Tag: European design

15Jan

Classic Beauty In Belgium: Dries Van Noten At Home

Dries Van Noten is one of my favorite fashion designers.  He is the master of sophisticated prints.  His creations masterfully merge traditional prints with modern silhouettes.  Consequently Dries Van Noten’s beautiful Belgian home should not come as a surprise.  The Neoclassical home, located in Lier, close to the cıty of Antwerp was build in the 1840’s and was decorated with the help of interior designer Gert Voorjans.

Dries Van Noten’s home

The house is furnished with beautiful antiques that were collected from markets in Brussels and Paris.  The patterned textiles throughout the house is a definite nod to Van Noten’s love of pattern and exotic graphics.

Dries Van Noten’s home, garden

The 55-acre park surrounding the mansion was converted into a breath-taking garden by Landscape Architect Erick Dhont.  Dries’ other passion is gardening and by looking at the images below, he does an amazing job.

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24Jul

A 200-Year-Old Farmhouse In Mallorca Gets A Major Makeover

Mallorca villa

Mallorca Villa

Ammonite fossils on top of an antique table welcome visitors in the entry way.

Imagine coming to your summer home and being greeted by an aromatic scent emanating from a line of olive, almond and cork trees that indicate the path to the house. This forever-summer home is located in Manacor in the south-east of Mallorca. It’s been entirely renovated in a way that preserves the house’s original Mallorcan spirit by Architect and Interior Designer Ramon Garcia Jurado. The clients’ request was for a ‘home where you can hang out all day in a sarong and be barefoot most of the time’. The final result is that and more, Garcia Jurado was able to interpret his clients’ wish while making the home also comfortable and sophisticated enough. The white walls and bare resin floors serve as the perfect background for the rich colored antiques throughout the house.

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17Jul

A Charming Fisherman House In The Ile De Re by Christian Liaigre

A Charming Fisherman cottage in the isle de , Christian Liegre

A Charming Fisherman cottage in the ile de Re, Christian Liaigre

Simplicity doesn’t mean sterile, and a fisherman house doesn’t always imply unworldly either.  Quite often good design is harder to interpret in simple, authentic ways than in grand, opulent ways.  As this charming fisherman house shows, good Interior Design embraces the home instead of disguising it.  Christian Liaigre took inspiration from the 18th-century architecture in Île de Ré, an Island of the West Coast of France, to decorate his family country home.  The rusticity found in the unspoiled island is interpreted in the design details of the house from the understated facade with its simple main door to the original white painted panels throughout inside the home.  The main red doors Liaigre saw in his trip to Nantucket inspired the touches of red dotting around the house.  “This is a simple home for a fisherman, and that is reflected in the decoration”  Christian Liaigre

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30Nov

Amanda Brooks Idyllic Home in The English Countryside

Amanda Brook 1 via belle vivir

Amanda Brooks is known as a writer, contributing editor at Condé Nast Traveler and AD and ex fashion director at Barneys New York.  What you may not know is that she is a great Lifestyle Architect too.  If such title exists, she’s earned it.  Amanda Brooks is a New Yorker who moved with her family to the English Countryside and had created an idyllic countryside life style.  All with absolute no previous experience.  It all started when Amanda decided to take a year break from the hustle and bustle of her busy career in the City and moved with her family to the farm where her husband grew up in Oxfordshire, England.  Yes, she traded attending front row fashion shows, dressing head to toe in designer clothes and attending the fancy after parties for the calm and charm of the English countryside, complete with horses, sheep, pigs and pretty gardens.  The one year became years and now is the family’s permanent residence, as she told AD where their Farm was featured.  Amanda also told AD that she is currently writing a book about the whole experience.   Her Instagram account is like a dream no one would like to wake up from, at least not me, full of beautiful and inspiring images from nature, gardens, dogs and her children.  You can also appreciate snippets of her home, Fair Green Farm, and how unpretentious and beautiful she decorates it.  Everything looks so livable and tangible… yet so tasteful.
I love to hear stories like this because it’s all but a reminder that the real pleasures in life are about substance and whatever fills your heart.  It’s about what makes you wake up in the morning with a full heart.  Of course all better when done in style, as Amanda shows us.

Amanda Brook farmhouse via belle vivir blog

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28Feb

7 Half Painted Wall: A European Design Detail

European Design is very different from American Design.  It’s simpler yet stylized, restrained and unpretentious.  European interiors is more about how the furniture complements the already elaborate Interior Architecture.  And when the interior background is modern enough, they find ways to enhance them in unassuming ways.  One simple but powerful way to add architecture to a modern room is by adding a different color paint to half of the walls in a room, haf painted wall.  This half and half painting interior design detail can be done by painting the room walls in light color and then adding a dark color on the half bottom side of the walls in a straigh line.  As the images here show, the dividing line can be added at any height you wish.  This is a perfect way to slowly bring dark hue inside our homes when we are too afraid of putting it in the entire room.  It’s also a smart way to add a focal point to any room.

7 Half Painted Wall Ideas

half painted walls, European design, black and white

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22Aug

Jean Louis Deniot At Home In Capri; A Chic Retreat

I have many places I want to go to, like many but, Capri in Italy is by far on the top of my list. At this point it has moved up to be the tittle of my list, really! I have the thought of me walking down one of its many hilly stoned walkways down to the beach with the air blowing my hair while my feet warm up at the touch of the hot ground. I may even fall down trying to take in the amazing view.  Jean Louis Deniot at home in Capri.

Jean Louis Deniot at home in Capri via belle vivir interior design blog
Now, this breath taking beach home in Capri designed by the one and only Jean-Louis Deniot makes my wishes go one step further and of all of a sudden I start thinking how about a vacation home there, even if it’s in a million year?  One can dream! Had I not read that Jean-Louis Deniot designed this home I would’ve thought that it was created by nature itself, especially the outside.  Enjoy!