For this month’s selection of summer sounds, our esteemed TuneSmith, Rob Wood, picks out a surprisingly uplifting medley of melancholia, and an album inspired by one of Smith’s top honeymoon hotels, the Maldivian paradise of Huvafen Fushi… ALBUM OF THE MONTH Boys Outside by Steve Mason When? You’ve exhausted Beta Band and Hot Chip Why? [...]
While our love for hotels knows no bounds, our feelings about getting from A to (boutique) B are slightly less rosy. When flying is involved, the prospect of lengthy waits, over-zealous security personnel and sinister-looking plane food can slightly dampen the hopes of even the most optimistic traveller. So, as everyone else jets off to [...]
With a look book that’s generally considered to be the last word in British bridal elegance, Amanda Wakeley (OBE, if you don’t mind) is renowned for her fashion finesse (not to mention after-dark attire, if Beyoncé’s recent Vegas clubwear and Florence & the Machine‘s choice of performance get-up, below right, are anything to go by). [...]
It’s here, and we’ve had a launch party to prove it. Mr & Mrs Smith’s latest guidebook features 31 hotels in 12 destinations around France, is packed with gorgeous original photography and irreverent hotel reviews, and is genuinely a thing of beauty. (If we do say so ourselves.) What better excuse for a shindig? Last [...]
We’re setting our sights stateside this week as we lay our affections on Stonehurst Place, a bright spark of a B&B in Atlanta, that would have been right up Scarlett O’Hara’s street a few years back… Style Southern B&B belle Setting Princely Piedmont Park Why this week? Until September, a weekend at this 19th-century artwork-filled [...]
Brooklynite in Berlin, graphic designer Ebon Heath, is the current artist in motion at concept gallery with a difference, MADE This weekend, while lucky enough to be reviewing the fabulous new Soho House Berlin*, I was honoured to get an eyeful of Ebon Heath‘s typographical creations in the most inspiring art space imaginable – a [...]
Virgin Atlantic London to New York press trip, July 2010. Part one: pre-flight delights and a boutique boudoir in the sky. Do you remember that competition to win the ‘best job in the world’ last year – when Australia‘s Tourist Board was looking to find a caretaker for a palm-fringed white-beached island in Queensland? Anyway, [...]
There are times when less just simply isn’t more. Bored by minimalism and modernity, we’re hankering after the kind of extravagance that would make a maharajah blush. We’re talking grand beds with marshmallow-plump bedspreads and squashy silk cushions, lofty ceilings with ornate frescoes, walls bedecked with paintings of stirring scenes and haughty miens and bathrooms [...]
Ooh la la, vive la France, c’est la vie – plus any other linguistic cliché you care to cull from the French dictionary – it’s Bastille Day across the Channel! While Parisians line the Champs-Elysées to watch the traditional 14 Juillet parade, we prefer to celebrate by reminding you of some of our favourite things [...]
‘You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures!’ (Percy Bysshe Shelley, letter to Maria Gisborne, 1820) It’s easy to fall out of love with London life [...]
