Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People (Hardcover)

by Hamish Bowles (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This unique book of thirty-six spectacular houses and gardens—whose owners come from the worlds of fashion, music, art, and society—draws not only on stories that have appeared in the pages of Vogue and Vogue Living over the past two decades but also on images that have never before been published. Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People takes you to these style-makers’ private realms around the world, captured by such celebrated photographers as Miles Aldridge, Cecil Beaton, Jonathan Becker, Eric Boman, Oberto Gili, François Halard, Horst P. Horst, Annie Leibovitz, Sheila Metzner, Mario Testino, Tim Walker, and Bruce Weber, among many others. Their dazzling photographs bring to life interiors and exteriors, modern and classical, that are both inspiring and transporting. Writers like Hamish Bowles, Joan Juliet Buck, Dodie Kazanjian, Eve MacSweeney, Julia Reed, Marina Rust, and Vicki Woods take us behind the scenes to give us an intimate view of the owners and how they live.

Here are Madonna’s romantic rural retreat in the depths of the English countryside and the Oscar de la Renta’s coral-stone Palladian mansion on the coast of the Dominican Republic; Michael and Eva Chow’s epic Los Angeles manse and shoe maestro Christian Louboutin’s magical houseboat on the Nile; Donna Karan’s Zenlike Manhattan aerie and legendary tastemaker Marella Agnelli’s enchanted villa and gardens in the Palmeraie of Marrakesh; Julian and Olatz Schnabel’s operatic downtown loft and childrenswear designer Rachel Riley’s miniature château on the Loire; celebrated landscape gardener Fernando Caruncho’s innovative Spanish gardens and Houghton, David Cholmondeley’s magnificent English stately home; Janet de Botton’s idyllic Provençal estate; and four decades of Karl Lagerfeld’s endlessly surprising houses, both innovative and palatial.

Lavishly illustrated in full color, Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People is an irresistible voyage through some of the world’s most beautiful and private gardens and interiors.

About the Author
Hamish Bowles is European editor at large for Vogue and editor in chief of Vogue Living. He was curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2001 Costume Institute exhibition, “Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years.” He lives in New York, London, and Paris.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307266222
• ISBN-13: 978-0307266224
• Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 9.8 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,718 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #1 in	Books > Arts & Photography > Design & Decorative Arts > Furniture Design
  #8 in	Books > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Landscape
  #13 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Rich & Famous

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best decorating book of the holiday season, November 29, 2007

By	J. Landau (Orinda, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Flash review: The perfect gift book for this season.

This new book, timed for Xmas giving, features a selection of the best homes shown in Vogue in the past several years. It is a large-scale book, filled with wonderful color photography. Although Elle Decor and Architectural Digest have come out with similar books this season, neither can hold a candle to Vogue's tome. If you are familiar with the 1968 publication, "Vogue's Book of Houses, Gardens, People", which now sells for $400 and up if you can find it, you will know what is in store for you.

Maximum emphasis on homes you would love to see in person, owned by people of impeccable style: Janet de Botton in the south of France, Marella Agnelli in Marrakech, David Cholmondeley's stately, etc.; minimal number of celebrity digs done by decorators of questionable taste which you tend to see in Architectural Digest. The style and taste of the featured houses, gardens (and, yes, people) are on an entirely different plane than those shown in the new books by the other two lifestyle magazines.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sumptuous living, December 29, 2007

By	Shemogue (New Brunswick) - See all my reviews

There is no disputing that this is a sumptuous volume. Lavishly produced, its oversized 384 pages are crammed with images of exquisite rooms and lush gardens from 36 unique homes, owned by the rich and/or famous in Europe, America and North Africa and into the likes of which you and I will never set foot. (Which is the reason, thankfully, such books are produced and why we lesser mortals buy them.)

There are rooms modern and rooms classic, arranged with the taste, elegance and restraint of the world's best decorators and captured by the world's greatest photographers. And yet the rooms are not museum pieces, but are demonstrably inhabited by their owners, their well-scrubbed children and their adorable dogs, such as the greyhound on page 317 filching a piece of cheese from the dinner table.

My favourite room which is featured on the front jacket cover is of Janet de Botton's breakfast room in Provence, its French chateau décor a study in white, cream and faded pastel, the background, literally a wall of china - floral motifed white plates and platters displayed on white-painted, floor-to-ceiling wooden plate racks built into the walls. (Already I've been measuring my walls to see how I can incorporate something similar - though less vast - into my old house).

At the opposite end of the décor spectrum is Amanda Brooks NYC loft, all kitsch and brash eye-popping colour like a Barbie Doll house with Brooks herself photographed in a Barbie Doll style gown in a Barbie Doll pose. (It's not to my personal taste but cleverly done & I had to look twice to be sure the figure lying stiffly across the bed wasn't a mannequin).

If you are a fan of décor books you will find plenty more here to inspire, amuse and entertain you and your like-minded friends and family.

So why did I hold back from a five star rating? My quibble is with the empty 14 pages devoted to Madonna which might have been put to better use: Madonna's cow pastures, M. with (admittedly cute) children; a gowned & high-heeled & coiffed M. feeding the chickens (as if!); M. canoodling with husband, a double-page shot of M's sheep -- & only one tiny interior shot, a sitting room that was rearranged by the photographer & does not reflect the actual décor of Madonna's house - which might have been of real interest even to a non-fan like me.
Thus the book falls just a little short of being, for me, the epitome of the coffee-table décor genre.

15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Vague Living , November 27, 2007

By	Stylemaven - See all my reviews

Photography is extraordinary. The people featured therein, not so much. Still, it's a beautifully done publication and worth the cash but buy it at discount.
Stylemaven