This was, unexpectedly, quite moving to me...seeing the spirits interacting with the living, and the idea of beauty, the ephemeral nature of beauty, and the idea of making things lovey before you go...
"'Les Fantômes du Cinéma', a film by Matteo Garrone that conjures up the intersection of temporalities and identities conveyed through Maria Grazia Chiuri’s new collection. The grounds of Rome’s Villa Albani Torlonia are the setting for dreamlike scenes in which ghostly figures clad in costumes associated with the films of Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini and more interact with the models as they prepare to unveil the House's latest creations. Featuring cameos by the photographer Brigitte and members of the House’s ateliers, this enchanting episode of magical realism is a poetic paean to the powerful femininity the Creative Director of Women’s collections has championed since the start."
https://www.dior.com/en_us/fashion/womens-fashion/ready-to-wear-shows/cruise-2026-show
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Friday, May 30, 2025
BEAUTY: Painting--Richard Claremont
Summer is almost upon us and it is in the spirit of warm days, beachside visits, and strolls through the French or Italian countryside that I present the wonderful, Impressionist work of Australian painter Richard Claremont. It makes me think fondly of my own times walking in the Tuscan countryside and hearing wild boar rustle the bushes around me or wandering around villages in Provence and smelling lavender...
Top to bottom: Afternoon By The Orchard; Afternoon Drift; Beach Holiday; Memories of an Italian Summer; Morning Coffee, Pittwater; On The Terrace; Sunburst; Wandering Light
He sells his work on his website!
https://www.richardclaremont.com/
Top to bottom: Afternoon By The Orchard; Afternoon Drift; Beach Holiday; Memories of an Italian Summer; Morning Coffee, Pittwater; On The Terrace; Sunburst; Wandering Light
He sells his work on his website!
https://www.richardclaremont.com/
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
San Francisco Decorator's Showcase 2025
Regular readers know that I attend the San Francisco Decorator's Showcase every May and I always look forward to seeing what marvelous, inventive interiors my fellow designers have come up with and to finding new and exciting products and materials I can use in projects of my own. This year's San Francisco Decorator's Showcase wraps up today and it was, as usual, a feast for the eyes. Today is the closing day so if you are in San Francisco, get a wiggle on and head over!
Located at 2935 Pacific Avenue, the original building was designed by Scottish-born architect Thomas Paterson Ross and built in 1902 not as a single family dwelling but as a set of three flats. The Tudor Revival style of the house was changed to a Classically inspired home with limestone facing in 2009 by architect Louis Felthouse. Today, the property is for sale for $19 million. I hope the new buyers keep some of the marvelous details created by this year's crop of talent.
The Showcase proper started with Kelly Hohla's Marine Layers Family Room and Kitchen. Her inspiration was the California shore, sky, and fog which expressed itself in her choices for pretty much every item, not only in terms of color but also texture and shape. I was knocked out by the custom Seafoam rug and the multi-leveled cocktail table. In the kitchen, Coastal Oak cabinetry by British firm Bakehouse also featured inset doors in a hue called Bridgerton Blue. A hidden wireless charging station in the kitchen island and electrical plugs that ingeniously blend in with the marble backsplash were tech standouts.
Decorative painter extraordinaire Willem Racké took on the butler's pantry passage between the kitchen and the dining room. Stylized flower stalks based on the work of French designer Armand-Albert Rateau were painted over a slate plaster ground, and the result was subtle but compelling...
What came next was a vision, a mirage, an oasis...the Moroccan Mirage dining room by Julie Rootes was over-the-top gorgeous. She used yards and yards of alpaca to line the walls and create a tented ceiling gathered at the center by a stunning, properly exotic chandelier. Moorish scalloped edging evoked the casbah. Even the adjacent sitting area featured palm-tree light fixtures while an antique French chest and mirror brought a bit of classical flair. The stunning dining chairs made of cast brass by John Lyle were amazing, and weighed at least 80 pounds each! This room was one of the highlights of the Showcase.
Beauty Interrupted was what Leslie Lamarre of TRG Architecture and Interior Design called a home office with some fascinating features. The stand out item was of course the undulating, organic desk that seemed to flutter and wave across the room, morphing into a wall structure and then down into a seat. Made of laser-cut plywood and painstakingly assembled into what you see below, it dominated the room in such a forceful way. But it was only matched by the enormous bee in the pattern of the Timorous Beasties wallpaper. Above was a constellation of pendant lights made from corrugated cardboard. On the floor was a custom Kyle Bunting rug in coordinating colors...gorgeous.
Kathleen Navarra's Modern Library was a gorgeous thing...an incredibly sophisticated mix of pattern and color. The ceiling was papered with a design from Fromental as was the amazing paper lining of the bookcases (in fact, I saw this paper for the first time last year at the Kip's Bay Showhouse in Manhattan, in a room by Alan Tanksley) which looks like cloisonné. The art in the bookcases, the leaf-shaped sconces on the bookcase stiles, the multi-fringed bench, and another custom Kyle Bunting rug elevated the space.
The Champagne Skies primary bedroom and Bronze Topaz and Vanilla Onyx en suite bathroom by Lauren Berry were soft, muted affairs which is perfect for a personal retreat. I loved the chevron onyx floor but the clear winner was the topaz glass bathtub with a view of San Francisco in the wood paneled bathroom.
The next floor held some pretty interesting spaces. The Nest by Ansley Majit of Lark and Palm Interiors was a bedroom for a young girl. She managed to make a room for girl that felt appropriate without falling back on "girly" or "frilly" tropes. Whimsical bird wallpaper and a palette of soft greens just felt right. Majit also created the Jack and Jill bathroom that used the same color approach with the same raisin tone as the molding in the bedroom.
The Jack and Jill bathroom led to the boy's bedroom perfectly titled Imaginarium, created by Heather K. Bernstein. The draw in this room for me was the fantastic hand-painted and hand-embroidered wallcovering used on the ceiling. Children's doodles embellished with flourishes of stitching and loose thread (like a painted boot with thread laces hanging down) mingled with animals that recall Maurice Sendak's legendary "Where The Wild Things Are." A coordinated lamp shade blended in. The closet featured a selfie booth with a backdrop wall covered with tiny plastic children's toys!
Fernando Castellanos' glam, all-black laundry room was dramatic and unexpected.
The Atelier of Dreams room by Sabah Mansoor was her expression of a space for creativity, to create haute couture clothing. Walls painted by the wildly talented Caroline Lizarraga recalled the work of Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali while a custom ceiling of interwoven fabric rope and lights offered another surreal touch. The closet lighting fixture was fantastical as well: a bronze-cast piece of driftwood terminating in the skulls of a pair of birds. She also created the adjoining l'eau Muse bathroom with a breathtaking marble-lined walk-in shower that featured a water droplet-shaped shower head.
The final bedroom of the house was The Global Nest by Kendra Nash who used her travels in Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Australia, and Mexico to inform her choices of textures, patterns, and colors. Indeed, the room was all about texture. I particularly loved a simple design detail I would love to use for a future client: a chair rail but made of sticks of fluted wood with a small rail of wood to finish the top and bottom...a simple detail but one that carries with it a wonderful sense of finish.
The rooftop--with its separate lounge-fire pit area, central dining area, elevated bar area, and private hot tub (!)--was imagined and engineered by the team at Strata Landscape Architecture. I really loved the choice of railing for the 360 degree view of SF!
Accessible only from the rooftop, John Anderson's Way Out West listening lounge was a dose of color and fun, referencing the "West" in terms of both the designer's roots in Texas as well as the West of the great state of California. On display: colorful Mexican serapes, artwork featuring cacti, a copper-topped bar of glass bricks, leather-strapped bar stools, and vintage historical images of the Wild West. The vinyl record corner featured both Glen Campbell and Orville Peck! But lest you think this was a "country" affair, I can assure you there was definitely a veneer of 70s glam on top of it all. On top of a vintage 1970s chrome cocktail table sat a book featuring the late photographer Helmut Newton's work which appeared in the 1978 Faye Dunaway film "The Eyes of Laura Mars." A nearby glass floor lamp looked like it came from Studio 54. Way to go John!
Geoff De Sousa's exquisitely curated Living Room was an exercise in understatement. He co-owns the showroom De Sousa Hughes at the SF Design Center and he told me that he is known at his studio for his mantra, "Edit, edit, edit!" The result of his powers was on display in this room with the original warm wood coffered-paneling still intact. He layered on some amazing, sculptural pieces: the Fold sofa and Caldera cocktail table from John Pomp Studios, a pair of Todo Modo Chairs by Jean-Michel Wilmotte designed for the Louvre with a reversible back to view art from both sides, and Brutalist sconces by Caste Design. The contemporary nature of all these pieces created a beautiful frisson when seen with the traditional paneling and carved wood surround of the fireplace. The art work both stood out yet somehow blended in with their surroundings: De Sousa's own Warhol polaroid of Little Edie over a painted bar was tiny but mighty. Everything in this space hung together so well, making a space that was invigorating but also calmingly inviting. Another highlight of this year's Showcase.
The bottom garden level of the house boasts its own separate one-bedroom apartment designed by Katie Monkhouse. The stand outs: the custom living room rug by Safar Rugs, and the kitchen island pendant lighting by the new company Brightbound.
The Showcase ended on a delightful note: the garden apartment's Feather & Fold laundry room by Assel Teskey was a tiny treat of storks, sandpipers, and flamingoes on a pale pink ground!
As usual, I am already looking forward to next year's Showcase!
https://www.decoratorshowcase.org/
Located at 2935 Pacific Avenue, the original building was designed by Scottish-born architect Thomas Paterson Ross and built in 1902 not as a single family dwelling but as a set of three flats. The Tudor Revival style of the house was changed to a Classically inspired home with limestone facing in 2009 by architect Louis Felthouse. Today, the property is for sale for $19 million. I hope the new buyers keep some of the marvelous details created by this year's crop of talent.
The Showcase proper started with Kelly Hohla's Marine Layers Family Room and Kitchen. Her inspiration was the California shore, sky, and fog which expressed itself in her choices for pretty much every item, not only in terms of color but also texture and shape. I was knocked out by the custom Seafoam rug and the multi-leveled cocktail table. In the kitchen, Coastal Oak cabinetry by British firm Bakehouse also featured inset doors in a hue called Bridgerton Blue. A hidden wireless charging station in the kitchen island and electrical plugs that ingeniously blend in with the marble backsplash were tech standouts.
Decorative painter extraordinaire Willem Racké took on the butler's pantry passage between the kitchen and the dining room. Stylized flower stalks based on the work of French designer Armand-Albert Rateau were painted over a slate plaster ground, and the result was subtle but compelling...
What came next was a vision, a mirage, an oasis...the Moroccan Mirage dining room by Julie Rootes was over-the-top gorgeous. She used yards and yards of alpaca to line the walls and create a tented ceiling gathered at the center by a stunning, properly exotic chandelier. Moorish scalloped edging evoked the casbah. Even the adjacent sitting area featured palm-tree light fixtures while an antique French chest and mirror brought a bit of classical flair. The stunning dining chairs made of cast brass by John Lyle were amazing, and weighed at least 80 pounds each! This room was one of the highlights of the Showcase.
Beauty Interrupted was what Leslie Lamarre of TRG Architecture and Interior Design called a home office with some fascinating features. The stand out item was of course the undulating, organic desk that seemed to flutter and wave across the room, morphing into a wall structure and then down into a seat. Made of laser-cut plywood and painstakingly assembled into what you see below, it dominated the room in such a forceful way. But it was only matched by the enormous bee in the pattern of the Timorous Beasties wallpaper. Above was a constellation of pendant lights made from corrugated cardboard. On the floor was a custom Kyle Bunting rug in coordinating colors...gorgeous.
Kathleen Navarra's Modern Library was a gorgeous thing...an incredibly sophisticated mix of pattern and color. The ceiling was papered with a design from Fromental as was the amazing paper lining of the bookcases (in fact, I saw this paper for the first time last year at the Kip's Bay Showhouse in Manhattan, in a room by Alan Tanksley) which looks like cloisonné. The art in the bookcases, the leaf-shaped sconces on the bookcase stiles, the multi-fringed bench, and another custom Kyle Bunting rug elevated the space.
The Champagne Skies primary bedroom and Bronze Topaz and Vanilla Onyx en suite bathroom by Lauren Berry were soft, muted affairs which is perfect for a personal retreat. I loved the chevron onyx floor but the clear winner was the topaz glass bathtub with a view of San Francisco in the wood paneled bathroom.
The next floor held some pretty interesting spaces. The Nest by Ansley Majit of Lark and Palm Interiors was a bedroom for a young girl. She managed to make a room for girl that felt appropriate without falling back on "girly" or "frilly" tropes. Whimsical bird wallpaper and a palette of soft greens just felt right. Majit also created the Jack and Jill bathroom that used the same color approach with the same raisin tone as the molding in the bedroom.
The Jack and Jill bathroom led to the boy's bedroom perfectly titled Imaginarium, created by Heather K. Bernstein. The draw in this room for me was the fantastic hand-painted and hand-embroidered wallcovering used on the ceiling. Children's doodles embellished with flourishes of stitching and loose thread (like a painted boot with thread laces hanging down) mingled with animals that recall Maurice Sendak's legendary "Where The Wild Things Are." A coordinated lamp shade blended in. The closet featured a selfie booth with a backdrop wall covered with tiny plastic children's toys!
Fernando Castellanos' glam, all-black laundry room was dramatic and unexpected.
The Atelier of Dreams room by Sabah Mansoor was her expression of a space for creativity, to create haute couture clothing. Walls painted by the wildly talented Caroline Lizarraga recalled the work of Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali while a custom ceiling of interwoven fabric rope and lights offered another surreal touch. The closet lighting fixture was fantastical as well: a bronze-cast piece of driftwood terminating in the skulls of a pair of birds. She also created the adjoining l'eau Muse bathroom with a breathtaking marble-lined walk-in shower that featured a water droplet-shaped shower head.
The final bedroom of the house was The Global Nest by Kendra Nash who used her travels in Southeast Asia, New Zealand, Australia, and Mexico to inform her choices of textures, patterns, and colors. Indeed, the room was all about texture. I particularly loved a simple design detail I would love to use for a future client: a chair rail but made of sticks of fluted wood with a small rail of wood to finish the top and bottom...a simple detail but one that carries with it a wonderful sense of finish.
The rooftop--with its separate lounge-fire pit area, central dining area, elevated bar area, and private hot tub (!)--was imagined and engineered by the team at Strata Landscape Architecture. I really loved the choice of railing for the 360 degree view of SF!
Accessible only from the rooftop, John Anderson's Way Out West listening lounge was a dose of color and fun, referencing the "West" in terms of both the designer's roots in Texas as well as the West of the great state of California. On display: colorful Mexican serapes, artwork featuring cacti, a copper-topped bar of glass bricks, leather-strapped bar stools, and vintage historical images of the Wild West. The vinyl record corner featured both Glen Campbell and Orville Peck! But lest you think this was a "country" affair, I can assure you there was definitely a veneer of 70s glam on top of it all. On top of a vintage 1970s chrome cocktail table sat a book featuring the late photographer Helmut Newton's work which appeared in the 1978 Faye Dunaway film "The Eyes of Laura Mars." A nearby glass floor lamp looked like it came from Studio 54. Way to go John!
Geoff De Sousa's exquisitely curated Living Room was an exercise in understatement. He co-owns the showroom De Sousa Hughes at the SF Design Center and he told me that he is known at his studio for his mantra, "Edit, edit, edit!" The result of his powers was on display in this room with the original warm wood coffered-paneling still intact. He layered on some amazing, sculptural pieces: the Fold sofa and Caldera cocktail table from John Pomp Studios, a pair of Todo Modo Chairs by Jean-Michel Wilmotte designed for the Louvre with a reversible back to view art from both sides, and Brutalist sconces by Caste Design. The contemporary nature of all these pieces created a beautiful frisson when seen with the traditional paneling and carved wood surround of the fireplace. The art work both stood out yet somehow blended in with their surroundings: De Sousa's own Warhol polaroid of Little Edie over a painted bar was tiny but mighty. Everything in this space hung together so well, making a space that was invigorating but also calmingly inviting. Another highlight of this year's Showcase.
The bottom garden level of the house boasts its own separate one-bedroom apartment designed by Katie Monkhouse. The stand outs: the custom living room rug by Safar Rugs, and the kitchen island pendant lighting by the new company Brightbound.
The Showcase ended on a delightful note: the garden apartment's Feather & Fold laundry room by Assel Teskey was a tiny treat of storks, sandpipers, and flamingoes on a pale pink ground!
As usual, I am already looking forward to next year's Showcase!
https://www.decoratorshowcase.org/
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