Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2017 från MILIEU

I confess to having a special bias for one kind of person — the entrepreneurial woman. By that, I mean women who not only do well in whatever business endeavor they undertake, but who also help empower other women along the way. Women who have a goal to succeed and meet the challenge always inspire me. For example, India Hicks, the former fashion model who launched her lifestyle brand that features products that women around the world can sell from their own homes and make a good living doing so. In this issue of MILIEU, India takes us on a tour of her English Cotswolds where she grew up. We see how shoe designer Angela Scott has virtually redefined the way all of us walk through life with her unique…

My parents started a mannequin repair company in 1954, and I joined the family business in 1976. Right away, I thought, “Why are we repairing other peoples’ mannequins when we could be making our own?” So, we hired a sculptor, and about a year later we debuted our first collection, called Action. From the beginning, I realized that all of the mannequins available on the market were ladylike, delicate in form, which was fine, but we needed to stand out. We made ours sculptural, architectural, and colorful. Then, as now, I find that there are limitless options and ideas. Our mannequins invoke elements of pop culture, art, music, models, Henry Moore, anything…. Fashion is a very fast business; people always want new. When we started our furniture line, it was…

Every year as the holidays approach, retailers across the country devise fanciful window displays to enchant and entice shoppers into their stores. For the young designer Charlie Baker, the magical woodland environments he created in the windows of the Hermès boutique on New York City’s Madison Avenue back in 2010 achieved much more than that. One of the admirers of his work turned out to be the esteemed interior designer Charlotte Moss, who reached out to Baker and commissioned him to construct some of his signature woven-twig furnishings in her East Hampton garden. After the two collaborated on a few more projects, Moss asked him to design a seasonal scheme for the exterior of her townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “Charlotte had the idea to create a basketweave design…

Because this centuries-old home in a tiny Spanish town looks like something out of a fairy tale, the happy story of its restoration reads like one. More than a decade ago, Juan Castro, an antiques and furniture dealer, and his partner, Juan Mugica, an illustrator, discovered one of the most remote and untouched areas of Spain, a town in Las Merindades in the northern part of the Burgos province, noted for its craggy Cantabrian mountains, dense forests, and the scenic Nela River. The couple was eager to find a place to which they could regularly retreat from their professional lives in Madrid. While on a weekend jaunt, Castro recalls doing a quick Google search, simply typing in “Old country farmhouses for sale.” “This place came up and when we drove…

NATASCHA FOLENS The Belgian-born, Virginia-based designer Natascha Folens established her NF Interiors (NFI) in 2002, and she has completed residential, hospitality, and commercial projects throughout the Northeast and Europe. Her initial vision for the company was to enrich American homes with the timeless Belgian design she has been surrounded by her whole life. Natascha strives to make rooms appear natural, comfortable, and distinctive. JENNIFER VAUGHN MILLER Jennifer Vaughn Miller is noted for her unexpected approach to design and a keen eye for detail. Based in New York City, Vaughn Miller Studio has completed projects coast to coast as well as internationally, primarily focusing on high-end residential design. Trained in architecture, Jennifer is typically sought after to work on all aspects of a project — from conceiving preliminary spatial concepts and…

I grew up in the rolling Cotswold Hills of England, on an estate tucked between the two tiny towns of Wallingford and Watlington and the villages of Ewelme, Brightwell Baldwin, and Britwell Salome. It’s a convenient part of Oxfordshire, located only an hour northwest from London. My children were christened in the Ewelme church, the same church I was christened in and where my father’s funeral was held, although he insisted on being buried in the churchyard at Brightwell Baldwin, deemed much more stylish, much less squashed, and suitably opposite the Lord Nelson pub. The Lord Nelson boasts a fine menu, two rooms to sleep in, roaring fires in winter, Pimms in the summer, and year-round gossip from farmers and gentry alike, perched on bar stools with snoozing dogs on…

Belgian-born interior designer Natascha Folens and her Belgian husband and business partner, Luc Dejager, run their successful interior architecture business from the Washington D.C. suburb of Great Falls, Virginia. But they retreat on weekends to the heart of Virginia hunt country. Although they didn’t know each other when they were growing up in Belgium, both were avid competitive equestrian riders and their love of the sport has endured. So when the couple decided to look for a weekend house, they focused on the pastoral epicenter of Virginia’s fox-hunting country around the small hamlet of Middleburg, population 600, just an hour from Great Falls. They quickly joined the Loudon-Fairfax Hunt, but the search for the right house took longer. “We looked for two years, for a little hunt box, a cottage,…

Richard Hallberg likes things that never change, especially homes. Nearly thirty years ago, he and his design partner at the time, Barbara Wiseley, were commissioned by husband and wife clients to create the interiors for a contemporary house situated on the ocean in Malibu. “It’s a simple box, a two-story white house, filled with a collection of contemporary, traditional, and unusual objects from all over the world,” says Hallberg, the noted Los Angeles–based interior designer who also founded and owns, with Wiseley and another partner, Dan Cuevas, two of the industry’s best showrooms, Dennis & Leen and Formations; today, he concentrates on the running of his namesake firm, while Wiseley focuses on the operation of the showrooms. “The architecture, outside and inside, is clean and classic, my idea of the…

COVER Photography: Miguel Flores-Vianna, mf-v.com. Interior Design: Natascha Folens, NF Interiors, nfinteriors.com. Wall color: Stucco White, WW25, RALPH LAUREN PAINT, ralphlaurenhome.com. Table and bench: Altar oak, HEERENHUIS, heerenhuis.be. Chairs: Basket rattan chair by Gian Franco Legler, FEELGOOD DESIGNS, feelgooddesigns.eu. Light fixtures: Fonte copper lamp, TIERLANTIJN LIGHTING, tierlantijn.com. Flooring: Simena honed limestone, STONE SOURCE, stonesource.com. NOTE In the Carol Piper Rugs advertisement on page 13, 1970s Swedish bench-built pine Klismos chairs - two of a set of four are shown, W. GARDNER, LTD., wgardnerltd.com. CREATIVE CONTROL Written by: David Masello. Photography: Brie Williams, briewilliams.com. Page 27 Bracelet: Calixte; Brooch: Farrah. Page 28 Wallpaper: It’s A Rose, Collection N Eleven; Candice Kaye, CANDICE KAYE DESIGN, candicekayedesign.com. BODY LANGUAGE Written by: Ralph Pucci. Photography: Antoine Bootz, antoinebootz.com. Pages 32-37 RALPH PUCCI MANNEQUINS, ralphpuccimannequins.net.…

When French-born Sebastian Reant first visited Mexico City he thought, “This place has a very cool cosmopolitan vibe with amazing people, cultural heritage, and design history.” So inspired was he by everything from the typography on the city’s streets signs to its modern architecture that he decided to bring the best examples of mid-century Mexican furniture design across the border to America. Together with his English wife, Amanda, he founded Luteca, a brand dedicated to contemporary Mexican design — those of the past and others conceived now. “Some of the classic pieces we produce never found their way out of Mexico before,” says the forty-year-old Reant. “Many Mexican designers, who were celebrated in Mexico, were largely unheard of internationally. There’s this wealth of incredible talent there and we’ve been fortunate…

Every good interior designer in Houston — and many beyond the city — knew the inside of Eddie Morrow’s lighting store, Alcon Lightcraft Company, on West Alabama Street. Situated in a two-story, 1920s brick house, the shop was a universe all its own, filled with lighting fixtures and finials, shades and wiring, bulbs and swag chains, Victorian gas lamps to state-of-the-art LEDs that, if lit all at once, could likely illuminate the whole of Houston. Yet, few people, even his close friends, had seen his spacious apartment above the store, where he lived for many years. “He was a very good friend of mine, but also a very private person,” says Jill Brown, who owns Brown, a Houston source for lighting and antiques. “The first time I was invited upstairs…

It’s a familiar phrase that has been uttered for well more than a century in America: “Go West.” That is just what a New York City couple decided to do in their quest to spend more time with their family. West for them meant San Francisco. To accomplish their wish, the husband and wife bought a second home in the City by the Bay, one that was a surprise both to them and their interior designer, the New York– based Jennifer Vaughn Miller, who heads her company, Vaughn Miller Studio. “It was a simple decision to go there,” says the wife upon commissioning Miller, “since our three kids, grandkids, two sisters, and my mother had all decided to live in San Francisco.” But the setting and the architecture the couple…