The World's Best Contemporary Interior Designers: New Book

Long timers among you will remember a small series I wrote way back BP (before Pandemic) about a beautiful velvet wrapped interiors book by Phaidon called The Greatest Rooms of the Century, the criteria for which was that they must all be residential. The rooms were a fascinating history of design through the decades but it was the essays at the start that really drew me in.

from Phaidon's By Design, the world's best contemporary interior designers: Kelly Wearstler: Malibu Residence, Malibu, California, USA, 2009. Picture credit: François Halard

In one, Diana Vreeland, the formidable editor of Harpers Bazaar and Vogue, was quoted as saying, in what would turn out to be hugely prescient, that:  “Few things are more fascinating than the opportunity to see how other people live during their private hours. In the rooms they love… among their personal possessions …  organising their domestic arrangements to fit the pattern of their lives.”