Category Archives: Moderne

Timeless Chic at Clos Videlot

It seems that, in the world in which we live and orbit today, nearly every aesthetic image has been posted, pinned and uploaded into the ether. As a part-time blogger I often grow tired of rediscovering the same repeated information and imagery that can be found from the original source – accurately credited, I might […]

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The Louche Life

Posted March 23, 2015. Filed in Collected Cool, Italian Modernism, Moderne

The title of today’s post, The Louche Life, may conjure for many a disreputable association, but I intend it in the most complimentary way, in the sense that “louche” signals a seductive hedonism in the realm of the interior as theater for sensory pleasure and delight. If sexy interiors make you squirm, do not proceed […]

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My Favoriet Rooms

Posted February 10, 2015. Filed in Juan Montoya, Moderne, My Favorite Rooms

I have always dreamed of having an apartment in Paris that captures the curiosity of a collector and artist … a cabinet d’amateur!  It wouldn’t have to be large, but the perfect dwelling would possess the spirit of my favorite era, the 1920’s. It needn’t be grand at all, either. Character and atmosphere are all […]

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Puttin’ On the Ritz

 Now if you’re blue and you don’t know where to go to, why don’t you go where fashion sits? Puttin’ on the Ritz Puttin’ on the Ritz, a turn of phrase coined by Irving Berlin in 1929 for the song of the same name, was a slang expression to indicate “dressing stylishly”, inspired by London’s […]

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SPARE SIMPLICITY IN ST. TROPEZ

Posted June 10, 2014. Filed in Frédéric Méchiche, Minimalism, Moderne, Riviera Style

Several years ago Frédéric Méchiche decided upon a 17th-century house in the Ponche district of St. Tropez as a retreat before its being published by The World of Interiors in 2005. His vision was not to reproduce, what he refers to as, the “Provençaleries” rife throughout the region – those quaint and cozy country French […]

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The House of Armani Redux

Posted April 9, 2014. Filed in Giorgio Armani, Minimalism, Moderne

In two of my earliest posts, Le Style Frank: The House of Armani and Le Style Frank: The House of Armani Revisited, I shared every known photo I possess of one of the most memorable and influential interiors with regard to my own decorative and architectural lexicon as it has developed over the years. The […]

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VILLA E.1027 REDUX

Posted February 22, 2014. Filed in Eileen Gray, Le Corbusier, Moderne, Modernism

“The biggest secret of E.1027 is that it offers spaces for secrets, having layers of interiors within its interiors.” –Katarina Bonnevier Villa E.1027, Eileen Gray’s modernist 1929 villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera, opens to the public with great fanfare thanks to a complete seven-year renovation made possible by the Friends of E.1027 and […]

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SWIMMING IN LUXURY

Posted January 21, 2014. Filed in Art Deco, Classical Moderne, Moderne, Thierry Despont

“Swimming in Luxury” was the title of an article written by Françoise Labro for Maison & Jardin in 1995 – a separate and complete article associated with my previous post, Passion, Discipline and Savoir-Fair, chronicling the collaboration between client and architect of a bespoke residential project in the western part of the United States. This […]

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Passion-Discipline-Savoir-Faire

Posted January 20, 2014. Filed in Art Deco, Classical Moderne, Moderne, Thierry Despont

“Passion, discipline and savoir-faire”: these are the three guiding principles of master architect and designer Thierry Despont. Tucked away in the shelves of my studio’s books cabinet I rediscovered a spread  that has long been on my mind since I first discovered it in 1995 in Maison & Jardin, that wonderful publication that met an […]

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Riviera Style: Villa Nara Mondadori

Posted September 9, 2013. Filed in Moderne, Peter Marino, Riviera Style, Villas

Villa Nara Mondadori was designed and constructed by architect Oscar Niemeyer on Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in 1968, a Modernist anomaly amidst Belle Époque mansions peppered up and down the Côte d’Azur. But it no less signifies a taste for luxury by the monied set than does its extroverted, elaborate and highly stylized neighboring pink and ocher manses. […]

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Monsieur Moderne – Part Quatre

Posted June 9, 2013. Filed in Moderne, Uncategorized

Though begun in 1932, Villa Cavrois did not reach its epogee until 1947, after the Nazi’s had commandeered it during World War II. It was designed and built by Robert Mallet-Stevens for inustrialist Paul Cavrois in the city of Roubaix, near the Belgian border. When the house was finally completed in the post-war years it […]

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Monsieur Moderne – Part Tres

Posted May 16, 2013. Filed in Moderne, Uncategorized

The fashion designer Paul Poiret – who liberated women from their corsets at the turn-of-the-century, draping them instead in yards of fabric and kimono-style jackets – commissioned Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1920 to build a Modernist Art Deco villa, his first large project, Château de Mézy. “It was all-white, pure, majestic and a little provocative, just like […]

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