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‘Gore Vidal must be one of my more exhilarating interviewees’ writer Natasha A. Fraser. ‘No doubt because he was an essayist at heart, understood the importance of pithy details – “history is gossip,” he rightly reminded - and enjoyed meeting younger folk. I was received in state at La Rondinaia – his majestic white villa set amongst the rocks in Ravello, above Italy’s Amalfi coast – where he lived with his long-time boyfriend Howard Austen from 1972. True, Gore liked showing off but he was also socially gracious: charming, self-effacing and au courant. Renowned for his bon mots and quotes, one led to breaking the ice and our becoming friends. ‘Pretty boys don’t age well,’ he declared. ‘Well, you look pretty, darn good,’ I replied. It was late December 1996 and Gore was a magnificent looking 71-year-old. ‘Natasha, I was never a pretty boy actor,’ he said in that voice of his, described by the writer Rachel Cooke as being ‘as cold and as dry as a well made martini.’ It was a make-or- break situation but I swiftly apologized, fibbed that my occasional nickname was ‘Faux Pas Fraser’ and we then both collapsed into laughter. There were many Gores. In public, he was an ideally suave date, snapped alongside actresses like Claire Bloom, Susan Sarandon and Joanne Woodward. In private, particularly in the company of women, he was Signor Mild: preferring to being amused over being annoyed. It also helped that Diana Phipps, one of his best friends, introduced us, and that our three nightly discussions concerned the film producer Sam Spiegel (1901 - 1985.) Gore had written two screenplays for him: ‘Suddenly, Last Summer’ (1959) and the disastrous ‘Night of the Generals’ (1967). ‘I became famous for working with Sam twice,’ Vidal told me. ‘When asked why I returned, I would say, ‘well, I couldn’t believe him the first time.’’ Read the full story about American writer Gore Vidal with words by Natasha A. Fraser’s (@ticklishtash) in print in our Issue Ten.

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New York gallerist Angela Westwater and her husband David Meitus’ Uptown apartment on Fifth Avenue plays like a graceful foil, the art and furniture unfolding in an elegant, horizontal sprawl. Many of the gallery’s personages turn up on the walls and sometimes around the table—proof that what one does for a living is often inextricable from how one lives. Meitus, who runs a showroom that specializes in mosaics, tile, and other surface materials, was at the time living in Chicago in a noted glass-and-steel house. He was in the market for art, and a friend recommended a downtown gallerist, which led to a Richard Long acquisition and a spark. In 1992, the couple wed— Meitus for the first time, Westwater with a young daughter from a previous marriage. By that point, Meitus had tired of what he calls the “extravagant minimalism” of his jewel-box Chicago place. “Everything had to be perfectly in place all the time,” he says. Their Upper East Side home has a different kind of ease. “We can have fifty or a hundred people here, and after they leave, the house looks the same.” Finding a gem of an apartment helps. In the mid-1990s, when they came upon the eleventh- floor unit overlooking Central Park, it belonged to a Venetian count who had just broken off an engagement. Renovations had been abandoned; there were wires coming out of the walls. As for who would decorate the apartment? “There was no question that Jed (Johnson) was the guy,” says Meitus. Pictured: Richard Long’s “Mud Circle” (2004) hangs in the home office. Read the full profile of @angela_westwater with photography by @cobeyarner and words by @lauraregensdorf in print in our Issue Ten.

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New York gallerist Alan Eckstein is a design fanatic and autodidact with an innate sense for what is coveted at any moment in time. Right now, he believes, Art Deco is peaking. But while most of the furniture he carries at The Somerset House is from the 20th century, his instinct tells him that brown furniture—from Windsor chairs to Biedermeier dressers—is ripe for a comeback. “I think Biedermeier is really happening right now,” he says. “I think Bauhaus, too, is in an interesting place. The materials—metal, plywood— have a texture that feels right now.” Now that him and his wife Haley Loewenthal have a four-year-old, Luke, Eckstein appreciates that his wife is the practical yin to his frenzied yang. Their roles are clearly defined. “She’s the rational one,” he says, “and I’m completely irrational. There is no middle ground—but she lets me be that way.” Loewenthal, who spent years as a fashion stylist, runs Somerset House’s business side in addition to weighing in on aesthetics. “Freelancing is entrepreneurial,” she says. “You learn to run things whether you want to or not. Even if I must be the one who says, ‘You can’t spend that money.’ I sometimes feel like Toby from The Office.” Pictured: A handblown Murano glass vessel by Dana Arbib sits atop a rustic painted wood low table by an African mahogany stool by Green River Project and a French club chair. Step into the @thesomersethouse with photography by @garesai and words by @ingridabram in print in our Issue Ten.

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A pencil portrait on paper from Andy Warhol’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ series (1975) and a glazed ceramic bas-relief by Fernand Léger (1952) hang in the Parisian living room of interior designer Jacques Grange. As Rebecca Voight writes: “Jacques Grange would like you to believe that everything in his illustrious design and life is a case of serendipity, but he never forgets to do his homework. Case in point is his Parisian apartment; once the home of the writer Colette, her “lit-radeau” chaise longue reclines by the window where she once watched the children playing in the gardens below. Grange who has lived here since the 1980s, acquired the place by chance when Mlle. Goudeket (the daughter of Colette’s last husband) called him six months after they met and offered it to him. In this apartment, historic and contemporary pieces fall into place, and as Grange’s partner Pierre Passebon says: “his style is impossible to describe. You just feel it.” Grange’s fine-tuned, effortless way has attracted clients including François Pinault, Isabelle Adjani, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Francis Ford Coppola, Leonard Lauder, Chanel and most notably Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé with whom he worked for close to five decades. They have all relied on him to second guess their inspirations and work with their collections, or help create them. In the case of families, the Grange habit now extends to their children. Working non-stop since the 1960s when he landed his first job as assistant to Henri Samuel, the most prominent French interior designer of the 20th century, Grange has been on intimate terms with countless styles and personalities, some of them beyond his time. For Samuel, he applied himself to the restoration of the Grand Trianon in Versailles and château updates for the Rothschild family while following up on the bronze and wrought iron furniture orders for major clients with Diego Giacometti who he recalls was “charming, easily distracted by girls and incredibly slow.” Read the full profile of @beaujolais1944 by @rebeccavoight with photography by @jesperdlund in print in our Issue Six.

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When stepping foot inside Café Cecilia, it doesn’t instantly feel like London, or especially like being in Hackney on Regent’s Canal where it’s located. The restaurant feels like it could be in Copenhagen or even Milan. It’s slick, yet airy, has edge, but is welcoming to all, even children and dogs and it’s chic, but not trying too hard to be. It speaks to the vision of its chef-owner, Max Rocha, who after cutting his teeth at iconic restaurants like Spring, St. John and The River Cafe, opened his own place in 2021, that now five years in, has become one of London’s new institutions. Max Rocha started his career in music. He worked at a label and found the work thankless to the point where he started to fall out of love with music. He eventually was let go which was a blessing in disguise because it led him to finding work in a kitchen, first starting at Skye Gynell’s seasonal produce-driven Spring in Somerset House. “I didn’t grow up as a foodie. People always ask me “Were you always into food?” and the truth is I wasn’t. I needed a job and I found one in a kitchen.”, explains Rocha. The work resonated with him. He enjoyed the straightforwardness of it all, clock-in, clock-out and working as part of a team where every role was integral, everyone in a kitchen has a specific purpose. “If I called out sick one day, the whole team would suffer because my portion of the food wouldn’t be there. I needed to be there, we all did. It wasn’t like working in an office at all”, says Rocha. Read the full profile of @cafececilialondon’s chef star @maxrocha__ with photography by @jacoblillis and words by @kylebeechey in print in our Issue Ten.

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