Category Archives: Understated Luxury

Hunt Country Simplicity

The hunt season is in full swing. In the states Virginia is the center of this long-standing tradition, which begins as early as September – a tradition carried over by our forefathers from Great Britain, where it originated in the 16th-century. You can read about its history and traditions in my post Hunt Country Style. […]

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Throwback Thursday: Anthony Hail

Posted October 2, 2014. Filed in Anthony Hail, Classic Elegance, Understated Luxury

  In today’s Throwback Thursday post we visit, or revisit as your own personal experience may indicate, the one time Nob Hill home of Anthony Hail in San Francisco. It was featured in the May/June issue of Architectural Digest presented in interview format. In past posts I haven’t borrowed directly from a feature’s copy but […]

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CLASSICO-MODERNA

Posted March 25, 2014. Filed in Classic Chic, Michele Bönan, Understated Luxury

Luxury hotel collection J. K. Place has introduced a third boutique-style hotel to its existing venues in Florence and Capri with the recently opened J. K. Place Roma. For the design and decoration of their latest property in the Eternal City they once again turned to Michele Bonan to cast his sybaritic take on elegant […]

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Savoir-Sills

Posted January 17, 2014. Filed in Stephen Sills, Understated Luxury

Granted, it’s probably very unlikely we can “know” someone – “Savoir Sills” – from an interview. But when it comes to decorator Stephen Sills (he deplores the term “designer”, stating “it’s such a made-up thing from the 70’s when decorators were looked down upon, so everybody became a ‘designer’. A great decorator should be every […]

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A JAMAICAN JEWEL: ROUND HILL

Fresh from a most non-traditional Thanksgiving vacation in Jamaica I am still dreaming of crystalline azure waters, balmy breezes, the friendly Jamaican people, and the understated traditional luxury informed by decades of British colonization. And the fact that Ralph Lauren has vacationed here for nearly as long as he’s been in business adds another layer […]

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Provence Pastoral

Posted August 2, 2013. Filed in Jean-Louis Raynaud, Provence, Understated Luxury

The Toujours Provence series comes to a close with Janet de Botton’s extraordinary Provencal bastide and surrounding farmland in Les Baux, the rugged Southwest region of France, oft blogged about since its appearance in Vogue a few years back. Intent on finding a property with views – as opposed to the usual ones protected from […]

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Chez Catroux Provence

Posted July 25, 2013. Filed in François Catroux, Provence, Understated Luxury

Toujours Provence continues, bringing us to Betty and François Catroux’s 16th-century farmhouse, Les Ramades, in the Luberon. Imagine escaping here from Paris, approaching the property through apricot groves to a dead-end road lined with plane trees, where you then enter the intimate and highly stylish world of the Catroux’s. The approach only hints at what’s […]

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Haut Provençal

Posted July 16, 2013. Filed in Jacques Grange, Provence, Understated Luxury

  Our tour of Provençal homes continues with the farmhouse of Terry and Jean de Gunzburg, longtime clients and friends of celebrated French interior designer Jacques Grange. What is particularly unique to this Provencal mas is the balance Grange achieved from bringing together local rustic color and materials with sophisticated art and decor. Grange retained the […]

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Home on the Grange

Posted July 10, 2013. Filed in Jacques Grange, Provence, Understated Luxury

Our tour of some of my favorite homes in Provence continues, following my posts Tourjour Provence, Truex Provence and Chez Cameron. Images of Jacques Grange’s farmhouse, Mas Mireio, have been protected in plastic sheet covers ever since I pulled them from HG magazine years ago, in the late 1980’s. His Provençal vacation home, which is reserved […]

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Truex Provence

Posted July 5, 2013. Filed in Provence, Understated Luxury, Van Day Truex

Van Day Truex – once dean of The Parsons School of Design and design director of Tiffany & Co., and friend of Billy Baldwin and teacher to Albert Hadley – epitomized restraint and elegance. Truex is famous for his design directive: “Control, edit and distill”. A distillation of his thoroughly edited approach to classicism was […]

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Toujours Provence

Summertime in Provence is a feast for the senses – fields of sleep-inducing lavender contrasting the positively sunny disposition of row upon row of sunflowers; the colorful and tempting displays of fruit, vegetables and flowers at village marchés arranged in eye-catching compositions reminiscent of a Cezanne or Van Gogh; aromatic herbs carrying their heady notes […]

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Le Style Frank: The House of Armani Revisited

In 1989 House and Garden magazine featured The House of Armani, Armani’s freshly remodeled and redesigned Milan pied-à-terre by architect and designer Peter Marino, in a four-hundred-year-old palazzo in the historic Brera section, which he moved into in 1982. When asked if he were pleased with the final outcome of the redesign of his rooms […]

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