Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2022 i Vogue Living

Richard Christiansen FOUNDER OF CHANDELIER CREATIVE AND FLAMINGO ESTATE A Babylonian retreat in Los Angeles is a far cry from Richard Christiansen’s rural northern NSW farmland upbringing but this speaks his capability to dream big. “My brother and I did not have many friends, but we got to exercise our imaginations all the time with the plants and garden,” he says. For this issue, his covetable home (page 92) has been captured by photographer Matthieu Salvaing. “Collaboration, to me, is an alchemical spark that allows you to see things in new ways,” he says. “It was a dream come true to see the garden and orchard through Matthieu’s eyes.” In the course of his career, Christiansen has worked with Hermès and Cartier, as well as “many of my heroes, from…

I’ve always had a passion for textiles and their application. I’m fascinated by how fabrics technically work, how they drape and can mould to a body or a piece of furniture. One of the great things about working with Mokum has been understanding how the textiles are loomed. It has certainly stretched my knowledge and allowed me to become much more sophisticated in my own appreciation of textiles. I’m a child of the ’70s and the idea of patterned paper is part of my DNA. I think both fabric and paper bring an extraordinary richness and whimsy, and can also work in tandem to soften a space. There is something very comforting about being enveloped in a patterned world. I have always loved the ’60s and ’70s look of continuous…

When Ken Done mounted his first solo show of paintings in 1980, the genial Sydneysider had already spent two decades as a creative director at advertising agencies. He was a highly successful ad man, holding roles at top firms in New York and London. But he didn’t feel truly fulfilled by the work. Luckily for Done, that first exhibition at Holdsworth Gallery was a success. He ended his advertising career and began to paint intensively, developing an exuberant and youthful visual identity that drew comparisons with Keith Haring and David Hockney but was unmistakably Australian. “Ken truly influenced the look and feel of modern Australia,” says Romance Was Born cofounder and Done collaborator Anna Plunkett. “His use of colour and technique is unapologetically ‘Ken Done’ — it’s instantly recognisable.” It’s…

Few would guess that the fervent applause greeting artist and inaugural La Prairie Art Prize recipient Atong Atem on a recent afternoon at the Art Gallery of New South Wales would prompt a key moment of self-realisation. “I knew what the prize was. And I knew what the award was. But it wasn’t until we were actually doing the events that it was like, ‘Oh my god, this is for me’,” the photographic artist recalls. “It was really overwhelming. It felt, as much as I have confidence in myself and my practice as an artist, there is so much uncertainty. It made me realise that I didn’t have half as much confidence in myself as I thought I did.” That this intelligent and charismatic woman clad in a bold aquamarine…

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We’re always looking for that element that will fuck things up,” says David Flack of design firm Flack Studio. “It’s very important for our spaces to feel layered and non-prescriptive.” Flack teamed up with NTF Architecture to create Emplacement, a five-bedroom, five-bathroom house overlooking Melbourne’s Como Park that defies expectation from its very outset, its diminutive proportions as viewed from the street belying the expansive 600-square-metre, three-floored interior within. The house, designed for a young couple and their four children, took six years to manifest, thanks mostly not to its extravagance, but instead to its refinement. Two materials dominate the architecture: concrete — “it captures the grey of Melbourne,” says architect George Fortey — and walnut veneer. “The concrete is about permanence,” he says, “and for the clients, putting down…

On a sunny Tuesday morning last year Jeremy Bull, principal architect at Alexander &Co., found himself outside smashing stone tiles. “I hit them with a hammer, threw them against the wall and dropped them from various heights,” he says. But despite how it might sound, Bull wasn’t having an angry outburst on site. He was actually on a quest to create a perfectly imperfect kitchen floor for a home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Wabi-sabi carried out in dramatic fashion. The finished floor is the lovechild of ’70s-era crazy paving and an elegant hotel by the Mediterranean. It is made from three different kinds of natural stone broken into irregular shapes and is at once busy and beautiful, much like the young family who call this cliff-top property home. The owners,…

Beale Street, Memphis It was incredibly important for my team and I to become familiar with Elvis’s Southern experience. We visited both Tupelo [Presley’s birthplace] and Memphis, and also followed Elvis’s touring itinerary to absorb the topography of the landscape. We were particularly sensitive to re-creating an environment that wasn’t culturally our own. Travelling to Beale Street to experience it firsthand was invaluable. Nothing replaces actual experience when trying to tap into the spirit of a location. While Baz is always meticulous with research and detail, it was especially so with Beale Street. He wanted it re-created truthfully but also in a way that amplified its part in Elvis’s story. My team delved through countless Memphis archives to ensure every detail of the set was as historically accurate as possible.…

I lived in Bondi and Tamarama as a teenager and young adult, and they weren’t enviable places to live. Back then I couldn’t have imagined doing what I’m doing now. The fact is that I stumbled into design — I didn’t study it; I studied fine art. My ambitions were not those of a person who had always dreamt of being an industrial designer because that really wasn’t on my agenda. Now, I’m literally doing (almost) everything that I could ever have dreamt of doing. I would describe what I do now as somewhere between a job and a hobby, although it’s more of a job at this point. I shoehorn in moments of creativity to the more mundane aspects of having a company and a business. It’s extremely hectic,…

If looking for a little respite in trying times, Truman Capote’s most famous protagonist had one suggestion: “What I found does the most good,” Holly Golightly explained to readers back in 1958, “is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there.” While we can’t vouch for the scientific properties of a visit to Tiffany’s, Golightly had a point. After all, it’s hard to overstate the brand’s significance in the postwar American consciousness. Andy Warhol designed Christmas cards for it; renowned jeweller Jean Schlumberger came on board; and then, of course, Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s became not just a bestseller, but a lauded film in which the…

It was in the crucible of Melbourne’s 1980s clubland that music, film, fashion and design began dancing to one syncopated beat and posturing to a different modernity. The Cold War was peaking, Reaganomics ruled, and counterculture was resetting everything as the city’s brightest young things raged against the dying of the light. “We all expressed ourselves in the most individual way we knew how,” recalls fashion powerhouse Fiona Scanlan, cofounder of the Scanlan and Theodore label — who back then belonged to a coterie of cool kids counting teenager Martin Grant — who make-shifted fashion into a new frontier. “I think back and compare it with now and how people develop as creatives or designers. We just did what we thought we needed to do, but we did it with…

Embroidered visual detail, sumptuous fabrics and animal print have all found a place in producer and costume and production designer Catherine Martin’s latest collaboration, The Royal Menagerie collection with Mokum. Evocative names recall striking motifs in Elvis Presley’s life — Royal Peacock, Monkey Business, Midnight Symphony, Jungle Room and Bengal Tiger, to name but a few. A cushion upholstered in a plush, patterned textile will bring a touch of decadence to proceedings that Presley would no doubt appreciate.…

How does Elvis Presley and his iconic style relate to a Vogue Living issue guest-edited by me now in 2022? Well… it all starts with Baz Luhrmann being fascinated by Elvis. In fact, in the 30 years Baz and I have known each other, Elvis has been an abiding interest culminating in Baz’s most recent movie, Elvis of which I was lucky enough to be the production designer, alongside Karen Murphy, and the costume designer. The story delves into the complex dynamic between Elvis and his manager Colonel Tom Parker spanning over 20 years, from the singer’s rise to fame to his unprecedented stardom, against the backdrop of an evolving cultural landscape, the civil rights movement and the loss of innocence in America. Being on Baz’s train to Memphis has…

Picture this,” entreats Will Huxley, one half of the contemporary arts coupling known as The Huxleys, who have just wrapped production on a photographic series that frames a pair of intergalactic queer Elvises falling to earth and engaging with the Outback. “We’re in the middle of country Victoria, dressed in full-sequinned costumes, gold guitars, tight bums, big pompadours, blue and green faces — the full showbiz fizz — about to take our first frame for the warm-up shot hitchhiking, and this ute, with a dog hanging out, drives up the dead-end dirt road and a guy yells out, ‘My dog likes the look of you’.” The air heavies with menacing ambiguity, continues Garrett Huxley, as he describes 30-plus heat melting their metallic faces. The driver alights and carries on: “I’ve…

Last year, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain was preparing to open the doors of its latest exhibition, a collection of paintings known as the Cherry Blossoms series. The 30 works were by Damien Hirst — easily one of the most successful artists today — and they marked his return to solo painting. In other words, the show was a very big deal. And not only that, but it marked Hirst’s first museum exhibition in France. “He’s a huge name, but people didn’t have the chance to see his work, except when you take the train to go to London,” says Hervé Chandès, the institution’s long-time creative and general director. “So this was the premiere.” The show was, unsurprisingly, a great success. But it would be easy to look at…

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The client and designer’s professional relationship can be a tricky one. Translating a client’s hopes and dreams into a material form that ticks all the boxes isn’t an exact science. The plan of attack an interior designer or architect comes up with will express itself in bricks and mortar, tiles and textiles, as well as a tailored layout that reflects a particular lifestyle. But what of that intangible but knowing sense of home? A design professional has to conjure welcome comfort via these bare building-block elements. Imagine carrying the weight of this responsibility, then adding a family client, as well as the need to protect the time-capsule heritage of one of Sydney’s most admired addresses into the equation. In the hands of Tania Handelsmann and Gillian Khaw of interior design…