THE DREAMER'S ATELIER

LOVE YOUR INTERIORS!

I find people often dismiss the importance of interior magazines, when in reality, they inspire more than one imagines. It’s not only photographs of well put together (most of the time!) interiors, but I feel it really widens your imagination when it comes to colour coordination and composing. Many a times a feature on a Hamptons estate or a Parisian townhouse helps you picture a certain anecdote, event or even movie; a room’s aim above all is to make one feel some sort of emotion. One of my favourites were published in the January 2000 issue of Architectural Digest.

Geoffrey Benson, an “antiques dealer and decorator”, had a knack for making English homes look exotic and lavish but always with the right dose. The excerpt photo shows a bedroom commissioned by a client, while the two others are of Benson’s homes in Brighton and London during the 1970s and ’80s. Another reason for not dismissing the magazine genre? Discovering, discovering and always discovering personalities who keep reinventing the meaning of style and design, time and time again. I came across Australian native Rose Cumming who ascended to New York to become Vanity Fair’s decorator. She ended being dubbed an “eccentric” during the 1930s, which in my view is one of the highest forms of compliments. The picture of her New York townhouse living room, circa 1937, is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. She is what I call a true interior visionary: mixing Gothic and Venetian Baroque with 18th century Chinese wallpaper and Louis XV furniture, the result is beyond exquisite. Not to mention my obsession with the dark mint at the moment…