BELLAS ARTES

In 1972, Diane von Furstenberg created a chic and universally flattering ready-to-wear jersey wrap dress that launched her career and would forever change the landscape of women’s fashion. Since then DVF, the woman and the brand, have created designs that empower and promote a woman’s sense of self, weaving feminism and activism into the brand’s DNA. This visually vibrant tome, which accompanies an exhibition held in von Furstenberg’s hometown of Brussels, features nostalgic and contemporary photographs of her journey as a designer. Printed with three different luxe paper stocks withvarying inserts in each chapter, this book features beautiful graphicfabrics flooding each page, alongside numerous images of the wrap dressworn by von Furstenberg and models Jerry Hall, NaomiCampbell, and Cindy Crawford. Original essays discuss the intersection of Von Furstenberg and her designs with feminism, gender politics, and entrepreneurship, with personal anecdotes from collaborators like model Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Stefani Greenfield. Unique and contemporary, this is a story of the inimitable designer, her brand, and the significant role of a single dress that continues to inspire generations of women.

In-demand London-based interiors and furniture designer Rose Uniacke beautifully showcases a number of homes she has designed, boasting clean lines and calm, light-filled spaces, and showrooms defined by an effortless blend of traditional details within contemporary spaces. Whether the project is an urban townhouse, a seaside retreat, or a London villa, the approach of Uniacke is always the same—a collaboration with clients to make understated, refined sanctuaries that offer the perfect settings for everyday life. The book is sumptuously illustrated with two hundred color photographs that truly capture the serenity and timelessness of Uniacke’s hand-hewn cultivated style.

Treating architecture, landscape, and interior design as complementary endeavors, Brian Sawyer and John Berson have been ahead of their time and influential in the world of design since the founding of their eponymous partnership in 1999. SawyerBerson’s prodigious use of traditional and modern vocabularies has gained the firm widespread recognition and many notable clients. Meticulous attention to detail and versatility combine to create a wide variety of projects.

Best known for UNESCO’s Cop22 in Marrakech and the French Embassy extension in Vienna, as well as his daring “guerrilla architecture,” such as Bow-House made from scaffolding and repurposed doors and windows in Holland, architect, urbanist, author, and former graffiti artist Stéphane Malka is at the forefront of the architectural avant-garde. Malka’s work blends art and architecture from a humanist perspective informed by the designer’s intention to create work that is positive and sustainable. His practice, based in Paris and in Los Angeles, realizes homes, offices, art installations, and stage designs with the idea that we ought always to rethink our typical notions and challenge established conventions. This results in surprising places where there is an intermingling of dreams and pragmatism, the baroque and minimalism, ecology and sophistication.

British interior designer Flora Soames founded her eponymous firm in 2009 and launched an acclaimed collection of fabrics and wallpapers in 2019. Informed by her background in art and furniture, her style exudes the traditional charm of English country homes while incorporating modern, original touches that are comfortable and design-led. This embrace of old and new—along with Soames’s passion for collecting, heritage, color, and pattern—has resulted in an impressive portfolio of projects in the UK and beyond.

Rafe and Heide discovered their true home in a late 1800s New England farmhouse after a decade of living in Brooklyn, New York. The historic property, Ellsworth, is a showplace for their shared aesthetic and sensibility of designing for real life, and not for formality. At the core is a house of pared-down traditionalism with references to Shaker tranquility, Arts & Crafts practicality, and bohemian chic. Whimsical wallcoverings, striking colors, a mix of contemporary furniture and antiques, exciting works of art, and comfort abound—turning a workaday house from the nineteenth century into a creative laboratory of the twenty-first.