Meteorologically speaking, we're in the final month of spring, but time has got away from us and we never had the chance to fully appreciate this season that comes before our favourite. For it's at this time of year, that the earth awakens from its deep sleep, shedding the icy weight of winter's discontent.
FOR SOME strange reason, springtime always makes me feel like completely renovating the powder rooms. What seems to be fine in the winter, suddenly feels oppressive and in dire need of a makeover when the days get longer and the sun fills everything with its warm golden light. Can't wait until it's warm enough to throw open all the windows again and let the fresh air in, fluttering the gauzy curtains in the bathrooms here at the cottage.
YES, I KNOW, I introduced my new design aesthetic recently, only to change back less than a week later, but this time, I think it will take. It's not exactly White Chocolate Minimalism, but it's definitely as serene and calming, yet with enough charming details and flourishes (ceiling beams, crown moulding) to keep things from becoming too austere. There seems to be quite a bit of blacks, browns, and dark, rich woods in this iteration, but it feels earthy and not oppressive...
In any given year, the exercise of assembling a definitive list of the best places to travel is both exciting and daunting. After all, we’re never short on inspiring places and experiences we hope to cross off. And so, every fall, when we convene to start the process of creating this list, we do so with great care, enlisting our extensively traveled network of writers from around the world—and for the first time this year, editors from other Condé Nast Traveler markets—to pitch, endorse, defend, and eventually align on the places we believe that you, as our readers, will most want to travel to over the next 12 months.
WE TRIED TO come up with a few different ideas this year for the men in your life⏤a silver retro-style rotary-inspired telephone, an all-aluminium suitcase, an eggplant serving platter, and a striped throw cushion. There are, of course, old favourites as well: a Fair Isle jumper, a cashmere scarf and glove set, a cedarwood candle and more.
WE FIRST INTRODUCED you to German style blogger Livia Auer three years ago, in 2019. While Auer still loves berets and trench coats, her style has evolved and become a little more sophisticated, with long knit dresses and striped jumpers added to the mix. There are tweed blazers and trousers and waistcoats and bouclé jackets and blue button-down shirts, oversized sunglasses, denim jumpsuits and a bit of a 70s vibe...
LA POSTA VECCHIA is a five-star luxury boutique hotel located in the coastal town of Ladispoli, about forty minutes outside of Rome on the historic Via Aurelia, a Roman road that was constructed in approximately 241 BC. House in a 17th-century villa and surrounded by 15 acres of Italianate gardens, the hotel overlooks the Tyrrenean sea and shares a coastline with villas and castles, small towns and beach clubs ...
THIS WEEK'S Two Lovely Things features the front door curtain, something we've been coming across quite a bit recently, especially in English countryside décor. There are many reasons why one might hang an entrance curtain over their front door: as a beautiful way to frame the doorway, but also as a chic solution for reducing heat loss at home, as a heavy fabric curtain can help prevent cold air from passing through a draughty entranceway.
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 ...
Décor Inspiration | At Home With: Julia Amory in the Hamptons, New York...
BITS AND PIECES of this quintessential English countryside cottage have been featured here before (without us realising that they were all from the same place) because Charlotte's Folly, as this Shropshire cottage is known, ticks all the boxes of the things we love lately: Stripes and Garden Rooms; Blue and Pinkish Brown; and of course, using Curtains Instead of Cupboards ...
PERHAPS IT IS the shortening days that fade even before 7:30 now, or the evening chill that flutters leaves and creeps in before suppertime. Whatever the reason, we find ourselves drawn to deeper, darker hues lately, and especially to a variation of pinkish brown (or brownish pink, if you like) that we seem to be seeing everywhere lately ...
LOUISE WAS normally the one who always wrote about stripes here at TIG (see here, here & here) as she loved them so, especially in a nautical, décor and everyday capacity. We always loved them in a holiday capacity of sorts⏤beach umbrellas in Italy, yellow and white towels at a hotel in California, wallpaper in a home in the English countryside. Now we're seeing them in an entirely new light, as tablecloths and shower tiles, oversized linen shirts, cushions and chaise lounges...
If you are a longtime reader, you'll remember our series, Two Lovely Things, where we juxtapose seemingly unrelated things together. For this instalment, it's two different dining rooms, one with a marble table and crystal chandelier, and the other, with a dramatic dried floral display, candlelight and stripes⏤but both in cosy shades of dusky pink ...
WHEN I WAS little, I would tell anyone who would listen that the my favourite colours were pink and purple. My little sister (who was always by my side) would chime in that she liked blue and black. Being unabashedly girly, I never favoured those colours and wore a steady wardrobe of preppy pink for as long as I could. Fast forward to the future and black would be a firm wardrobe staple, but blue, well I never ever really took to it⏤that is perhaps until now?
