Fashion & style
fromElite Traveler
11 hours agoThe Underrated Status Clue? It's Sitting by Your Sink
Aesop's hand wash has become a symbol of aesthetic literacy, influencing home decor and luxury branding beyond traditional markers of wealth.
BREMEN is designed to change the way people interact with music by allowing everyday objects to become actual instruments, thus removing traditional barriers to music-making.
The collection spans several categories in the home, featuring smart storage pieces like the electric lime Lacquer Entryway Storage Pillar and a crescent moon-shaped chair and ottoman set.
Off the Grain works out of Halifax in West Yorkshire, handcrafting every piece to order. Forget flat-pack or particleboard - here, it's all about real materials and genuine expertise. Skilled craftspeople cut, join, and finish each item by hand. You can pick your dimensions, wood, and finish, so the final piece fits your space instead of the other way around.
The design trio wanted to concentrate all the necessary functions of the home into a few square feet by dividing the house along a main axis-ideally, one hall would connect the living room, hallway, and bedroom.
What began as a modest brief for a young and growing family soon evolved into a considered renovation that reimagines an existing Barwon Heads home. The original house had endured several unsympathetic alterations over the years, leaving it disjointed and built to a poor standard.
The exterior runs on strict formal logic. Vertical fluting covers the door panels from edge to edge, each ridge precisely cut into the stone so the surface ripples with shadow even under flat ambient light. On plain marble, this treatment would read as architectural severity, which is exactly the point. The fluting establishes a rhythm, almost like a grid, that makes what comes next feel genuinely disruptive.
I'm a planner through and through, so before diving into this renovation, I broke it into manageable steps, starting with pest control and assessing the structure of the shed. As I inspected the exterior, I noticed leaks and wood rot - nothing catastrophic enough to require a complete teardown, but still in need of attention.
The gloss and color-pop of lacquer is a refreshing alternative - it achieves a playful vibrancy with modern sophistication. There are plenty of perks that come with lacquer finishes, too. For one thing, lacquer can be applied almost anywhere, from an accent kitchen island to your dining table to the material for all of your counters and cabinets. It introduces and strengthens the room's color scheme, also contributes some fresh texture with its sleek, shiny finish.
Such was the case when John MacLaren started making porcelain light fixtures. MacLaren had been making custom furnishings for 20 years when his gaze drifted upwards: While visiting the home of a friend in Sagaponack, his pal noted that he'd n ever seen contemporary flush-mount light fixtures as beautiful as the antique ones in his historic home. MacLaren wondered if he might be able to make some.
Mixing wood tones can be a bold and rewarding design choice, but the potential for unseemly clashing is real. With a room as important as your kitchen, you want the space to feel inviting, stylish, and functional all at once. Before diving head-first into mixed wood tones, research the different ways to avoid a potentially ugly contrast. Kitchen flooring, backsplashes, cabinets, countertops, and even light fixtures all have the potential to be transformed with a wooden facelift.
Architecture Office founder Alexander Mackison and glass artist Juli Bolaños-Durman had something of a creative meet-cute. The two became acquainted while running a lecture series at Custom Lane, a collaborative center for designers and makers in Edinburgh, where they both have studios. They remained friendly, so Alexander eventually learned of Juli's plans to renovate an apartment nearby. "Just through casual conversations, I became integrated into the project," he remembers.
Even before the client decided to compete in the public sale of a military domain, he involved architect Maarten Dekoninck in his plans. He gave a positive recommendation and later transformed the brutalist building, characterized by concrete and steel windows, into a residential house with an office function.
Think of it like that childhood memory of painting lines and shapes on brown construction paper, but in a more coordinated, sophisticated, upgrade-your-kitchen kind of way. This isn't the checkerboard pattern's first time in the limelight, soaring to popularity in the 1920s and 1930s before fizzling out in the '50s. The design is experiencing a revival, but it's straying away from the tacky, tiled pattern of the past, giving old wooden floors a breath of new life in a timeless way.
When we first visited the site, what struck us the most was that after emerging from a narrow alley, an extraordinary view opened up toward one of the slopes of the Tepozteco mountain range. These rock formations are emblematic of the region, and the land ends precisely at the base of this dramatic topography. From the very beginning, one of our main concerns was to ensure that every room-whether for gathering or resting-could enjoy this privileged view.
How did a material conceived for bridges, factories, and large-scale structures make its way to the living room bench, the apartment bookshelf, the café table? For centuries, metal was associated with labor, machinery, and monumentality-from the exposed structures of 19th-century World's Fairs to the productive logic of modern industry. Its presence in domestic interiors is not self-evident but rather a cultural achievement: the transformation of an industrial material into an element of everyday, intimate use, in close proximity to the body.
Lighting is one of the most essential aspects of a home; it's also one of the most overlooked. The right illumination can create ambience, soften harsh edges, and imbue a sense of warmth. However, not all light sources are of the same quality. A custom chandelier, for instance, will always stand head-and-shoulders above the rest. These meticulously made creations can range from minimalist to monumental, bringing scale, ambition, and elegance into the room.
You know that feeling when you run your fingers across something and the texture makes you stop in your tracks? That's exactly the vibe British furniture maker Nick James is going for with his sideboard featuring sculpted doors. And honestly, it's the kind of piece that makes you rethink what furniture can be. At first glance, it looks like a solid oak sideboard. Clean lines, classic proportions, nothing too flashy.