BELLAS ARTES

A swirl of elegantly offbeat parties and lush tablescapes, where ceramic snails creep under flower petals and chandelier girls covered in Swarovski crystals beckon guests to the dance floor: Gardner’s infectious irreverence shines in her glamorous approach to entertaining, where even the mundane is made delicious. This book—like her parties—is a decadent feast for the eyes, with a foreword by Sofia Coppola and photography that captures the surprise and delight of Gardner’s hyperbolic entertaining style. From a brass band leading guests to dinner along the tracks of the Napa Valley Wine Train to a pink-poodle-themed holiday party with a bountiful buffet of retro desserts, the pages burst with entertainments, heavy pours, and flattering light as all the elements combine in a perfectly orchestrated yet seemingly effortless way that makes it impossible for guests not to have a screaming blast!

The leading design authority for the last century, AD under Astley is more popular and far-reaching than ever before, featuring a wide range of styles and tastemakers and helping to personalize interior design for us all. This book showcases highly original interiors and the personality and creativity of the bold-faced names who live in them. Spanning the worlds of fashion, music, film, art, and design, the people inhabiting these pages come from around the globe, showing us there are so many ways to create a beautiful home. The interiors encompass different milieus and styles, from city to country, classical to bohemian, modern to old world, including art-filled urban lofts and classic townhouses as well as country estates and tropical getaways.

Aerin Lauder’s love of flowers is deeply personal, being passed down to her by her celebrated grandmother, Estée Lauder, as well as her mother, Jo Carole Lauder. From fresh bouquets to floral patterns on wallpaper, fabric, and tabletop pieces, in Living with Flowers Lauder shares the many ways she brings flowers into her home. Whether it’s an arrangement of daisies in the kitchen to welcome friends or family for dinner, or a single stem on her desk to brighten the workday, flowers are an essential part of her home and her lifestyle.

While touring readers through four of his own homes, Paredes shares the key elements in his creative process, giving us access to the same tools he uses in every home to decorate rooms that feel modern even as they glamorize the past, to show us how an environment has real power to transform our very state of mind. Paredes is renowned for being a master of extrapolating an entire theme from one unique item, say transforming the stripe of a crisp Oxford shirt into a unique upholstery perfect for the seaside, or finding inspiration for a couch’s decorative fringe in a well-worn piece of leather ranch gear. He is said to have “perfect visual pitch,” creating vignettes and rooms with an energy that feels undeniably masculine and sophisticated thanks to dark wood, iron railings, rustic fabrics, an overall patina, and soft furnishings in soothing earth tones.

Step (or jitterbug) into the dazzling world of 1930s American advertising, where bold promises, slick design, and more than a touch of wishful thinking kept the country dreaming through the Great Depression. While wallets tightened, creativity soared―glossy magazine pages teemed with cheerful, colorful ads selling everything from beauty creams to Hawaiian vacations, all wrapped in an air of optimism that defied the hard times.