As the United Kingdom wrestles over its departure from the European Union and finds diversion in the release of “Downton Abbey,” the movie, one thing seems to be sticking around: its décor. Especially, its Victorian décor: the dramatic patterns, ornate millwork and lavish fabrics and trims associated with the reign of Queen Victoria. Spanning much…
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Witold Rybczynski, an architecture critic, author and emeritus professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, was sitting in the lobby of a chain hotel here, trying to peg the elusive charm of this city. After all, as Mr. Rybczynski wrote in his new book, “Charleston Fancy” (Yale University Press), the city…
If you ask decorators, architects and other aesthetes to name their favorite Modernist, the French designer Charlotte Perriand comes up more often than not. Perriand lived from 1903 to 1999, nearly spanning the 20th century, and she made the most of her decades, designing buildings, furniture, rooms and objects at an impressive clip. She found…
DETROIT — Colorful little homes are springing up alongside an arid freeway bank in the Dexter-Linwood neighborhood here, a few miles northwest of downtown. Although tourists sometimes think the buildings are playthings and knock on the doors, the site is actually intended to help solve desperate urban problems. “Every single house is different on purpose,”…
The listing for the properties — four five-acre parcels of desert scrub near Pioneertown, Calif. — landed in Dave McAdam’s inbox one morning before dawn. By 10 a.m., he was in contract to buy all the lots, sight unseen, for $320,000. One of the parcels had been planted with a cabin, a low-slung, concrete-block one-bedroom…
When Nina Edwards Anker was growing up, her family spent summers and weekends in a shingled cottage in Southampton, N.Y. An expansion of a carriage house originally designed in 1890 by Stanford White, it belonged to a genre typical of the Hamptons. But the version that Ms. Anker — the 48-year-old founder of the Brooklyn…
They come by car and park in color-coded garages set along the perimeter of a cluster-model mall — stores arranged in Stepford neighborhood groupings: Niagara, Hudson Valley, Saratoga. The shops face inward around a series of walkways leading to open-air commons, framed by the pastoral backdrop of low wooded hills. They come by the millions,…
ImageFriezes created by the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen wrap the newly renovated Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands.CreditDmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times LEIDEN, the Netherlands — The imposing red stone edifice rises from an otherwise empty area in this old Dutch city like a mesa in the American West, bound —…
You’ve seen it on celebs, on the street, and on the runways—the bra as a top is officially a thing. But before you throw on any old bra with any old look, you need to master these important tricks: 1). It’s all about how you style it. Layering is a must, whether it’s a blazer…
PARIS — In a large circular chamber covered in periwinkle blue velvet and hung with curtains all around, seats curling outward in snail shell tiers, Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga convened his parliament. Then he scented it with Blood and Money and Petrol (after starting with a bit of Anti-Sceptic, literally: he had perfumes made for…