Table of contents for April 2026 in ELLE DECOR

Toggles and rockers and dimmers—oh my. Electrical vocabulary aside, the humble light switch has long been the wallflower of the well-appointed room. That is, until now. With Corston’s new line of paintable switch plates, launching in May, this often overlooked detail gets a major upgrade. Primed and ready for pigment, they invite a decision: Let them dissolve seamlessly into matte-finished walls and moody limewash, or outline the beauty of the brass in highgloss contrast so everything pops. Welcome to a world where even the flick of a switch feels deliberate. SUPPORTING CAST Thoughtful additions that elevate the rituals of daily life.…

F. Scott Fitzgerald may be the American writer most closely associated with Ralph Lauren—the designer created the costumes for the 1974 movie of The Great Gatsby, and it’s almost reflex while rereading the novel to imagine the characters with RL cable-knit sweaters tossed over their shoulders (colors may vary) as they roam lawns lit with Modern Hurricanes, dining at tables set with Garden Vine dinner plates, marking time with Brennan desk clocks. But in an era when Ralph Lauren Christmas has become a TikTok sensation with almost a million views, when the line for Ralph’s coffee stretches a block down Madison, when vintage Polo is a young-creativecool-kid signifier, when a party to celebrate a new Ralph Lauren Home fabric line becomes the most elegant invite in Paris, “borne back ceaselessly…

When Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Carmen Bambach decided she absolutely needed to have a painting for her sweeping Raphael retrospective, opening this month, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. It took five visits to the Louvre to finally persuade the world’s largest museum to lend the Met its portrait by the artist. An in-person visit by the Met’s director and CEO, Max Hollein, finally sealed the deal. Over the course of eight years, Bambach’s research for the show took her to Europe more than a dozen times, including trips to London, Vienna and Madrid. The show comprises 237 paintings, drawings, tapestries, historical objects, and even a fresco fragment, from 60 public and private collections around the globe. Many of the items rarely, if ever, travel. They come from…

There is perhaps no more quintessentially British restaurant than Simpson’s in the Strand, the 200-yearold institution that has hosted Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, and even Sherlock Holmes and Watson in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mysteries. “There are very few grande dame restaurants left in the country,” says restaurateur Jeremy King. “Simpson’s, for a lot of people, was the great grande dame restaurant.” Two centuries on, the place was showing its age, its interiors weathered and worn. But when it reopens this spring, Simpson’s, like certain human grandes dames, will show off a distinct glow-up. King has restored the restaurant to the atmosphere of its heyday, with hidden tweaks making it fit for 2026. Because, as we all know, the best work is the kind that goes…

“Cute yet elegant, this lamp takes me back to the magic of childhood.”—Marie-Anne Derville, scenographer Table Lamp 25, $3,000, marieannederville.com “Add whimsy and cheer to the top of fruit tarts or tablescapes.”—Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown Advisory Raspberry beeswax candles, $30, happyorganics.co “When keeping a citrus tree alive indoors is an impossible feat, opt for a metal version.”—Jenny Hartman, fashion stylist Tole Lemon Tree by Tommy Mitchell, $2,400, overthemoon.com…

DIMORESTUDIO X BONACINA Evoking the ease of Tuscany, Bonacina’s Punta Ala collection brings the brand’s decorative heritage into sharp contemporary dialogue, where 1970s silhouettes are rendered with rigorous, time-honed craftsmanship and combined with Dimorestudio’s unmistakable lens. SHEPARD FAIREY X POLTRONA FRAU Shepard Fairey recasts an iconic armchair as a bold artistic and environmental manifesto; limited edition of 200. FORNASETTI X CC-TAPIS When a rug is more than a rug? Fornasetti’s dreamlike iconography meets the top-notch craftsmanship of CC-Tapis. ANTONIO CITTERIO X MAXALTO These singular glass volumes on plinths command attention, fusing architectural precision with a bracing austerity. LA DOUBLEJ X BELMOND VILLA SAN MICHELE When tapped to collaborate, JJ Martin answered with a resounding yes and a vibrant new home collection.…

The year was 1983. Two jaw-droppingly large slabs of Cor-Ten were dangling almost gingerly from a crane as they approached a gray stucco building in Beverly Hills. Construction, any passerby might have thought. But in fact the gargantuan steel pieces were Richard Serra sculptures, and this was the first time Serra was showing in a new space with his dealer, Larry Gagosian. The two California guys had decided to go for it. All was well—until the moment the crane set the steel onto a forklift, and that forklift crossed the threshold of Gagosian’s gallery, which he had redone just a year or so earlier. Suddenly the floor collapsed. “We were in a panic,” Gagosian says. The sculpture, aptly titled Plunge, was salvaged, the floor was repaired and strengthened, and the…

When the New Museum reopens this spring, following the construction of a 60,000-square-foot, sevenstory addition designed by OMA, it will be punctuated with a kiss. The moment comes courtesy of New York–born and –bred artist Tschabalala Self, whose site-specific sculpture, Art Lovers, will appear on the exterior of the Lower East Side museum at the exact point where the original building (designed by SANAA in 2007) meets its new counterpart. The 13-foot-tall commission—Self’s largest work to date—features a Black couple in an emotional embrace that blurs the boundaries between the figures. The piece is partially based on Self’s silk, satin, and dyed canvas collage Madly from 2022. Though the New Museum sculpture may be Self’s grandest work yet in terms of scale, it befits her prolific output. Since graduating with…

I went to visit a friend of mine in New York the other day. She has a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side overlooking the Met. In the deep window reveals were generous terra-cotta pots with wonderfully rangy green geraniums sitting in front of the windows. The plantings did something so unusual to this (extremely well-appointed, Jacques Granges–decorated) apartment: They brought a soft, gentle calm of a kind that you don’t find very often in the city. The geranium is a humble plant, and the terra-cotta pot nothing exceptional, but to have these at scale you must have a greenhouse. When I inquired about them I discovered they had in fact come from the country. How perfectly Annette de la Renta! (Or Bunny Mellon, or Hubert de Givenchy, or…

Standing in the presence of an Alexander Calder mobile can be spellbinding: the eye-catching geometric forms exquisitely balanced on wires, their captivating configurations continuously, subtly shifting. “They are never doing the same thing,” says Alexander S.C. “Sandy” Rower, the artist’s grandson and head of the Calder Foundation. “If you give it more than 10 seconds, you discover that something surprising can happen, does happen. And that was what it was like for him, being in Paris in the ’20s, exposed to all of that creative energy.” Pioneering and prolific, Alexander Calder remains, half a century after his death, one of America’s most recognizable and admired artists, our Picasso. But the story of his ascent to becoming a giant of modernism really begins in Paris, where he moved, as a young…

MAGENTA DISTRICT Start with a macchiato at Marchesi 1824 before crossing the street to see the array of exhibitions at Palazzo Litta, a Baroqueera residence. Farther along is the Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie, home to Leonardo’s Last Supper as well as the Formafantasmacurated Prada Frames symposium. Stop by the design gallery Rossana Orlandi on Via Matteo Bandello and Canadian lighting brand Bocci’s chic apartment showroom on Via Rovani. By Sempione Park sits the Triennale Design Museum, where an Eames Office project and a retrospective on design duo Barber Osgerby are on exhibition. BRERA This neighborhood is worth your time for its mix of traditional showrooms, independent galleries, and temporary installations by blue chip brands. Hermès has been taking over a jai alai court from the 1940s for…