BELLAS ARTES

The House of Chanel offers rare access behind the scenes to three haute couture runway shows designed in dialogue with contemporary artist Xavier Veilhan. Virginie Viard, artistic director for Chanel’s fashion collections, entrusted Xavier Veilhan with the set design for three consecutive haute couture shows: Spring‒Summer 2022, Fall‒Winter 2022/23, and Spring‒Summer 2023. This unusually long dialogue resulted in an original visual universe, blending Veilhan’s poetic imagination, his reinterpretation of the Chanel world, and the infinite delicacy of Virginie Viard’s haute couture creations.

In spaces that forgo easy categorization of traditional or contemporary, Hallberg uses art and objects from every genre and era—eighteenth-century gilt consoles, African baskets, selenite-slab tables—in a seductive interpretation of modernity that embodies the multifaceted, multicultural way we live today. Wrought by a native Californian with the heart of a classicist, these rooms reserve space for sunlight, foliage, and the sound of trickling water, which make the exalted approachable and revere the perfectly imperfect. Hallberg incorporates the finest natural and artisanal materials—reclaimed wood, hand-troweled plaster, marble, limestone, crisp linen, and sumptuous wool—but understands that the greatest luxury of all is comfort. This volume chronicles the instinctual process of a designer who eschews hard-and-fast rules for the wonder of breaking them, who leaves no stone unturned in his uncompromising search for beauty, and whose lifelong pursuit of the magical, ineffable, and gorgeous has yielded an incomparable oeuvre.

Workstead designs one-of-a-kind interiors and pieces that balance beauty with necessity, and this book presents a special blend of their tour-de-force historic renovations and innovative yet elegant new constructions. Over the past decade, the multidisciplinary design firm has earned rapid and wide acclaim for both their residential interiors as well as for larger-scale projects, such as the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn and the Rivertown Lodge in Hudson, New York. In all their projects, Workstead considers both clients and community, working with local artisans to create meticulously crafted modern interiors, architecture, and furniture designs inflected by history. As T: The New York Times Style Magazine put it, Workstead “are known as sophisticated pack rats who surround themselves with objects that have a story to tell,” and described their collective design philosophy as “a cozy, updated version of early Americana, with wood plank floors and a mix of vintage and refined custom-built furniture pieces that are almost Scandinavian in their restraint.”