Innehållsförteckning för October 2023 från Architectural Digest

When 18th-century gentlemen headed to Europe to partake of the Grand Tour—a crucial step in a civilizing education—they often recorded cultural sites in charming paintings, in much the same way that today’s globe-trotters snap away with smartphones. Van Cleef & Arpels, the Paris jeweler that was founded in 1906, has taken those watercolor reveries as inspiration for a new array of treasures: four bracelets set with impressionistic combinations of gemstones—sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, and more—that evoke the landscapes of Rome, Florence, Naples, and Venice. “Turning a watercolor into a bejeweled bracelet is both a technical challenge that I wanted to push even further and a very interesting creative development,” says Nicolas Bos, the president and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels. “They call to mind true paintings, but they are fully…

Houston’s Memorial Park was meant to honor those who sacrificed their lives in World War I. But as the project approached its 2024 centennial it had become a memorial to its own landscape. Underfunded maintenance and prolonged drought had left most of its thousands of trees to die. The decimated 1,500-acre grounds weren’t much to look at, as Houstonians learned from Memorial Drive, the highway that has divided it, unceremoniously, since the 1950s. Thomas Woltz and his firm, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, were hired to reimagine the park, a process that began a decade ago and may take another to finish. But this year Houstonians rejoiced in the progress Woltz and his team have made on the project. Their latest big achievement was burying two stretches of the highway,…

In a city of hills and valleys, what’s most coveted in San Francisco are its views—those sweeping, unobstructed panoramas of the unique nature-abutting-urbanity that define Northern California’s cultural capital. Such prospects are rare, but unlike in other, taller-built cities, easier to maintain. In 2001, architectural designer Abigail Turin and her then fiancé, now husband Jonathan Gans went hunting here for a new home—a modern design with a Bay vista—or so they thought. Instead, they quickly fell in love with the charm and potential of a 1925 Italianate manse in Pacific Heights. Two stories tall, it had a garden accessible via its small basement, with a large eucalyptus tree whose curved branches had grown in a tender, yet respectful embrace of its architecture. It didn’t have a view of the water,…

They’re meant to look like they’re dancing,” says Kim Mupangilaï, reflecting on the eight works in her inaugural solo show at Manhattan’s Superhouse gallery this past summer. Unveiled in a vitrine-like space on the second floor of a Chinatown mall, her furnishings do have an uncanny, anthropomorphic energy. A sinuous bench wears a swingy, banana-fiber skirt; an armoire seems to stomp its heeled foot; and a groovy floor lamp sports a shade modeled after a precolonial Congolese hairstyle. Their surreal silhouettes might recall the work of Antoni Gaudí, Philippe Hiquily, or Joan Miró, made at a time when many creatives mined colonial Africa for inspiration. But Mupangilaï’s pieces, which she describes as “cross-cultural self-portraits,” chart new territory, mixing the visual references handed down from her Congolese father with the woodworking…

For AD100 mainstay Ken Fulk, every great design starts with a compelling narrative. “I instinctively built a business around storytelling. Whether I’m designing a house that stands for generations, a hotel for thousands of guests, or a party that lasts only a few hours, it’s all about creating a genuinely transportive environment and experience,” says the free-spirited conjurer. Predictably, Fulk’s new five-piece collection for The Rug Company, titled Divine Inspiration, is positively brimming with history, fantasy, and delightfully idiosyncratic interpretations of old-world forms and iconography. Consider Saint Joe’s Dome, a loosely illustrated rendition of the soaring ceiling of the deconsecrated Romanesque Revival church in San Francisco that houses Fulk’s Saint Joseph’s Arts Society. Or Surrealist Garden, a trippy dreamscape that nods to the folkloric and allegorical imagery of pictorial tribal…

Belgian designer Jean-Philippe Demeyer isn’t a fan of unreconstructed design clichés. “I need a twist, a feeling out of the ordinary,” insists the AD100 talent. And there are twists aplenty at Frou Frou, a fearlessly inventive Chinese-themed restaurant that is affiliated with JNcQUOI, a private members club in Lisbon, Portugal. (The restaurant is open to the public.) Demeyer’s vision for the lavish eatery draws inspiration from a dizzying array of sources: the 1980s architecture of the building that houses the club; the outré style of ABBA; and the centuries-old influence of Asian art and design on European aesthetics. The blue-lacquered ceiling, for example, nods to the preferred eye shadow of the ABBA sirens, while the proliferation of dragon, cloud, and lotus motifs—including the elaborate embroidery on the bespoke, imperial-yellow sofa…

When people ask James LaForce and Stephen Henderson for the key to a long and happy relationship, the New York power couple of 34 years offer three pieces of advice. “The secret to marriage is a king-size bed, separate bathrooms, and separate sofas,” jokes Henderson, a writer, alluding to the quotidian bliss of parallel play. Space, in other words, can be a salve. But space also poses its challenges, as the duo discovered upon buying their new Manhattan apartment. Set in a historic Chelsea factory building, the loft spanned some 6,000 square feet, with broad windows and an auxiliary studio apartment incorporated into the generous floor plan. For social butterflies who love to entertain but also delight in their downtime together, the question became how to make sense of that…

When it comes to interior design, Ralph Lauren would be hard-pressed to pinpoint any one passion. “I have never followed architectural rules or chosen one decorative theme,” he admits. “I love contemporary. I love American Country, the Southwest, Bauhaus.” Over the course of his legendary career, that polyglot sensibility has informed every aspect of his work and life, from his runway shows to his own residences and collections. “I don’t care if a thing is English, French, antique, or modern. It’s whatever appeals to my eye.” Put simply, he adds, “I’m a romantic.” Those words, among many other intimate musings, resonate powerfully in the style icon’s new book, Ralph Lauren: A Way of Living (Rizzoli). Published on the 40th anniversary of Ralph Lauren Home, the volume both surveys the designer’s…

I have always been a collector and I like to show my possessions, not hide them.”—Adwoa Aboah The Jean Monro chintz is one of my favorite fabrics. I’ve known it for 15 years and I still get excited about it.”—Beata Heuman…

In the secluded enclave of Mar Vista, the fast-cooling late-afternoon air is filled with the heady scent of lemon verbena and eucalyptus, as scatterings of periwinkle petals from overgrown hedges of jacaranda and frothy canary-colored clusters of fallen mimosa blanket the sidewalks of narrow streets dotted with Craftsman cottages, modern bungalows, and Spanish Colonials. Offering vistas overlooking the ocean, the Los Angeles neighborhood enthralled Ariel Kaye, the founder of the popular home furnishings brand Parachute, who had spent the past seven years renting in nearby Venice. It felt like an idyllic setting in which to raise her two young children. Though she expected her house hunt to be endless, she ended up seeing just one property (and three days later, in February 2021, her offer was accepted). Sited close to…

Perhaps it’s the 1960s Jansen Louis XVI–style lyre-back chairs admiring their own comely reflections in the louche-glam 1970s mirrored dining table. Or the rare 1985 Philippe Starck chair—a welcome reminder of the designer’s early, mad genius—poised nonchalantly beneath an unimpeachable Noguchi paper lantern in the primary bedroom. Or maybe it’s the antique Louis XV fauteuil upholstered ever so daintily in the same Sister Parish linen that covers the walls and daybed of the sitting room. Connoisseurs of great design will have a difficult time selecting a favorite vignette among the plethora of sensational moments at the Los Angeles home of AD100 designer Oliver M. Furth and brand strategist Sean Yashar. Within a classic 1950s California canyon house perched in the hills above Hollywood, the inveterate collectors have marshaled an astonishing…