Café Design

Doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt last night. About a month ago I received an invitation to Bunny Williams’ latest book launch party at John Rosselli Antiques on 61st Street and was beyond tickled by the opportunity to meet Mrs. Williams personally. She is a design legend and one of America’s most talented and beloved decorators of our time, and I admire her greatly. Her new book, Love Affairs with Houses is gorgeous and I’ll share more about it on the blog once I get back home and have had a chance to thoroughly read it. In the meantime, I’d love to take you with me to last night’s party. It was impressive, I felt like a kid in a candy shop! Rooms filled with treasures, botanicals, hurricanes, beautiful textiles, crystal chandeliers and exquisite furnishings, the temptation was everywhere I looked… I knew that John Rosselli’s stores are a favorite among designers and a destination in themselves but I wasn’t expecting so much beauty, at every turn. Add to that the fact that designers whose work I’ve long studied and only wrote about were actually standing right next to me. It felt humbling and inspiring at the same time. I also got a chance to meet Stacey Bewkes and Susanna Salk, the fabulous duo behind the blog Quintessence, and they were both as lovely as you’d expect them to be.

Today I have the great pleasure to share with you an interview with one of the leading names in American interior design, Leta Austin Foster. I have tremendous respect and admiration for Leta’s work and could not be more excited to sit down with her for an interesting interview marking the launch of her new design concept, PREtty FABulous Rooms.  Leta founded her award-winning design firm – Leta Austin Foster Interiors – over four decades ago and in the years that followed, her work has been published in all the major design magazines as well as in a great number of interior design books. She has contributed design advice to Elle Décor, Veranda, Traditional Home and House Beautiful. House and Garden magazine named her one of America’s Greatest Interior Decorators. In 2015, Gibbs-Smith published “Traditional Interiors: Leta Austin Foster, India Foster and Sallie Giordano, written by Brian Coleman and Erik Kvalsvik, a book that celebrates her firm’s stunning portfolio.