Book Review: Vogue Living: Country, City, Coast

Author: Hamish Bowles & Chloe Malle

Publication Date: October 24, 2017

Publisher: Knopf

A stunning new collection of beautiful houses and gardens that have appeared in the pages of Vogue over the last decade, with more than 400 full-color photographs. 

Lavishly illustrated, Vogue Living: Country, City, Coast is an irresistible look at some of the most spectacular houses and gardens whose owners come from the worlds of fashion, design, art and society to be published as a book for the first time.

Here is Tory Burch’s stylish and informal Southampton estate, Lauren and Andres Santo Domingo’s glamorous duplex in Paris, Dries Van Noten’s romantic house and garden in Belgium, Alexa and Trevor Traina’s dramatic and colorful San Francisco house, Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber’s lakeside Canadian cabin, shoe maestro Bruno Frisoni and designer Hervé Van der Straeten’s modern house in the heart of Tangier, Stella McCartney’s grand English country garden, Olya and Charles Thompson’s richly patterned Brooklyn house, and the old-world Wilshire estate of Gela Nash-Taylor and Duran Duran’s John Nash Taylor and many more. 

These breathtaking houses and gardens have been photographed by such celebrated photographers as François Halard, Oberto Gili,  Mario Testino and Bruce Weber among others; such writers as Hamish Bowles, Joan Juliet Buck, Plum Sykes, Jonathan Van Meter and Chloe Malle give you an intimate view of the owners and how they live. This book is a look at some of the world’s most iconic houses and gardens—not only rich in ideas for all readers but a resource and inspiration for designers, architects, and landscape architects as well.

As the pages of this book reveal, interior designers quote from the past just as fashion designers have – sometimes with academic reverence, other times with soaring imagination.

In their eclecticism and diversity, these lifestyle portfolios not only reflect the very different personalities of the people who created and live in these environments, but also hold a mirror to the fast-changing times and the fashion and societal trends that Vogue – and more recently its website, too – has reflected so potently across the years.

What a difference a decade makes.

Firstly, I loved the diversity of this book. Readers will get to travel from the country to the city and then to the coast, just as the title implies. The photographs showcase a vast array of beautiful homes, landscapes, and the people that populate and created them. The people’s lives that are showcased in this breathtaking book are famous and well-known for many different reasons, and a look into their worlds is sure to entice and enrapture all readers. A look into Cindy Crawford’s home and lifestyle was by far my favorite section of this book. Her home in Ontario was picturesque and inviting. There is a full page photo of her children jumping from a huge boulder near her home; the feeling communicated in these pages is cozy and completely down to earth, something one might not expect from the life of this famous supermodel.

The images are exasperating and breathtaking. There are hundreds and hundreds of images that showcase the insides of brilliant homes and their architecture and design, images of lavish and lush gardens, and images of the notably remarkable people who inhabit them. Going back to the diversity that was mentioned above, readers will feel a sense of having witnessed every design and architectural style after reading over this book. Some homes were cozy and remote, some were modern and completely ahead of their time, some were traditional, while others had a rather Victorian feel to them. I greatly enjoyed seeing the different tastes of these monumental people.  

***A free copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers at Knopf in exchange for my honest review***