WE’VE HAD this five-bedroom home in Sag Harbor, NY, saved in our folder for ages. Originally built in the 18th century, this weekend retreat with a guest house has been updated for modern comfort. The renovation combines luxurious neutrals with a mix of vintage and custom-designed pieces.
Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of the world’s most popular TV show, is supposed to be an everyman. The Truman Show is set in an island town, Seahaven, that evokes the prefab conformities of American suburbia. Truman is a brand in a setting that is stridently generic. Since his birth, he has navigated a world manufactured—by Christof, the creator of his show—for lucrative inoffensiveness. Everything around him exists to fulfill the primary mandate of a mass-market TV show: appealing to the widest possible audience.
NEVER REALISED the need for outdoor curtains until coming across it again and again, mostly in archways and doorways, sometimes from the windows of juliet balconies on old apartment buildings and saw how utterly charming it is ...
TUCKED AWAY on the Côte d'Azur (the Mediterranean coast of southeastern France) lies Château Saint-Victor-la-Coste, one of the most idyllic places to while the hours. A vacation complex comprised of three cottages and one suite (in a 16th century castle), all available for rent, the Château is situated in the old village of St Victor la Coste (an equal distance between Avignon in Provence and the market town of Uzes in Languedoc) where you will find a boulangerie and épicerie
THESE LINKS COME to you late, as the short trip we made to Edinburgh to visit family ended up spiralling into chaos due to the heat wave over these past three days. We left for the city on Sunday morning and were only supposed to stay one night, but the temperature rose on Monday and created mayhem⏤schools were closed, shops were shut, people stayed home from work, and trains, tubes, and subways were cancelled.
BRIE AND PEARS at a picnic by the seaside at sunset; wicker lamps and wicker bags and sun umbrellas flapping in the breeze; Lisbon kitchens and wide-legged pants; summer sweaters with city shorts and trolleys full of lemons... These are the things of far-flung places but also of summertime, our very favourite time.
LAST WEEK WE featured the Hudson Valley home of Deborah Needleman and while we were researching her place, we came across Villa Arniano on Needleman's Instagram: "Back from a week at the house of my dreams—the Tuscan idyll of @camillaguinness. Spent a few days with @jacobwe, @skyegyngell, @davidprior, @holly_gore and my daughter Lily Weisberg who doesn’t bother herself with social media, and then a few days with #camillaguinness, @amberguinness and @macmillandavidmb languorous, long summer days eating (really well) reading, chatting , swimming and napping. I was so blissed out I didn’t take any pictures, so these are lifted from Camilla and Amber’s Instagram as well from @arnianopaintingschool the week-long painting workshops Amber runs here with her friend @willropercurzon"
WE CAME ACROSS the beautiful kitchen of designer Jasper Conran's vacation home on the island of Rhodes on Instagram and instantly fell for its rustic charm. Nothing looks too perfect, and yet everything looks perfect. There are stacks of old pots and pans on lower shelves and large terracotta platters displayed casually above, a pebble mosaic floor (something we had never seen before), irregular white plaster walls and a thatched ceiling. We, of course, were intrigued to see the rest of the home, which once belonged to Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte von Rezzori.
THE INTERNET is a funny place—it can be both stifflingly small and a place so large, that we can all be "known" in our own little corner of it without ever running into each other. I only discovered Pia Baroncini, the Creative Director of Los Angeles clothing label LPA, today and loved the little glimpses she gave on Instagram of her Spanish colonial home in Pasadena, California ...
YES, WE KNOW, it's only been officially autumn for a month, but with the nights drawing in so quickly now, the bright yellow leaves falling off the trees, the wet gloomy skies, and British Summer Time ending at the end of the month, we're already dreaming of sunnier times and warmer days. If the dark days of autumn and the dreary days of winter must be tolerated, then we'll do it with cosy evenings fireside, and also through plenty of daydreaming. These images, that came floating through our feed this week, of places around Mallorca are a perfect place to start ...
IF YOU HAVE been reading for a long time, you will know that it is a tradition, every year, around this time, for us to post one Lasting One Last Longing Look at Summertime. Last year, during lockdown, may have been missed ...
WE HAPPENED UPON the beautiful home of Danish artist and interior stylist Simone Polk Dahl on Instagram and have fallen completely in love with the easy-going vibes of this space with its neutral palette of black, beige and brown tones ...
EVER SINCE Edinburgh, we have been off our routines—the workouts, the cardio sessions on the exercise bike, the daily countryside walks. Summer might have something to do with that as well, but it has been a while now that we've not been able to keep all of our Monday, Wednesday, Friday workout commitments. I had thought today might be a start, but in truth, perhaps nothing will be back to normal until September. (Can you believe that it is already nearly mid-August?)
THE WEATHER has been beautiful, so on both Friday and Saturday, we took our new folding bicycles out for very long countryside rides through hilly landscapes filled with roaming sheep and giant bales of hay framed by rambling stone walls covered in moss that have been there for hundreds of years. There were castles and viaducts and cosy country pubs along the way where we would stop for a drink and mingle with the locals ...
WE HAVE BEEN reminiscing about our former life in Spain and all the summer mornings spent eating sandía on the back terrace in the sun, the terracotta tiles warm under our bare feet. We've been craving gazpacho, which is proving difficult to find here in the English countryside ...
