of beachside fabulousness: a pair of glittering residential towers flanking a new Four Seasons hotel, all designed by Pritzker Prize winner Richard Meier, the virtuoso architect who is credited with conjuring some of the world’s most desirable contemporary…

IT’S NOT TOTALLY CRAZY. IT JUST SEEMS CRAZY.” Jean Nouvel, the Pritzker Prize–winning French architect, is describing the system he used to build the National Museum of Qatar. Made of 250,000 different glass fiber–reinforced concrete elements fixed to a steel frame in curving sections, the building sprawls like scattered, overlapping petals at the edge of the Persian Gulf. The engineering drawings look like Piranesi drafted them after a few double espressos. And yet there is a structural logic, explains Nouvel, who is a master of complexity. It is mid-February in Doha, the burgeoning capital of Qatar. The National Museum is scheduled to open in about one month, and for the first time the press is allowed a foot in the door. Exterior sketches have been circulating since 2010, but the…