VILLA NECCHI CAMPIGLIO

I just saw Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love, staring Tilda Swinton. An Italian melodrama full of passion, haute cuisine, chic fashion and Milanese architecture, the film features the Villa Necchi Campiglio, an imposing home built between 1932-35 in an art deco meets rationalist (also known as fascist) style. The movie was fantastic, for many reasons, but the production design by Francesca Di Mottola is utterly phenomenal.

Di Mottola and Guadagnino show Milan in all it's sharp, aloof grayness. The house is a brick an mortar incarnation of the strange, intensely private and intensely privileged lives of the industrial elite in northern Italy. Everything that feels vaguely depressing and oppressive about the city seems honed into a glossy marble slab in the film. The house is currently a museum open to the public, but for filming was made into a rich, luxurious series rooms that, one after another, each seem to invent yet another shade of brown. I can't get it out of my head!

I cannot wait to visit the house the next time I am in Milan, and I will most definitely be seeing the movie again to soak up the visuals a second time. For more images and information, check out the T magazine article written by Armand Limnander.

Images via travelpod and habituallychic.blogspot.com

SPT DAYS 18-22: SYDNEY

Miles flown so far: 16,265

Sydney is a sprawling, complex city.  It is much more beautiful than Melbourne, and certainly has more glitz, but it also seems harder to get to know, especially without a car.  We stayed downtown so we had an easy walk to the major sites and some good (if insanely expensive) restaurants, but did not get much of a chance to explore the inner suburbs, where some of the hidden gems of food, shopping, etc. lay in wait.  For sheer glimmering Australian vistas, however, Sydney did not disappoint.  The from the harbor, the opera house, and the Harbor Bridge, to the the botanical gardens, quaint yet slightly rundown Victorian neighborhoods and modernist apartment buildings spilling down cliffs toward the sea-- this city is gorgeous.

An odd apartment complex overlooking the harbor.  The Australian answer to Britain's somewhat depressing but unusually fascinating 70's welfare state architecture.  It seemed totally out of place in this subtropical paradise of a city.

Thousands of Flying Foxes (bats) live in the Royal Botanical Gardens.  They are huge and loud and a bit intimidating.

Here they hang above an unsuspecting tourist.

The Asian cuisines of Sydney seem to be its highlight.  These Malaysian beef and chicken dishes from The Malaya were a satisfying lunch one hot day.

Tucked away on Liverpool Street in the old Victorian neighborhood of Darlinghurst is Bill's-- the site of another great lunch.

I had the breaded chicken schnitzel with slaw.

For dinner that same night we ate at another Darlinghurst spot, A Tavola.  I had the insalata di acciuglie, finocclino e asparagi (salad with greens, white anchovies and asparagus) and the pappardelle con ragusa d'agnello (hand cut pasta with lamb ragu).  Both were totally delightful, and I loved the interior of the place: long communal marble table with bar facing out toward the room but tucked away to the side, good lighting, and a simple color scheme.

Here is the freshly made pasta hanging near the kitchen.

We had another tasty lunch at Spice Temple in the central business district.  Above is the chicken salad, the fried silken tofu, and the spicy pork.  The food was very good, but as a general rule I think Australians could use a bit more restraint when it comes to restaurant design.  Many places we ate were so over designed, with such elaborate menu philosophies and high concept names that at times establishments with perfectly decent food seemed dated and heavy handed.  All the best meals we had in Australia consisted of fresh ingredients, sophisticated but direct menus, and simple, elegant decor.  A lesson to keep in mind for all interiors, and one that I have had drilled into my head by eating at so many overwrought dining spots over the last three weeks.

Also, on our last day in the city, I visited the New South Wales Gallery and saw artist Tazu Nishi's installation piece War and Peace and in Between.  He constructed rooms around the large bronze statues that flank the museum's entrance, creating an amazing contrast of scale and spacial hierarchy that was just fantastic.

We leave Sydney tomorrow for New Zealand and the countryside, and I am ready!

PIERRE BERGE AND YSL

A book I purchased at the V&A Museum that has nothing to do with British decorative arts, but is my new favorite possession: The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge by Robert Murphy. Yves Saint Laurent and Berge spent a lifetime curating the 20th century's most impressive collection of paintings, one of a kind furnishings, curios, sculpture and rare books: their own.

After Saint Laurent died, Berge auctioned off the whole lot, wiping the slate of his life clean and at the same time rescuing the faltering high end auction world. The auction in Paris was said to be, literally, the sale of the century.

Everything they collected was special, exceptional and unexpected. The book, with vivid photography by Ivan Terestchenko showcases (some of) their residences: three in Paris, and one each in Normandy, Tangier, and Marrakesh.

Saint Laurent's cabinet of curiosities.

Levels of taste I can only hope to achieve someday.

One small aside... the preface of the book calls Saint Laurent and Berge "friends and business partners," which I am sure they were. They were also husbands who spent their lives building something truly amazing together. Let's call it what it was, please. In a related note, thanks a lot, Maine.

Images by Ivan Terestchenko via art and auction.com, artnet magazine, Harpers, Interview and artinfo.com

MAD

This weekend is supposed to be really nice here in the northeast (finally, summer!) and I am lucky enough to be able to get out of the city and up to Maine again. DO NOT WORRY, though. I have programed by TiVo to record the premere of Mad Men season 3, Sunday night.

Mad Men is, hands down, the finest show ever produced on television. Character development, plot depth, writting, set design, costumes... nothing can come close. Every time I see an episode, as soon as it is over, I want another. I watched all of season 2 in a weekend. I am not sure how I will make it through waiting a week between episodes.

In celebration of the return, here are some shots of vintage New York. Bask in the glorious dysfunction, fantastic style, hopeless repression and pervasive cigarette smoke of these times. Enjoy the weekend!

Here is where I will leaving town from soon... Eero Saarinen's former TWA (now JetBlue) terminal at JFK-- a relic of the golden age of air travel.

Images via AMC.com, straatis on Flicker, CUNY, NY Dialogue, Ezra Stoller