Monthly Archives: August 2014

Favorite Vintage Ads Friday: Collier Campbell for Martex

Posted August 29, 2014. Filed in Favorite Vintage Ads, John Saladino

Today’s favorite vintage ad was produced in 1983 by Atelier Martex in collaboration with Collier Campbell to introduce their new bedding line, Kashmir. Martex employed interior designers and decorators, with never a mention of their names, to create imagined rooms layered with atmosphere to entice buyers into their secret world. They are some of the best […]

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Throwback Thursday: Charles Sévigny

Posted August 28, 2014. Filed in Charles Sévigny, Mediterranean Style

The other day I grabbed a stack of old, not yet vintage, Architectural Digests from the shelves and rediscovered this beautiful villa designed by American born Parisian interior designer Charles Sévigny. It was featured in the July/August issue of 1973 and, though I purchased this magazine from a dealer only years ago, I am struck […]

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Favorite Vintage Ads Friday: Patterson, Flynn & Martin

Posted August 22, 2014. Filed in Favorite Vintage Ads

Today’s Favorite Friday Vintage Ad features this eclectic and richly appointed room with a resist-dyed canvas floor cloth by Maya for Patterson, Flynn & Martin, shown in “China Gardens with Ribbons”, which was published in Architectural Digest in 1977. Like many of my favorite ads from that era, curated rooms settings like this one are […]

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Throwback Thursday: John Siddeley

Posted August 21, 2014. Filed in Classic Contemporary

Every once in awhile I encounter rooms I’ve never seen before or a designer whose work I’m not familiar with. But this is very rare, as I’ve been consuming interior design and decoration since I was about the age of thirteen. The bookcase in my study is chock-a-block with shelter magazines dating back to the […]

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The Last Swan’s Song: Villar Perosa

Posted August 19, 2014. Filed in Italian Villas, Maison Jansen, Marella Agnelli, Stéphane Boudin

For decades people, like myself – who love beautiful houses – have mused about the interior lives at Villar Perosa, the late Gianni Agnelli’s family legacy in the hills of Piedmonte, Italy, overseen today by its chatelaine, Gianni’s widow, Marella – the last of the living “swans”, the affectionate name Truman Capote gave his gaggle […]

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A Blue-And-White Delight

Posted August 18, 2014. Filed in Carolyne Roehm, Textiles, Tropical Style

Do you recall Quadrille’s stylish ad campaigns from the 1970’s and 1980’s? I don’t think there was a single one that didn’t captivate me. Aside from loving almost every pattern and colorway they design there was something personal and special about the vignettes they created for their print ads. Recently I introduced a feature on […]

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Favorite Vintage Ads Friday: McGuire Furniture Stinson Beach

Posted August 15, 2014. Filed in Favorite Vintage Ads, McGuire

Our week’s vacation in Stinson Beach is coming to an end, and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate ad campaign than this McGuire Furniture advertisement set at Elinor and John McGuire’s Stinson Beach retreat in 1992 – four years after the completion of their Joseph Esherick built cedar clad pavilion with interiors by Andrew […]

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Throwback Thursday: High Style on Stinson Beach

Posted August 14, 2014. Filed in Coastal Chic, Sally Sirkin Lewis

  Note: I intended to post this last Thursday but lack of WiFi, and sketchy service pretty much everywhere, turned my vacation into … well, a bona fide vacation! Here’s more from Stinson Beach … Is it Thursday already? Please, say it isn’t so! That can only mean that our time in Stinson Beach is […]

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The McGuire’s in Stinson Beach

Posted August 11, 2014. Filed in Coastal Chic, McGuire, Pan-Asian Style

Since before I was born my family has returned time and again to our favorite California beach, our summer home away from home, Stinson Beach. My mother and father discovered it for themselves in the 1950’s on one of their romantic road trips in my father’s red Austin Healey, and it was love at first […]

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Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer

For me August defines “those lazy-hazy-crazy days of summer” – a tune originally made popular by Nat King Cole. As summer’s heat intensifies and the air becomes still a languid lull sets in, where it seems all one can do is sit quietly, relax and drink in the nearest quenching facility of water. The houses […]

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Favorite Vintage Ads Friday: Perry Ellis for Martex

Posted August 1, 2014. Filed in Favorite Vintage Ads

It seems like I just wrote last week’s Favorite Friday Vintage Ads and here it is Friday, again – how fast this week has flown by! But I’m not complaining, as Friday’s are most welcomed and better still, I’m off to my native home, northern California, to spend a week with my family at our […]

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