Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2017 från MILIEU

Houston is home. Home to MILIEU, to our staff, and to me. In this issue, we celebrate the city and all it offers, not only for those of us who live here full time but to all those who come here from around the world for our culture, our shopping, our food, and our perfect weather — okay, I admit, except for summer. I grew up in a small town in West Texas and I came to Houston as a young woman where I established my livelihood as an interior designer. I thrived here and I continue to. But I am far from the only creative person who gravitated to this city. When I came here many years ago, Houston was then America’s sixth largest city. It is now the…

When Mariana Barran ties a knot on a thread or positions crochet needles in her hands, she begins to move forward by going back in time. As the founder of Hibiscus Linens, her Houston-based line of fine handmade textiles for the home, Barran researches historic patterns, consults with clients to design motifs, oversees a team of talented artisans, and hand-stitches many pieces herself. She performs these tasks joyfully and with a deep commitment not only to preserve traditional needlework, but also to revive and reinterpret the craft for a new generation. “We’re not trying to replicate the past,” Barran stresses. “We’re creating new heirlooms using these exquisite and timeless techniques.” In our modern, mechanized world, how did intricate hand-sewn needlework like the embroidery, hemstitching, and crochet lace that adorn Hibiscus…

A wedding reception is really a party, but one unlike any other a person hosts in their life. The event that Samantha Schatte and her new husband, Jerome Mitchell, hosted for their 225 international friends and family in Houston, was to be, as she stated to her mother, “A party for everyone rather than one about me and my wedding.” When Samantha and her mother, Annette Schatte, were envisioning the festivities that would fill the grounds of Samantha’s parents’ home, they both acknowledged a fact about any party. “Rather than hiring a planner or coordinator, it’s more fun to just have things fall into place,” says Annette. “And you have to know that everything doesn’t always get done and doesn’t go as planned.” A successful party is as much a…

The building lot was chosen and the homeowners had begun to think about the architecture of their new house, but already interior designer Aaron Rambo had been commissioned for the job. His client, Ruth Davis, is also his business partner. Rambo and she are co-owners of FOUND, a trend-setting Houston home-décor boutique, noted for its novel mix of period antiques and repurposed industrial finds, and so it made sense that the two partners in business would work together off site, too. “Ruth put an incredible amount of trust in the vision, in the aesthetic, and in me,” says Rambo, whose talent, creativity, and the years of passion he poured into this project are now evident. Like many couples whose children are grown, Ruth and Neill Davis, longtime Houston residents, planned…

NICKY HASLAM As one of the world’s most lauded designers, London-based Nicky Haslam has created interiors for a roster of noted clients, including The Prince of Wales, Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr, and Natalie Wood. Recognized for breaking down design barriers, Haslam loves to use the completely unexpected to new effects. The mix of the serious and grand with glamour, charm, and wit is the Haslam trademark. AARON RAMBO Aaron Rambo is a native Texan who has spent the last two decades immersed in the world of design. After several years of working behind the scenes at leading design shops, Rambo and his business partner, Ruth Davis, opened FOUND in 2007 in Houston, a store noted for its inventory of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiques, as well as contemporary artworks,…

People pay attention to Lauren Santo Domingo — where she shops, how she dresses, the friends she makes. As a longtime contributing editor to Vogue and now cofounder and creative director of New York’s Moda Operandi, people know that what she chooses to focus on are the right things. Because Lauren is also very much a woman of our time, she shops online, so much so that in 2011 she cofounded Moda Operandi, a luxury retailer that pioneered the online trunkshow, a novel method of shopping that also involves her hosting a by-invitation group of women to her Manhattan boutique. As Lauren outlines, her clients are granted first and full access to fashion runway looks, with the ability to order items months before the designs reach stores. Apart from her…

The life Will Massie, his wife Alice, and their daughter Ella lead inside their spacious 1910 Georgian Revival home in Richmond is not so different from the way they occupy the rooms of their garden. They dine, entertain, and play outside in the quarter-acre garden that surrounds their home, situated in The Fan, the city’s elegant neighborhood of shady streets and stately Victorian-era houses. They welcome everyone to the garden’s geometrically precise parterres, herringboned brick walkways lined with boxwoods, and a trellised area that Massie likens to a “fabulous stage set you’d find in a theater.” Gretel, their fourteen-year-old Cockapoo, likes to play on a small lawn area, while Flannel, a cat the Massies share with their neighbors, prefers some of the garden’s more discreet areas. There is, however, one…

Grasse may be within just a whiff of the renowned Riviera coast, but as Perfume Capital of the World, this French hill town has forged a character all its own. The transformative journey from a center of the French leather tanning industry (with appalling odors) into the fragrant birthplace of such couture fragrances as Chanel No. 5 and Miss Dior began in the mid sixteenth century. Perfume met leather when French King Henri II’s Florentine-born Queen Consort Catherine de Medici brought the wildly popular fashion for perfumed gloves to France from her native Italy. Gallic producers soon stepped forward to meet popular demand for new luxurious compositions. With the ultra-refined French court as ambassadors — Louis XIV was considered the sweetest-smelling monarch — and thanks to its brilliantly imaginative scent…

“A house in France’s Alps-Maritime has a magical ring.” Celebrated British interior designer Nicky Haslam was working on a major London house, one of four homes for the same clients, when the international couple owners casually mentioned that he might take a look at their “little weekend house” in the South of France. “They were very modest about it,” Haslam recalls. “They said, ‘We’d like to do a few alternations, redecorate.’” But when the trio studied the couple’s mas, as houses in France like this are known, the enterprise soon became a more complex affair. The location between Grasse and Antibes was superb. “The house stands high on its own hill a few miles above the coast,” Haslam says. “It looks down to the sea in front, and up at…

With its storybook charm visible from the road, a 1920s English-style stone cottage, nestled in Nashville’s genteel Belle Meade neighborhood, captivated a husband and wife eager to downsize from a large home to something cozier. However, when they and their three teenage children toured the cottage’s one and a half stories, they realized that the interior would need to be dramatically remodeled for their family’s needs. The couple turned again to a design team whose work had pleased them in the past. “We had seen this house many times,” the wife says. “We had always liked it. The outside was attractive to us. But the inside was not at all.” The couple hoped to enliven the traditional, period interiors by bringing in a congenial mix of sophisticated, decidedly modern elements,…

COVER: Photography: Miguel Flores-Vianna, mf-v.com. Interior Design: Aaron Rambo, FOUND, foundforthehome.com. Custom cabinetry covered in: Formica laminate, Color: Citadel Gloss, FORMICA, formica.com. Cabinetry interior color: Spice Market, CSP-925, BENAJMIN MOORE COLOR STORIES, benjaminmoore.com/colorstories. Blue armchair fabric: In The Moo’d, Color: Celadon, JERRY PAIR LEATHER, jerrypairleather.com. Table: Saarinen dining table with white laminate top, KNOLL, knoll.com. Chair: Mini Papilio designed by Naoto Fukasawa, B&B ITALIA, bebitalia.com. Chair fabric: Serra 450 wool-cashmere, Color: 2025450, B&B ITALIA – MAXALTO, bebitalia.com. Sofa: Ruché designed by Inga Sempé, LIGNE ROSET, ligne-roset.com. Sconces: Circa 1940s French Baguès sconce, FOUND, foundforthehome.com. NOT SO MELLOW YELLOW Written by: David Masello. Photography: Brie Williams, briewilliams.com. Pages 22-27 Ann Mashburn, annmashburn.com. Top: Aurora, ANN MASHBURN, annmashburn.com. Circa 1950s Italian chairs from ANTIQUES MODERNE, 214-215-9600, antiquesmoderne@gmail.com reupholstered by Mike Calhoun, B&T…