Like the Arezzo villa I posted a liitle while back, this much design and art and regalia of family life packed into one apartment really shouldn’t work this well. But then, this is the Cologne apartment of Belgian art director and artist, Mike Meire a consummate collector not afraid to mingle the personal and the public. (Meire’s collection includes the work of ‘names’ like Damien Hirst amongst others). All up, more exquisitely curated proof that sometimes more really is more beautiful.
Even as we dive headlong into 2009, I still just had to squeeze in a word on these quite lovely window displays by Nendo for the Italian luxury leather brand Tod’s. ”Bringing a Christmas spirit out of the wintry darkness”, the Japanese designer happily shirks the classic yuletide mantle in favour of an utterly compelling nightsky blue. Dead simple display cases made from light-reflective panels, specially printed with stars and snowflakes, are sweet and disarming, having something of the fascination one feels peering into a dolls’ house. Nendo gets the balance just right between a big first impression, even (or maybe especially) from a distance, and leaving room for the bags and boots to take over and shine (literally), once our potential punter is at close range on the other side of the glass. And how he does it, for me, is all down to the perfect shade of BLUE.
Skin is the Florence address in a new network of cutting edge cosmetic surgery clinics in Asia and Europe. The work of British designer Michael Young, the Borgo San Jacopo clinic, like the Taipei branch before it, is fruit of a close collaboration with Icelandic artist (and Young’s ex-wife) Katrin Olina. Interior design and surface decoration are one and the same, with the team using new glass printing technology by Dupont to quite literally fuse Olina’s playful diamonds and luscious florals with the austerity and ice cold glamour of polished glass. But the designers, it might also be said, go further. Merging the dual authorities of contemporary cosmetic surgery, medicine and fashion, in spirit at least. And doing so with great aplomb.
The rest of the apartment leaves me a little cold but I love what she’s done with the bath… This is the New York apartment of Donna Karan. And in the bathroom, stunning by virtue of the picture window alone, there lies a beautifully logical response to the interior designer’s constant dilemma: how to reconcile the bath and the vanity bench in the space of an average room?
The solution for Donna Karan is predictably minimalist – just use the one bench height for both. Pesky level changes and right-angles are eliminated here as the single slab of travertine supports first the tub and then the counter-top basin, just visible here on the right. Easy!
Somewhere between Miss Haversham and Cinderella, the grand Crinoline outdoor chair by Patricia Urquiola for B&B Italia could fill a room – or indeed a sundeck – all on its own. Romantic and wistful, but with a darker side, I love the stern black petticoat grounding all that billowing ivory. And that odd, teetering feeling you get from the almost caricature proportions… As if the romance might not have a fairytale ending after all.
