A fashion-savvy home decorating magazine for the new generation of design professionals and consumers who know exactly what they want, ELLE DECOR covers fashionable and inspirational products that bring couture chic to every room of your home.
ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING THINGS ABOUT editing ELLE DECOR is the ability to tap into our network of 26 international editions (four of which are shown at right). From them, I can get a pulse on what is happening in design across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. The capacity to think locally and act globally is imperative in every industry today, but especially so in ours. I’m always astonished at how a room, no matter the budget or the location, can be such a melting pot of aesthetics, cultures, and styles culled from around the world. But it’s about more than just aesthetics. Recently, I met the French designer Philippe Starck, who discussed how narrow definitions of design, fashion, and interiors are becoming obsolete. Starck favors…
LONGEVITY ISN’T THE FIRST THING that typically comes to mind when you think of Los Angeles, where professional careers and social trends can vacillate with uncanny speed. The fact that Van Cleef & Arpels has occupied the same landmark building on a corner of North Rodeo Drive for the past 50 years is, therefore, a crowning achievement. Still, even the most distinguished environs can stand a little sprucing up now and again. As such, the luxury jewelry house is unveiling a renovation of its 6,000-square-foot Beverly Hills boutique, whose expanded, multi-floor spaces encompass, among other things, a dining room, a high-jewelry bridal salon, and Salon 1906, a room devoted to heritage pieces. The Parisian-inflected interiors include the Poetic Salon, a VIP area with blush-pink furnishings, and a lounge featuring Zuber…
WHEN JANICEFELDMAN, THE CEO OF the luxury outdoor-furniture company Janus et Cie, went looking for someone to collaborate with on a new line, she turned to the Hong Kong–based architect and designer André Fu. Feldman had seen his elegant work on the Cassia restaurant at Singapore’s Capella resort and arranged a meeting with the Cambridge-educated Fu in 2017. “His expertise in honoring heritage with a modern lens is something I greatly admire,” Feldman says. The resulting Rock Garden collection features 18 outdoor teak pieces. Dining, café, and side tables come topped with textured ceramic, while modular and lounge seating cushions are upholstered in a woven smoky-gray Janus fabric. “The collection embraces the poetic qualities of the authentic Japanese garden,” says Fu, who was named 2019 Interior Designer of the Year…
OUTSIDE HATMAKER NICK Fouquet’s sun-dappled home in Topanga Canyon, California, there are fruit trees bursting with figs, plums, lemons, apples, limes, and grapefruits in the winter. From the wraparound deck of his geodesic dome—originally constructed in the late 1970s by a bohemian couple with utopian architect Buckminster Fuller’s designs in mind—Fouquet can gaze out at Los Angeles’s rolling, sage-dotted mountains and relish its pinkish sunsets. Only eight minutes from the Pacific Ocean and perched atop a steep, winding road, Fouquet’s wooden dome is his sanctuary. He was drawn to the canyon’s relative isolation—an antidote to the buzzy pace of his Venice Beach flagship store and his globe-trotting lifestyle. (In January alone, he traveled to Paris to show the hat collection that he designed for Givenchy and also to New York…
CULTIVATE NATURAL HEAT Built for energy efficiency, the dome’s expansive triangular windows allow the sun to regulate heat during the day. STREAMLINE WATER SOURCES Fouquet is working on a gray-water system that would reuse shower and laundry water to irrigate the garden and surrounding landscape. MAKE USE OF RECLAIMED WOOD “What’s being changed is the guts of the dome,” Fouquet says. “But the bones are still there.” The original telephone pole base of the house will complement new redwood planks. GROW YOUR OWN FOOD “I have my own little Garden of Eden, and when it’s popping off and blooming, I can just go and pick,” he says. GO OFF THE GRID Fouquet plans to power the house with solar energy. With help from a neighbor’s independent water system, he anticipates…
SOME JEWELS REQUIRE A WEARER TO LEND them vivacity and substance. David Webb’s pieces, however, have their own distinct lives. Every design by the North Carolina native—who founded his eponymous house in 1948, and whose work was revered by the likes of Marisa Berenson and Gloria Vanderbilt—has a soul, but his animal creations are perhaps the best testament to his ability to imbue metal and stones with personality. Webb crafted his first animal, a gold-and-emerald bracelet featuring the mythical Makara creature, in 1957. Over the next few years, his Kingdom collection came to encompass a full menagerie of enamel zebras, coral fish, gold lions, and diamond leopards. In 1964, when Webb won the prestigious Coty Award for jewelry design, the fashion photographer Milton Greene and illustrator Joe Eula made the…
