A room can be visually perfect but intellectually empty at the same time. Most of the rooms I keep seeing are both. What separates the two is almost always the same thing: whether someone started with a design story.

And I want to be clear: the taste is there. This is not a beginner’s room. You know what you like. You’ve been curating for years. That’s exactly the problem when shaping a design that should feel like you or your business.

Curation is editing what already exists. Design is deciding what should exist, and why, and for whom. Those are not the same thing. And the gap between them is where most interiors quietly fail. Not because they look wrong, but because they look like they could belong to anyone.

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The Wassily chair is a good example. Designed in 1925 by Marcel Breuer, inspired by the frame of a bicycle, named after Kandinsky who admired it. It’s a piece with a whole world inside it. But on Instagram it’s become a status symbol, shorthand for I have taste and I shop vintage. Which is great. But when it sits in a living room with no other reference to Bauhaus, no tension, no conversation with the space around it, it’s not a design decision. It’s an algorithm decision. The chair stopped being a thought and became a signal.

The same goes for the Togo sofa, the Ultrafragola mirror, the budget-friendly chunky millennial sofa with a failed 70s reference, the limewash finish in a third floor apartment in the middle of a city. None of these things are bad. But most of them are chosen unconsciously, pulled by the current of what's circulating or trending, the same way fashion trends work. And a room built on that current, without a story underneath it, looks nice but feels like nothing.

And I’ll be honest: I’m not immune to this either. It’s inevitable living in a world with endless images and inspiration.

For my project named Townhouse O, I had almost convinced myself the walls should be high gloss. The house was lacking daylight and a reflecting surface would make sense technically. I wanted something glamorous, and I had just come back from a hotel in Paris I couldn’t stop thinking about. I was still in that headspace.

The further I got into the decision, the more wrong it felt. Not wrong aesthetically. Wrong for the story. High gloss walls would have pulled the whole space toward Parisian glamour, all city, all shine. But this house sits at the edge of the countryside (more on that in a bit). It needed to feel like somewhere you come back to after a walk in nature, not somewhere you dress up for. That elegant side had to be present, but kept subtle: in the metal, the chrome, the details. Not covering every surface of the open living room.

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So we pivoted. And the pivot only made sense because we had a story to pivot back to.

That’s the thing about being constantly exposed to beautiful images: inspiration is not the problem. That hotel design you loved, that restaurant you photographed from every angle, that apartment on instagram you saved the other day, that’s part of being a designer or design enthusiast. The problem is when you let those images make decisions before you have a story.

Find the story first, then go looking for the references that carry it. In that order, everything you find becomes useful and every upcoming decision falls into place. In the wrong order, you’re just decorating someone else’s vision. The algorithm isn’t all bad. It just doesn’t know your story. Only you do.

MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY

And that’s why I start every project deliberately in the same way: with creating a story. Non negotiable. No matter how tempting it is to build around that one piece you've already fallen for.

For Townhouse O it arrived quickly, inspired by the location (charming countryside village just outside an industrial city), the history and mood of the house and the surrounding landscape. The contrasting story of rural and urban, side by side. Not as an aesthetic, but as a lived reality. The client hikes in the nearby woods on weekends and hustles downtown on Mondays. The house sits at that same threshold. So the design had to hold both.

It all came down to those opposites: Rustic and refined. Ceramic and chrome. Linen and high gloss. Checkered tiles and brushed steel. Layered, not matchy matchy.

But the moment the story became most visible was in the custom made TV cabinet. Aluminium frame, bi-folding doors, an oversized handle wrapped in calf leather. Sculptural, functional, slightly unexpected. It hangs between the dining area and the fireplace lounge, against chestnut walls, and it anchors the whole room. The organic shape carries the rural reference. The metal and leather carry that urban edge. The folding doors were actually born out of necessity, there simply wasn’t enough space to open them without the fold. Funny how that became one of the best details in the room. From the start we wanted to hide a flatscreen in something that felt like an artwork. The proportions made sure it did. Designing this one was a real joy, and our partner Six Dots Design brought it to life beautifully.

Nobody would have arrived at that piece from a moodboard. It came directly from the crafted story and understanding what this specific house, for this specific person, needed to say.

THE STORYTELLING STARTER KIT

1. Start with your story, before anything else. Write a mind map. Put everything on the page: thoughts, sketches, memories, words, contradictions, questions. Don’t filter yet. The story is already in there somewhere, you’re just finding it.

2. Go outside. Wander your city or your environment with your phone and photograph what stops you. Go into restaurants, bars, hotels, shops you admire. Notice what speaks to you and then go one step further: ask yourself why. Don’t stop at it’s pretty. Dig deep and challenge yourself. Why this texture, this proportion, this feeling. That’s where the story starts to show itself.

3. Collect what pulls you, without asking why yet. Objects, fabrics, stones collected on a walk, a torn page from a magazine. Don’t curate. Just collect. The pattern will show itself before you do.

4. Go physical. Print your imagery. Pull materials and textures. Open your jewelry box, look inside your wardrobe. The things you’re consistently drawn to in how you dress and what you own already carry your references. They know the story before you do.

5. Look at the house before you look at references. What does the light do? What are the historical bones? Which time was it built? What’s already there that you’re ignoring? A house has opinions. Listen to them before you override them.

6. Find your contrasting tension. Every strong interior has one. Rough and polished. Old and new. Asymmetry. What are the two things in your life or your aesthetic that shouldn’t work together but do? That you feel very satisfied just by looking at?

7. Only now start slowly collecting pieces. Not shopping. Collecting. Vintage markets, design galleries, a specific era you keep returning to. Think in design eras, not trends. A Bauhaus reference, an Art Deco detail, a mid-century material (if you get lost here, keep an eye at this Substack!). Each one carries a point of view. But know why you’re choosing it.

8. Consider (at least) one custom piece. It’s a myth that custom is always expensive, just be creative. Adding custom pieces forces that decision. Something made for this specific space, this specific story, can’t be borrowed from anyone else’s algorithm.

9. Stay off Instagram until you have a direction. Not forever. Just at first. The references should confirm your thinking, not replace it.

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The goal isn’t a room that looks like good taste. It’s a room that looks like you thought about it. Those are different things, and you can always tell which one you’re standing in.

Staring at a blank page? I’d love to help you find the story. If you’re about to start a project and want to begin it right, my website or DM are always open. I also offer 90 min creative consults if your ideas are louder than your budget.

Hoped this inspired you to create your own story. And I’m really curious to hear about your creative process in the comments. And if you enjoyed this one, a like or share goes a long way!

Hugs, Haas

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OBSESSING OVER

Burl wood, high gloss and lacquer turning up on tables, sofas and chairs. Metal surfaces in any form, polished, brushed, patinated, you name it. Also lots of draped fabrics and soft carpets. But the thing that actually got me thinking was underneath all of these surfaces with texture: The handmade detail.

The piece that took nine months to knot, glazing that looks differently on every side, wood that shows you which direction the tree grew. It’s not about looking pretty, but there because someone decided it should be there, and you can see that decision in the object.

The same week, Dries Van Noten opened his foundation in Venice. The show is called The Only True Protest Is Beauty. I think that title is so on point. More on that later.

Because that’s exactly what’s happening. Right now you can generate a finished image in thirty seconds, a full render before lunch and an entire visual world by the end of the afternoon. I use these tools in my studio too. But when everything can be made that fast, the things that clearly couldn’t, start to mean something different. Not because slow is automatically better. But because slow leaves evidence. You can see where someone made a decision: how much pressure, which direction, when to stop. That’s what I kept seeing in the Milan coverage. Work that carried that kind of evidence.

Some favorites:

1. Hannes Peer tested the limits of ceramic production with Officine Saffi Lab in this wall relief made from 252 modules and a dozen custom glazes. It took 15 people over a 1000 hours to create.

2. An optical installation of chairs from the H&M Home x Kelly Wearstler collection sits against a backdrop of Palazzo Acerbi, a baroque palacio from the 17th century. They must have had so much fun building this up!

3. Studio Lugo’s candelabra, shown at Alcova, is made from alpaca metal. The welding marks and heat treatment are left visible, which gives the surface that oil-slick patina you don’t plan, you just get lucky with.

4. Polish Modernism, which featured vintage designs alongside contemporary ones by the likes of Maria Jeglinska and Marek Bimer. Photos by Michał Łukasik.

5. The 6:AM installation at Piscina Romano is built around one idea: repetition as a making principle. Blown glass modules multiplied until they stop being objects and start being architecture. The same gesture, done again and again, each time slightly different, which is exactly what craft is.

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It’s something I think about in my own work too. Every project I create, includes custom pieces: things we design and make specifically for that space, because off-the-shelf doesn’t get you there. In one kitchen we had leftover quartzite from the stone order for the countertop. A stunning piece, incredible veining, beautiful blue greenish colors. Instead of letting it go, we used it for a custom cabinet front and handle in the dining area. The pattern in the stone is completely random, nature did that part. We cut it into strips, letting the natural veining run across the full width of the cabinet like a continuous pattern. The effect is spectacular. That combination of the hands doing the work and the material doing its own thing is exactly what I mean.

Another example of handmade craftsmanship making the point is actually a vintage wall tapestry I found at Decennia Design for the Forest House project. It was the first thing I sourced for that space and it ended up shaping everything that came after. Amber, ochre, rust, sage, every color the forest goes in October, this piece shaped that whole design story. The glass windows of the forest house look straight into the trees, and the tapestry reads like a version of that view in something you can actually touch. What makes it work is the irregularity. The weaving changes throughout, some sections dense and raised, others looser, almost unravelling at the edges. No two parts the same. You can see the hands in it. And that’s the whole point.

So that’s why I am (always!) obsessing over craftsmanship. Not as a trend, but as a way of paying attention to what a material already wants to be and how to support that. I really takes a space to the next level, making it feel intentional and considered.

WORTH THE DETOUR

Three spaces that have been living in my head:

Trattoria del Cumbia, Milan. Everything Dimorestudio touches ends up glamorous, with a capital G. I’ve been obsessed with their work ever since my student time in Milan. This time they took a classic Brera trattoria and rebuilt it from memory rather than from reference images, which is exactly what makes it work. The floor is a mosaic in mustard yellow, liver red, and swamp green. Wow! The walls have 1930s watercolors and retro newspaper racks. Downstairs there is a private disco club (!!!) in deep blue satin with brown carpeting and a Gae Aulenti lamp. Different eras sitting in the same room without apologizing to each other. If you are in Milan for any reason, this is the dinner reservation to make.

Bar Omi Sushi, Paris A ten-seat sushi counter near Marché Saint-Honoré, designed by Fanny Perrier, and the interior is the reason to go. Black and red faience bar with copper kintsugi details, a backlit ceiling with Japanese ink drawings, Ingo Maurer lighting, velvet carpet. Need I say more?! The brief was apparently a Japanese boudoir crossed with a Parisian bachelor apartment from the 1980s, which sounds chaotic on paper, but looks completely right in person. The food is edomae sushi and the wine list is serious. Book ahead, ten seats is ten seats!

Chez Cleo, Paris (imagined): Not a real hotel you can book, which is possibly what makes it so interesting. Art director Charlotte Taylor and interior architect Sarah Castay built a full imaginary hotel set in Paris, theatrical, Art Deco, layered in the way that actual hotels rarely are anymore. Worth looking up as a reference if nothing else. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I love the kind of project where hospitality feels like it started from a story rather than a brief.

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ON MY CALENDAR

A big part of training the aesthetic eye happens through visiting galleries, markets, fairs and exhibitions across art, design, vintage and fashion. Here’s what’s on my calendar.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art | Victoria & Albert Museum London, 28 March - 8 November 2026. The UK’s first exhibition dedicated to Maison Schiaparelli. 200+ objects including the 1938 Skeleton dress and Tears dress, both made with Dalí, plus works by Picasso, Cocteau, Man Ray. Rare for a fashion exhibition to also work as a serious survey of surrealism. The art crowd and fashion crowd overlap fully here. Book ahead, the first six weekends sold out fast.

Cabinet Design Market | Centrale Markthal, Amsterdam 16-17 April. Curated vintage and design market launched January 2026. Stands with professional design dealers, serious design classics, vintage furniture, objects, books, vinyl, set in a beautiful monumental hall. Not just a flea market. My advice is to go early on Saturday. First a furniture round, then a second lap for books and vinyl, and a final stop in the food and drinks zone afterwards. Let me know what you’ve picked up!

Fondazione Dries Van Noten |Venice. A 15th-century Gothic-Baroque palazzo on the Grand Canal, bought in 2025 and turned into a self-funded cultural foundation. The first show, The Only True Protest Is Beauty, runs until October 4th. Curated by Van Noten himself, 200+ works across 20 rooms, including Tiepolo frescoes that were already in the building when he bought it. Works are curated through instinct and contrast, which is the only logic that makes sense in a space like that. Opens right as the Venice Biennale does, so the city is worth the trip twice over this spring.

Wandler’s new gallery Kamer/Maker | Tweede Kostverlorenkade 50, Amsterdam. For my fellow fashion lovers. The leather brand just opened a gallery on a quiet canal in Oud-West. Not a pop-up, not a boutique, but Wandler’s permanent concept space where the bag collection sits alongside a rotating selection of invited makers and objects. Currently they show the work of designers Willem van Hooff, Floor Merjenburgh, Mariekke Jansen and Jonas Lutz.

Kho Liang Ie: Mid-Century Modernist | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 14 May - 18 October. The Indonesian-born Dutch designer behind Artifort’s best furniture and Schiphol’s 1967 interior, his slatted ceiling is still there today. One of the great under-told stories in Dutch design, finally getting the room it deserves. Pair it with a stop at Wandler Kamer/Maker and the Rijksmuseum’s Metamorphoses, and make a proper Amsterdam design day of it.

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IN ROTATION

On the stairclimber every morning at the gym, headphones in, or as the usual Sunday morning reads. This is my current double shot.

WATCH

On my list is to go see Marc by Sofia, Sofia Coppola (2026). Sofia Coppola follows Marc Jacobs in the days leading up to his show. It is less a documentary and more a mood with glimpses, inspiration, the way a creative mind moves when it is under pressure. Currently in cinemas and launching on streaming services May 12th. Worth watching before you go anywhere near a fashion exhibition this season.

Dries, Reiner Holzemer (2017) If you are planning to visit the Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice this spring, watch this first. It is one of the best portraits of a designer I have seen, not because it is dramatic, but because it is so quietly specific about how he thinks and what he cares about. By the time you walk into that palazzo you will feel like you already understand something about the man who bought it.

LISTEN

Monocle on Design loved listening to the last episodes of this podcast. Their episodes are short and move across furniture, architecture, craft, fashion, and studios globally. It’s perfect for staying oriented without going too deep.

READ

The London List, Traces Through Time with Pierre Yovanovitch On how a design language forms and how it changes over time. Yovanovitch is one of the clearest thinkers working right now about what it means to actually have a process. Worth listening with something to write on nearby. When I was in New York last month I’ve visited his inspiring gallery, check it out here.

Your Research Practice Is Your Creative Identity, Art Direction by Zoë Asemin. The distinction this essay makes between collecting and researching is the one that landed for me. Collecting is saving images because they’re beautiful. Research is asking what an image is actually doing. A folder of thousands of saved references is evidence of a good eye, but it isn’t a practice. I loved the line: the research isn’t feeding the work, it is the work.

Shocking Life by Elsa Schiaparelli Her own memoir. Reads less like an autobiography and more like a very elegant argument for taking yourself seriously. She had opinions about everything and didn’t apologize for any of them. Good timing with the V&A show open, the two work well together.

SMELL

Something herbal, warm, a little unexpected. Spring means moving away from heavy tones towards something lighter, but it still has to feel warm for me, not too clean (I am truly a spice girl ;-)). Loewe Marihuana does the green and earthy part without apology. For something that goes warmer and spicier underneath, Lore Perfumery is worth looking into. Their herbal blends with a resinous base are exactly right for warm evenings with the windows open. I also love the scented candles by Côté Bougie from Marrakech, especially the soothing Tamegrout is refreshing for spring.

THE FIND

Pieces I am eyeing right now.

Every spring I clean out my closet. I try to be strict about it, this year more than usual, because my goal is to invest in pieces that actually last. About 80 percent of what I own is vintage or preloved, which makes the new purchases feel more considered by default. If something new comes in, it has to earn its place. Keep an eye on my Vinted if you’re interested in what didn’t make the cut during the clean out, some I might regret.

These are the fives pieces I am thinking about adding this month:

1. The Garment Gilian Peplum Pants
   My obsession with these is an understatement. The trousers that make you look cool with everything without trying. Sculptural with an unexpected peplum detail and a light-weight fabric that adds volume with a bit of funky flair. The kind of piece you reach for constantly because it never makes getting dressed complicated, and they come in three colors too.

2. The Paloma Wool Ryno top
   The shoulder padded gesture at the shoulder is nothing aggressive, but just enough to make it feel like a power move. This is the top that makes the trousers above look intentional even when you got dressed in four minutes.

3. The Double A Brianna Leather Jacket
   This one shouldn't work and it absolutely does. The whole jacket is built from interlaced leather straps, no lining, no filler, just sheep leather woven into itself by hand in Egypt. The shape is structured but the construction makes it feel almost alive. And that color... Rust going on terracotta going on exactly what I want to be wearing in May! It also, quietly, says everything the Obsessing Over section above is trying to say, which is either a coincidence or a sign I should just buy it already.

4. The Mansur Gavriel Mari Sandal
   A flip flop with a heel. I know. But look at it! The proportions are completely absurd and completely right, that short sculptural heel under a red thong strap is the kind of detail that makes you do a double take. Real Italian lambskin so comfortable as well (which a lot of these aren’t!). It goes perfectly with the trousers above.

5. The Giacca Mare Jeans
   This Swedish soft denim screams ‘designer!’ with its silhouette that feels like a study in proportion and form. Sits right at the edge between fashion forward and casual without tipping either way. Good for a client meeting, good for a Saturday. That flexibility is harder to find than it sounds and more useful than almost anything else in the wardrobe.

What was a big inspiration for you in April? And what’s on your list for May? Let me know in the comments!

Next up: A dive in the process of a current project!

Hugs,

Haas

New York is the only city that makes me walk faster and look slower at the same time. Five days with the family, tourist mode included, and I still came back with a notebook full of observations and a list of places I’m already planning around for the next visit.

The city is relentless in the best possible way. It raises the stakes on every spatial decision you make. So much history and so many leading, intentional concepts existing in the same ten blocks. Imagine surrounding yourself with this every day. If you do: lucky you!!

Here’s my curated city guide for people who love design, fashion, furniture, restaurant concepts and architecture. Not everything made it into my days, but everything on this list belongs here for a reason. I also made you visual lists to screenshot. I’ve tried to keep it tight, which may have been the hardest task of the year so far (besides making a selection out of the 1000 pictures I took lol).

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STAY

I believe the neighborhood you stay in can make or break a city trip. Even with an itinerary, the in-between moments matter just as much: the walk to coffee, the detour before dinner, the street you didn't plan to be on. That's where the city actually happens and where I always find the thing that wasn't on the list just by wandering around.

The Manner was designed by Milanese architect Hannes Peer with Standard International’s chief design officer Verena Haller, and described by Vogue as Gio Ponti on acid, with a dash of classic New York Studio 54-worthy glitz. The rooms are moody, warm, layered in lacquer, velvet, and gold leaf. No televisions, no formal check-in desk, a second-floor bar called Sloane’s with hand-applied gold leaf on the walls. The kind of hotel that was designed for a specific kind of person rather than a category of guest. Everything I’ve seen tells me this is the one. First booking for my next trip!

The Crosby Street Hotel with Kit Kemp’s maximalism is not my aesthetic, but I say that with full respect for what she’s doing. The Crosby commits completely to a point of view and never once apologizes for it. The wallpaper runs all the way through every corridor, the furniture pieces are stand-outs, one after another, and the library feels like an actual escape from the city. We had breakfast in the lounge, sat in the patio for a quick espresso, and I kept noticing: this is someone who knows exactly what she wants a room to feel like, even when that feeling is not yours. That clarity is its own kind of skill.

The Ludlow Hotel on the Lower East Side, opened in 2014 in an abandoned building Sean MacPherson and his partners rescued after the financial crash. The brief was New York of the early 1980s: Warhol, Basquiat, hip-hop from the Bronx, the Ramones. Oak-panelled walls, marble mosaic floors, a distressed limestone fireplace, Moroccan pendant lamps, factory casement windows. A hotel that wears its neighbourhood’s history without making it a costume. Cool is an understatement.

EAT

The Odeon opened in 1980 by the McNally brothers and the restaurant was the original TriBeCa landmark before TriBeCa was what it is now. The Art Deco detailing is the reason to go: the bar, the clock, the booths set out with a spatial logic that makes the whole room read as intentional from every seat. A room that has survived forty-five years of a neighborhood reinventing itself around it. And the food is genuinely good.

SoHo’s Altro Paradiso by chef Ignacio Mattos has high ceilings, a glimmering brass bar, amber light and proper woodwork. The kind of Italian restaurant that earns its regulars because the room is as considered as the menu. Handmade pastas that rotate with the season and a space that manages to feel both lively and calm at the same time, which is harder than it sounds.

Bridges is located in Chinatown, right between the entrances to the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, which is where the name comes from. The interior was done by Billy Cotton in his first ever restaurant project. It has cherrywood banquettes, glass blocks, chrome light fixtures, with references pulled from the nearby brutalist Chatham Towers. The French-Basque kitchen is lead by chef Sam Lawrence, formerly Estela. The design does what the best restaurant interiors do: it has its own logic that makes the food taste more like itself.

Dr. Clark is New York’s first Hokkaido restaurant, located in Chinatown. Interiors by Green River Project, the same studio behind the Bode store on Hester Street, which is exactly the reference the owner had in mind when he commissioned them. Coffee-stained natural plywood, custom African mahogany barstools, Hokkaido-style lamb BBQ at the table. The kind of place that tells you something very specific about the person who made it.

Sushi Koju Omakase is settled inside the Ace Hotel. The room is doing a lot quietly: vintage details mixed with clean Japanese sensibility, custom work throughout that makes the space feel considered rather than just dressed. It frames the food without competing with it, which is the whole point of a room like this. Smoked salmon with caviar, tuna in cuts that actually melt, a crab hand roll, hojicha ice cream, sake cocktails, vintage vinyl in the background. I’m still thinking about it.

Also: Casino, Crevette, Lucien, 7 Spring, Wild Air Restaurant

DRINK

I’ve been watching Stars from a distance, as multiple design platforms wrote about it. A 12-seat wine bar in the East Village, from the team behind Claud and Penny. Studio Valle de Valle designed the entire 450 square feet as a single jewel box: cedar-lined walls, matte red marble floors, a horseshoe-shaped zinc bar with custom mahogany stools, and a fabric-wrapped faux skylight above that gives the room a sense of height it physically doesn’t have. Two Frank Stella works on the walls. The name is an homage to downtown and the artists who lived and worked here. Walk-in only, which I love as it keeps the idea of spontaneous plans alive.

COFFEE

Fast Times Coffee Inside Buck Mason on Broadway, SoHo. The layout is simple but the vintage pieces scattered through the seating areas do something that’s hard to manufacture: they make the space feel lived in rather than designed for effect. That distinction is everything.

La Cabra’s New York outpost earns its own entry. The design is precise without being cold (obsessed with how they’ve used the tiles!) and the buns are, genuinely, worth making the trip for specifically.

Paquita Tea A proper tea destination, not a coffee shop that also does tea. The concept is specific and the space follows it.

Also: Setsygekka, 12 Matcha, Mandarin Coffee Two Bridges, Apollo Bagels, Milkweed Studio, Dimes Market.

ARCHITECTURE

The Guggenheim by Frank Lloyd Wright completely takes over. Which is both the argument against it as a museum and exactly the reason it’s one of the most important buildings in New York. Wright designed it as a continuous spiral ramp, the idea being that you take the elevator to the top and walk down through the work. In practice what this means is that you never stop being aware of the building. I went for the Carol Bove exhibition, which I wrote about in the last issue.

The Bubble House, Upper East Side is a 1970s organic-form private residence sitting in complete defiance of the neighborhood around it. The Upper East Side has a specific architectural grammar and this breaks every rule of it without flinching. That 70s soul, that willingness to build something genuinely peculiar, is rare. Word goes they will tear it down, I hope it doesn’t come to that.

TWA Flight Center by Eero Saarinen completed in 1962, is now a hotel at JFK airport. One of the purest examples of a building that looks exactly like what it is: the feeling of flight, made permanent in concrete. Saarinen finished it the year he died. I want to wander around it for an afternoon, so it’s a non-negotiable for next time.

GALLERIES, MUSEUMS + SHOWROOMS

The Future Perfect St. Luke’s Townhouse in the West Village. Five floors, appointment only, built in 1901 and renovated by David Chipperfield. A contemporary gallery with collectible objects arranged as if someone actually lives there, which is the whole point. Seeing a piece in a real room, on a real staircase, next to a real window, tells you something about it that a white plinth never can. Hit hardest of the three showrooms, and for this reason specifically.

Pierre Yovanovitch gallery is located on a penthouse floor of a pre-war building in Chelsea, 10,000 square feet with a rooftop terrace over the gallery district. It is as cool as it sounds. Over 80 pieces arranged in immersive settings, with The Bear Chair in a lead role. What stays with you is the consistency of vision across every single piece in the room, which is what separates a furniture brand from a design practice.

Quarters has a younger energy and a stranger programme in the best way. The kind of showroom that introduces you to names before they become widely known. You leave with references you didn’t arrive with, which is always the more useful version of visiting a gallery.

Kalei on the Bowery, is named after the kaleidoscope. Collectible design, vintage oddities, curiosities from multiple eras, and La Cabra coffee on a sun-drenched Italian patio. The concept is about play and shifting perspectives, which is a brief I find more interesting than most. Worth combining with La Cabra if you haven’t had one yet.

Love House hosts young talent, a different entry point into collectible design. The next generation, before it’s been collected.

Lisson Gallery has one of the best gallery programmes in the world. The London original has been setting the standard for decades and the New York space holds the same level. Worth checking what’s on before you go. At the time of writing, Anish Kapoor’s work is showing. His mirror sculptures and pigment works are the kind of thing that makes you question how a room can hold that much presence. If you’re anywhere near his work right now, go!

Casa Valle in Tribeca, is the gallery and showroom of Studio Valle de Valle, founded by designer Giancarlo Valle and former Architectural Digest style director Jane Keltner de Valle. The space is built around 18th-century New York, specifically the Lispenard family home that once sat near the Collect Pond. White clapboard panels, a tiled fireplace depicting that lost house, soaring cast-iron loft ceilings. The furniture collection sits in conversation with historic pieces from other eras, the kind of space where the curatorial logic is as interesting as the objects.

The Isamu Noguchi Museum located in a converted factory in Long Island City, holds the most extensive collection of the artist’s works, from architectural models, to sculptures and furniture designs. Impossible to leave without buying something from the shop, which I say as both a warning and a recommendation.

MoMA PS1 is located in a former public school built in 1890, and now one of the largest contemporary art centres in the United States. The building is part of the work: raw, industrial, institutionally imperfect in a way that suits the program exactly. Where MoMA shows what has been validated, PS1 shows what is still being argued about.

Also: Gagosian, Hauser + Wirth, Jack Shainman Gallery, Lyle Gallery, Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery, Dobrinka Salzman Gallery, Tage Gallery, TIWA Gallery, Perrotin, David Zwirner Chelsea, Whitney Museum, MoMA.

SHOPPING

Khaite‘s SoHo store was designed by founder Catherine Holstein and her architect husband Griffin Frazen who wanted to encapsulate the cultural legacy of the SoHo location with the area’s connection to the founding of the brand. One of the most important American brands right now and the space holds that up with its concrete, steel, an evergreen tree growing directly from the floor.

Maryam Nassir Zadeh on Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side has been a downtown reference since 2008, the merchandising inspired by her grandmother’s boutique in 1970s Tehran: potted palms, things displayed on the floor, an edit that reads as a personal wardrobe rather than a commercial strategy.

Desert Vintage‘s curation is so good. It feels like someone with a real eye made every decision. Tight edit, nothing surplus, the kind of vintage shop where you trust the selection before you’ve touched anything.

Blxxm Florist is a florist with a genuine design sensibility. Not just flowers, but the way they’re thought about and presented. That distinction matters more than it should. Showroom open by appointment.

Nonfiction Perfumes offers fragrances built around presence rather than escape, and you see that back in the store design. That’s what I call an interesting brief.

So many good shopping spots in New York, almost impossible to make a curated list!

BOOKS + MAGAZINES

Rizzoli for the Beaux-Arts building alone, a landmark dedicated entirely to design and art publishing. Albertine for the premise: French-language literature inside the French consulate building on the Upper East Side, next to the Guggenheim. Casa Magazines for every magazine that doesn’t reach your usual radius. Iconic Magazines for vintage issues as object, as archive, as a different way of reading design history. New York knows how to do great bookstores!

Subscribe now

WELLNESS

Othership is the OG for breathwork, cold, heat and community. The space takes it all seriously as a design brief together, which is rarer than it should be for wellness spaces. The materials are considered, the concept doesn’t compromise, and it proved something I already believed: you don’t have to choose between rigor and atmosphere. The way the design (and amazing staff!) guides you through the experience is beyond every wellness space I’ve encountered so far.

Schwet (opens summer 2026) The images and the social direction already tell you what you need to know: this is a team that understood the assignment. Not the clean-lines-and-minimalism wellness aesthetic I’ve personally had enough of. Something with more story to it, more understanding that a wellness space is about interaction and experience, not just surfaces. The brief alone makes it worth watching.

Spencer’s Spa feels like you’ve walked into the living room of someone with exceptional taste, and the facial happens to occur there. That reframing of the luxury spa, away from the clinical and toward the genuinely intimate, is exactly the direction I find interesting.

Also: Remedy Place, The Altar, Bedrock at Moss.

OTHER

Lighthouse is a dream workspace for every creative. A creative campus in Brooklyn, housed in a 19th-century pencil factory in Greenpoint. Private studios, communal workspaces, a 50-person theatre, podcast studios, test kitchens, a café, event spaces. Built by Whalar as a physical home for the creator economy, designed around the idea that creativity needs a real room to happen in. The Brooklyn’s building alone is worth it, and the community it’s pulling together is genuinely interesting. For anyone working independently in a creative field, this is the kind of space that makes you think about what your own practice could look like if it had the right room around it.

What should I add to this list? New York is one of those cities where everyone has their own version of it. I'd love to know yours!

Until next time,

Janneke

OBSESSING OVER

Hifi bars and listening rooms: what it means to design for sound

Madrid has been opening them quietly, one after another. I’ve been paying attention. But it was Space Talk in London that made me stop and actually think hard about what this format demands from a designer.

No photos allowed inside, which felt right. The whole point is that you’re meant to be there. I managed three shots before I surrendered to that.

What struck me is how deliberate every surface decision becomes when the goal is listening. Acoustic paneling is obvious. But it’s everything else: the sight lines that pull attention inward, the lighting that removes any temptation to look anywhere except at your drink and the speakers, the zoning that moves you through the space differently as the night builds. Space Talk (EBBA Architects & Charlotte Taylor) does this across four distinct zones, each with their own acoustic character. Charlotte has since taken the brief into private homes too, designing residential listening rooms where sound earns its own dedicated space the way materiality normally does. That idea interests me enormously.

The format is now a global thing, and what’s fascinating is what each city does differently with the same brief.

NEW YORK CITY

Eavesdrop (sound designer Danny Taylor) is built around the physical form of sound: birch plywood throughout, the same material used to construct speakers, concrete terrazzo, cork, a wall of mirrors gridded at variable depths to scatter light the way a diffuser scatters sound. 36 seats, strict capacity. A living room with a very good sound system. Upstairs (DSLV Studio, acoustics by Arup) is the more experimental version: walls that physically fur outward to direct soundwaves, then fold into banquettes, subwoofers embedded directly into the wall cabinets so the entire room becomes the speaker. Dark marble bar, custom plywood and steel chairs, ceramic stools by Cristian Andersen. Every object custom. Nothing purchased off a shelf.

One to watch: A new members-only listening lounge called Stylus, opening in the Lower East Side, hosting an acoustic salon and sanctuary for the ephemeral arts, performance, music, film, food and science. Images look promising.

LISBON

The Kissaten (Lázaro Rosa-Violán) is the most architecturally honest version of the original Japanese concept I’ve come across. Dark wood, velvet banquettes, Klipsch Cornwall horn-loaded speakers embedded in the bar. Patrons choose their own records, played in full. No DJ, no algorithm. The act of choosing is part of the design.

LONDON

Besides Space Talk, Jazu in Deptford and New Forms on Chelsea Manor Street caught my eye. Where Jazu is warm and neighbourhood-scaled, with a hifi system that earns its regulars without making a statement about it. New Forms is more architectural: pale timber, soft amber light, coffee by morning and wine by evening. Both prove that in this format, the quietest rooms are often the most considered ones.

PARIS

Listener in the 2nd takes the concept furthest: a subterranean bookable listening room, deep blue walls and 1970s-inspired furnishings, with individual music nap booths with audiophile headphones upstairs. The idea of designing for solitary deep listening inside a public space is new territory. Bambino and Fréquence (the OG of the Paris scene, open since 2018) sit closer to the original kissa. Both prioritize the experience of listening over the performance of being seen, which is harder to achieve than it sounds (especially in Paris).

AMSTERDAM

Cue (Gwen Hoopman) is aesthetically close to the Japanese kissa in sensibility, completely Dutch in spirit. With cherry wood, dark green fabric, green terrazzo and rounded details it’s intentional, warm, not trying too hard.

MADRID

El Willy HIFI (Cantiera Estudio) in the Justicia neighbourhood is exactly what this city needed.: natural wood, leather, bronze, heavy earth-toned curtains, sepia lighting that eliminates visual noise, a DJ booth integrated as landscape not stage. Another place that does it great is Barco Soundhouse in the Malasaña neighborhood.

SYDNEY

JAM Record Bar (Akin Atelier) is the most color-committed execution of the brief: entirely hot pink, because the acoustic insulation used was hot pink fibreglass panels and designer Kelvin Ho made that the concept instead of hiding it. ‘Designed to feel like drinking a cocktail inside a giant speaker box, but pink.’ The acoustic decision became the identity. 15,000 records (!!).

MILAN

MOGO (Giorgia Longoni Studio) is the theatrical, retro-futurist end of the range and my personal favorite. Grid ceiling that shifts from cool and corporate by day to amber by night, terracotta velvet seating against light blue flooring, burl wood veneer speakers suspended from the ceiling, custom tapestries by artist Andrea Marco Corvino. It knows what it is, and it owns it.

On the listening room side of this conversation, Voce at Triennale Milano (open since May 2025) is the logical endpoint: a permanent 330-square-meter installation by Luca Cipelletti, conceived as a cathedral of sound. Philippe Malouin’s deep green modular furniture is both flexible and acoustically functional. No images on the walls. Sound as the only spatial medium. That’s the whole brief taken to its conclusion.

Charlotte Taylor & Cream Atelier’s Silent Songs Records listening room is the private, personal version: a designed space for a record label that proves you don’t need a dramatic budget to give sound its own architecture.

Another example is Valentino’s L’Atelier Sonore, which ran from May through August 2025 on Madison Avenue and is unfortunately now closed: Alessandro Michele and Terraforma, velvet seating, handcrafted cabinetry, floor-to-ceiling curtains, no product to sell. Just listening. A fashion house converting retail into an acoustic room is a signal about where this is going.

TAKEAWAYS

The best-designed spaces in this genre are the ones where acoustic logic and interior logic are the same logic. Materials chosen to absorb or diffuse are also the materials that define the atmosphere. Zoning that serves sound flow also serves social flow. When those two things split apart, you get expensive speakers fighting their room. When they converge, the space feels completely inevitable.

And the bars that last, the ones that build real regulars rather than a moment of hype, are the ones that commit to a design point of view strong enough to make you curious. That make you tap into your senses. JAM’s pink, Eavesdrop’s wood-as-speaker-box, MOGO’s theatrics, Upstairs’ walls that physically curve around sound. Taking risks in design is not decoration, it’s what gives people a reason to come back, to tell someone about it, to feel like the space is theirs. Safe design in this format produces a nice room with a sound system. Committed design produces a place.

WORTH THE DETOUR

Three spaces that have been living in my head:

The Newman, London. The kind of hotel that makes you want to rebook before you’ve even checked out. Every material decision feels considered, the location in the Fitzrovia neighborhood is great and they have an amazing spa. The brasserie feels light and airy while they have a vibey jazz club in the basement for a night out.

VoyeurVoyeur, London (Designed by Crab Studio) Opened last November. The space is built almost entirely in plywood, but treated with enough geometric imagination that it reads as something else entirely: asymmetric polyhedra, a mirrored horizon line running the perimeter at exactly eye level, a neutral off-white resin that keeps everything from tipping into overload. The brands are a tight edit: Ann Demeulemeester, Rick Owens, Coperni, Rohé. But what stays with you are the two changing rooms: One two-way mirrored so you can see out without being seen, one a full 360-degree mirrored cabinet with deep wine-rot carpet. Uncomfortable (in a good way), precise, and very intentional. Retail as spatial argument.

Dévo, Marseille. The work of furniture maker Axel Chay and art director Mélissa Chay. The result feels 1970s but not too retro, earthy, sun-saturated, chic in a way that feels earned by the city itself. Marseille has always had that particular intensity, and this place leans all the way into it. I think the interior sparks that sense of discovery, where your eye keeps traveling around the space.

ON MY CALENDAR

A big part of training the aesthetic eye happens through visiting galleries, markets, fairs and exhibitions across art, design, vintage and fashion. Here’s what’s on my calendar.

PAD Paris | April 8 to 12, Jardin des Tuileries. The anchor fair of the spring season, and one of the oldest dedicated design fairs in the world. Over 70 galleries bringing historical and contemporary design into dialogue in a setting that somehow always feels fresh. Worth building a Paris trip around.

Calder. Rêver en Équilibre, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris | April 15 to August 16. The entire Fondation, including its lawn, given over to Alexander Calder. Nearly 300 works, from his early wire portraits to the monumental stabiles, plus the return of the legendary Cirque Calder from the Whitney. The timing is a double centennial: 100 years since Calder arrived in Paris, 50 since his death. What makes it extraordinary is the setting. Calder’s mobiles in dialogue with Gehry’s architecture is almost too perfect a match. Both are designed to be experienced differently as you move through them.

Rothko in Florence, Palazzo Strozzi | March 14 to August 23. Already open and I need to get there. Over 70 works tracing Rothko’s full career, curated by his son Christopher Rothko alongside Elena Geuna. The show is specifically conceived around Rothko’s deep relationship with Florence. He first visited in 1950 and was transformed by Fra Angelico’s frescoes at San Marco. The exhibition extends into those very same spaces, putting his color fields in dialogue with Fra Angelico’s cells. And separately into the Laurentian Library vestibule by Michelangelo, which directly inspired his Seagram Murals. The city becomes the exhibition. Works on loan from MoMA, the Tate, Centre Pompidou, the Met. It’s a serious show.

Carol Bove, Guggenheim New York | March 5 to August 2. I’m in New York right now, and this one was on my list. Her first ever museum survey, 25 years of work filling the rotunda. Bove bends and crushes steel tubing, coats it in richly colored automotive paint, and somehow the result is sculptures that feel light, almost improvised. She worked with Farrow & Ball to create 40 custom colors for the walls throughout the building. The whole thing sounds like an experience as much as an exhibition, and the Guggenheim’s spiral is the right architecture for it. Loved it.

IN ROTATION

On the stairclimber every morning at the gym, headphones in. This is my current double shot.

LISTEN

Aspire, with Emma Grede. I loved the episode with Kelly Wearstler, on building her studio, on leadership, on how she sees herself inside her own work. Specific and honest in a way, inspiring for a young designer like myself to hear which steps she took to build her career.

How to Get the Job (Done) by FI Business. For my fellow dutchies. Weekly, practical, and to start my Monday properly. The kind of thing that makes you feel organized before you’ve even opened your laptop, with inspiring stories of and for female entrepeneurs.

Lenny’s Podcast ‘The Design Process is Dead,’ with Jenny Wen. The title is more provocative than the episode, which is a careful, interesting conversation about what AI changes in design and what it absolutely does not. Creativity is not the thing that’s disappearing. That’s the whole point and she makes it well.

READ

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. A book I keep returning to. Different chapters hit differently depending on where I am in a project. Rereading it this month, I found things I don’t remember underlining. That’s always a good sign.

WATCH

Happy Clothes (documentary). About Patricia Field, the stylist behind the wardrobes of SATC and Emily in Paris, who lives entirely inside her own world of rare archive pieces. Completely fascinating to see what it looks like when someone has a fully realized aesthetic universe and refuses to leave it.

THE FIND

What I am hunting for right now.

We just moved apartments within Madrid. Third one in two and a half years, which means we know how to do this: keep it simple, invest in pieces that travel, change nothing we can’t take with us. Challenging as an interior designer though. We literally cannot put a single thing on the walls. Designer brain in a rental is a specific kind of thing. But still. My designer heart needs a reset every time. Pieces on my list:

In line with the start of this issue, some sexy retro speakers to add some soul. David Marshall pieces for the new office, obsessed with the mixed metal combo and the patina. And I’ve been looking at carts and trolleys at auction: there’s something so practical and so considered about a well-made designer trolleys, like this Bobby cart by Joe Colombo, a true icon. Some cool graphic ceramic tea mugs and lastly, this beautiful cocoon pendant with green accents.

What are you hunting for at the moment?

Next up: a full city guide. You can probably guess which one!

Until next time,

Janneke

Last year I made two trips to Paris for my wedding dress fitting, April and September, two nights each time. Hotel Château d’Eau was on my list before I arrived. I came back the second time because the first stay had done something to me that I wanted to feel again.

Every evening I returned to the lobby: that brown, those leopards, the chrome. Something in my designer brain quietly refused to switch off. There was always one more thing to unpack. A lamp stem. A color transition. The way the carpet climbs the wall. Which resulted in me photographing details at midnight.

Some spaces do that. This one did it twice!

Most hotels tell you what they are, but Château d’Eau tells you who you could be. That’s what I keep coming back to.

Design studio Necchi Architecture set out to capture an attitude: the attitude of a specific neighborhood, a specific era, and a very specific imagined guest. YSL’s muse, rolling in from Le Palace at 2am. A person as a brief, a far better one than any mood board.

THE DESIGN STORY

The hotel sits on Rue du Château d’Eau in the 10th arrondissement, a neighborhood most travel guides skip on their way to the Marais. Which is exactly the point. This area was the geography of Paris’s golden nightlife era. Le Palace, the city’s answer to Studio 54, opened just around the corner in 1978 with Grace Jones singing from the top of a Harley Davidson, surrounded by dry ice. Yves Saint Laurent, Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, Serge Gainsbourg, Kenzo: all regulars. The 10th wasn’t refined. It was alive.

Necchi co-founder Alexis Lamesta described the design goal as reflecting ‘an attitude, rather than a particular décor,’ one rooted in the disco scene, the artistic communities of early-80s Paris, and a cast of references running from Gainsbourg’s personal home to American Psycho to the Fantômas films. The references are absorbed, digested, and exhaled as something entirely of itself. Influences went in, something new came out.

One more reason this piece feels timely: Le Palace is set to reopen in 2026 under new ownership. The hotel that spent a year channeling its spirit may soon have its muse back on the same street.

THE STORYTELLING ELEMENTS

In my studio, I use the term storytelling elements to describe the specific design decisions that carry a project’s concept into physical space. The idea, the brief, the attitude: all of it has to land somewhere. In every Bespoke Spotlight, this is where I look for it.

THE GLOSSY PAINT

Walk through this hotel and almost every surface either absorbs light or gives it back. The lacquer, deep tobacco brown in the lobby and aubergine and burgundy in the corridors, does something very specific to a room. It bounces light slowly, warmly, and turns small spaces into something you want to stay inside. Glossy paint sounds maximalist on paper. In practice, used with this kind of confidence, it’s a spatial tool as much as an aesthetic one. Cosy and glamorous simultaneously, a register that is much harder to hold than it looks.

The bedroom ceiling, black lacquer, reflects the pyramid pendant below it. I photographed it both times. The optical effect was still surprising.

The brown in particular, the lobby walls and the gym, is one of the best single paint decisions I’ve encountered in any hotel. Dark enough to feel like a secret. Warm enough to feel like somewhere.

For those who want to chase these shades at home: Farrow & Ball Mahogany (No. 36) or Brinjal (No. 222) in full gloss; File Under Pop’s Lixisol in gloss 80; Paint & Paper Library Scarlet N Rust 316 in Architects’ Gloss or, for those who want to go all the way: ask a professional finisher for RAL 8004 Copper Brown in full gloss lacquer. The finish is not decorative. It’s structural to the effect.

THE DIRTY COLOR LANGUAGE

The rooms graduate: lime green on the lower floors, deep purple in the middle, bronze-orange at the top. Each floor its own character, the overall palette entirely coherent. The colors are what I call dirty: brown, lavender, aubergine, chartreuse, burnt orange. These are the colors of the 1970s, not the cleaned-up trend-report version, but the real ones. Age lives in them. A specific kind of Parisian apartment, a wardrobe lived in rather than assembled. Clean colors Where clean colors perform, dirty colors feel.

This is also a lesson in what designers call a model room approach: rather than replicating one look across all 36 rooms, Necchi gave every room a distinct color personality within a shared attitude. The hotel has one voice and thirty-six expressions of it.

THE LEOPARD

Everywhere, and never a cliché. That’s the skill. A runner down the corridors, upholstered chairs and cushions in the lobby, a leopard-topped fitted unit in the bedrooms. Then the hotel’s own branding: a pair of antique Italian ceramic leopards beside the check-in desk, their print echoed in the signage. When a flea-market find becomes the face of a hotel, you know the thinking is working at every level of the project. The leopard here is a point of view, applied with restraint and therefore impossible to argue with.

RETRO FURNITURE, FOUND OBJECTS, AND THE LANGUAGE OF METAL

The lobby and common areas are filled with hand-picked flea market and antique finds: the octagonal side tables, the chrome bar stools, the coffee table books opened to specific pages. Every object carries something, history, patina, the visible evidence of time. In an era of custom everything, specificity and age carry meaning that production value cannot manufacture. The hotel made a deliberate argument for the found piece. You can feel the Saint Ouen flea market in this lobby.

The bedroom furniture references René Herbst (1891–1982), the pivotal French modernist who co-founded the Union des Artistes Modernes and championed industrial materials in service of rigorous, functional design. His influence is felt in the spatial logic: everything oriented around the bed, the minibar integrated into the bedside table, the wardrobe exposed, the desk a mobile tray. Glamour built on discipline. The deep-pile carpet envelops the bedstead, the skirting boards, the side tables, a single material redefining the geometry of the room rather than just covering the floor.

Chrome is the thread that holds all of it together: a curved reception desk clad in chrome panelling, bedside lamp stems, exposed wardrobe rails, collectible design wall mounted vases and polished stainless steel basins inspired by train cabins. It runs from the lobby to the bedroom to the gym. Warm without being golden, industrial without being cold. The right metal for this particular attitude.

THE BATHROOM

Petit. Genuinely petit. My first stay had the deep burgundy and cream checkered tiles; my second, a different room with black and cream. Same graphic logic, different character: the model room approach applied right down to the shower. Black lacquer ceiling, chrome fittings, glass block dividers dressed with a small white curtain. Diptyque on the shelf. The whole room a graphic composition, and the composition confident enough that square meterage becomes almost irrelevant. Proof that small spaces don’t need more room. They just need better decisions.

THE LIGHT FIXTURES

The pyramid pendant in the bedroom: square shade, chrome stem, warm light cast diagonally downward and reflected back from the lacquer ceiling above. The effect is deeply satisfying in a way that is hard to articulate until you’re standing in the room looking up. Geometric shade, glossy surface, warm point source: each amplifies the others. These are rooms where the lighting isn’t something you notice because something is wrong. You notice it because everything is right.

THE GYM IN THE CELLAR

I like to keep my routine when I travel, and a hotel gym is usually the compromise I make for it. This one was the opposite of a compromise. A vaulted stone wine cellar, raw masonry left exposed, fitted with NOHrD wooden equipment: water rower, curved treadmill, wall-mounted ladder. The same deep tobacco lacquer on the end wall, with a row of vintage black-and-white photographs of men working out in cool clothes. The gym earns its place in the hotel the same way every other room does: through considered decisions at every scale.

A stay in a well-designed hotel teaches you things about yourself that a project briefing cannot. What kind of light you need in the morning. Whether silence or texture matters more to you in a small room. What it feels like when a space is genuinely built around how a body moves through it, rather than how a photograph reads. I noticed all of this here. And I took notes!

WHO MADE IT

Necchi Architecture was founded in 2021 by Charlotte Albert and Alexis Lamesta, who named their studio after a Milanese Art Deco villa by Piero Portaluppi: a house they both fell in love with immediately after graduating. Their stated philosophy: environments for living in, not performing on Instagram. This was their first hotel.

The client is Touriste, the Parisian hotel group with a model I find genuinely radical: a different designer for every property, given carte blanche to make it entirely their own. When they can find someone for whom it will also be a first hotel, even better. Luke Edward Hall’s first hotel. Beata Heuman’s first hotel. Necchi’s first hotel. Each one a debut collection. ‘Every new designer comes with a new idea about what hospitality should look like,’ says co-founder Julie Revuz, ‘and every time we trust that designer, it pays off.’ The creative risk is not incidental, but exactly the point. Dream client alert!

THE TAKEAWAY

Three things this hotel taught me that I carry into every project:

Attitude before decor. Before a material is chosen, a color selected, a piece sourced: ask what you’re trying to feel in this space. Betty Catroux at 2am is a better brief than any mood board, because it tells you who lives here, not what things look like.

Consistency through character, not repetition. Thirty-six rooms, one hotel. Each floor a different color, every room a different personality, and yet the whole thing reads as a single coherent world. The consistency comes from a shared attitude. A shared palette would have been far less interesting.

The found object is an argument. Using flea market finds, antique ceramics, and mid-century reference pieces is not a budget decision. It is a philosophical one. Objects with history carry meaning that custom production cannot manufacture. The patina is the point.

ATTITUDE AT HOME: A BESPOKE SELECTION

Five pieces that carry the same energy. All currently available.

1. Deep-pile rug in a dirty color: The carpet at Château d’Eau climbs the walls and wraps the furniture. You can’t replicate that in a living room, but you can find the spirit of it in a deep-pile rug in burnt orange, chartreuse, or aubergine. This one from Nordic Knots sits in exactly that register.

2. 1983s Barstools: Chrome bar stools that flex slightly with the body, made entirely of bent and welded steel rods. The same industrial rigour and visual lightness as the stools in the hotel’s own bar area, and no coincidence, because they are essentially the same typology. The chrome is the thing. Find a set where the finish has a little age to it.

3. Pyramid-shade lamp: Square shade, warm light. One of the most satisfying lamps I’ve encountered in a hotel room. This ceiling mounted pyramid lamp is the closest available equivalent, dimmable with the right proportions.

4. 1970s Octagonal table: The octagonal side tables in the lobby are one of the most specific pieces in the room: that combination of geometric form, industrial material, and quiet elegance. How fun would a 1970s Italian chrome and glass dining table look in the breakfast nook in your kitchen?!

5. A coffee table book that earns its place: The hotel had Becoming Disfarmer on a side table next to a chrome shell dish. Slightly obscure, very considered, tells you something about the person who lives here. Find yours: something with a specific point of view. The object beside it matters as much as the book itself. Check this store for cool vintage books.

Thank you for reading!

Curious: What's the last space that made your design loving brain accelerate?

Until next time, Janneke

I’m the person at dinner who reads the room, literally.

Three years ago I started a design studio with a name and a point of view and very little else. That turned out to be enough to begin. It also turned out to be the beginning of realising how much I didn’t know, and how much I wanted to.

That wanting to know more, that’s where this starts.

WELCOME TO BESPOKE

My name is Janneke de Haas. I run House of Haas, an interior design studio where projects begin with a story, no moodboard or floor plan, because a room without a narrative is just a room. I've been running my studio for three years now, learning something new every single day, and collecting obsessions along the way.

And I mean collecting. The kind that has no category. A hotel lobby that stops me mid-sentence. The way light can make a material go from ordinary to something you can't name. A coat in a vintage market that somehow explains an entire era. A designer nobody is talking about nearly enough. A city that only gives itself up when you know how to look.

I walk into every space asking the same question: what is this trying to tell me?

That question follows me everywhere. Into restaurants, museums, markets, other people’s homes. Into the things I read, the films I watch, the clothes I put on. Design, for me, has never been just about rooms. It's a habit of noticing. Once you have it, you find it everywhere. In what a space or piece does to you before you've registered why. The thread is always there. You just have to know how to look for it.

BESPOKE IS WHERE I FOLLOW THAT THREAD.

The name has a precise meaning. It's not made-to-measure, which adapts an existing pattern. Bespoke starts with nothing. No template, no standard size to alter. Just the thing in front of you and what it actually needs. A pattern built from scratch, every time.

Every issue will work the same way. A specific space, city, object, designer, or obsession, examined with the full attention it deserves. Just curiosity, in search of a story.

Because everywhere is research and everything is reference. And nothing, when you’re really looking, is ever just anything.

Come along.

See you every Thursday,

Janneke

p.s. What made you click subscribe? I’m genuinely curious, hit reply.

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