ELLE DECOR November 2020

I STAYED. BECAUSE I DON’T FEEL SAFER OR HAPPIER anywhere else. Even during the darkest moments of the pandemic, when cities across the globe shut down, urban streets still offered some of the magic that draws millions to them. I know—I walked them daily. The facade of a closed Met still offered the hope of all that was inside. As we enter a new chapter of this global crisis, and as cities around the world manage both progress and unpredictability, we pay tribute to the spirit of the metropolis, the soul and character and beauty that have proven invincible. They are all evident in this issue and will also be on display in a two-day virtual event this fall at New York’s 92nd Street Y that ELLE DECOR is proud…

There is one piece missing in this issue. Our tribute to cities around the world was scheduled to include the newly decorated New Orleans home of beloved ELLE DECOR contributor Julia Reed, who died at 59 on August 28 after a long battle with cancer. No one told a story like Julia, and no one hosted a party like her either. And we know ELLE DECOR readers always felt invited to one of her unforgettable cocktail parties whenever Julia wrote for the magazine. I first met her when I was Michael Boodro’s assistant at Vogue. Michael was Julia’s editor, and so I became her assistant too. She was everything I wanted magazine people—all people—to be. I still have her Rolodex card with all her phone numbers and can hear her…

FRENCH NOVELIST AND SERIAL PROVOCATEUR MICHEL Houellebecq told a radio audience in May what he believed the world would be like in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. “It will be the same,” the writer declared. “Just a bit worse.” While Houellebecq’s pessimism shouldn’t be taken as gospel, it does serve as a useful tonic to some of the wilder-eyed prognostications about the post-COVID future that have emerged over the last few months. From houses to cities to workplaces, big changes are said to be afoot; repeatedly, critics and designers have drawn comparisons to the 1920s, when the devastating Spanish flu helped give rise to the modernist revolution in architecture, its spare, sunlit aesthetic promising a built environment for a healthier tomorrow. Especially paired with the other simultaneous crises of our…

THIS PAST SPRING, AS people around the world fled cities for country houses and suburbs, a common refrain was that they were leaving because cities were no longer the bustling metropolises that had originally lured them. Who, given the choice, would stay in a packed urban center when untethered from the anchor of offices and schools? A lot of people, as it turned out—myself included. I live in New York City with my husband, and despite the general experience of being largely reduced to the cramped confines of my apartment, leaving didn’t make much sense to me. I liked New York even when I was mostly sitting inside my home, dreading trips to the grocery store. I liked talking to my neighbors and taking socially distanced walks with friends. Social life…

The new Steven Holl–designed Nancy and Rich Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is set to open November 21. Walking the tunnel of chromatic light by the late artist Carlos Cruz-Diez will be worth the price of admission. In January, the Black Artists + Designers Guild will unveil Obsidian, a virtual showhouse in Oakland, California, and a celebration of Black family identity. At Christie’s, the long-awaited Jayne Wrightsman auction took place on October 14. Lots from the late philanthropist’s collection included an Odalisque painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.…

IT IS AMERICA’S JEWELER, BUT TIFFANY & CO. WAS born and bred in New York City. And it has seen its hometown through almost two centuries’ worth of ups and downs. Founded in 1837 as a stationery and fancy-goods store, Tiffany operated several locations until 1940, when Cross & Cross designed its Fifth Avenue flagship. One of the first major projects in Midtown Manhattan following the Great Depression, the Art Moderne building—with its limestone, granite, and marble facade, its entry framed in an etched wheat-leaf pattern, and its enormous stainless steel doors—is often cited as a catalyst for the area’s postwar recovery. The beauty and modernity of the store’s design lifted the spirits of the city. And so many years later, Tiffany—with a new tabletop and jewelry collection and a…