EDITOR’S LETTER
I’m sure that in years to come, design pundits will look back on today as a significant Blue Period. The legacies of Picasso, Yves Klein, Giò Ponti et al suggest that creative blue moods are not unusual, but it’s a while since blue has had such a collective ‘moment’ across fashion, art, interior design and decor. While it might be a cliché too far to claim it as the new black, evidence suggests blue is actually the new white. This issue of Vogue Living was never intended to be an ode to blue — it kind of crept up on us. From the electric vibrancy of Majorelle blue in an apartment by Studio KO (page 112) to the midnight shades of a Lake Como home (page 128) and the festival of blue that is the Moroccan home of Samuel and Caitlin DoweSandes (page 160), the issue is — as our cover suggests — a rhapsody in blue. With timely prescience, artist Louise Bourgeois saw blue as the colour of freedom. In uncertain times, blue is perhaps more than a colour. It’s a refuge. When I worked as a fashion publicist in London in the 1980s, I was intrigued by the almost cult-like appeal of an Italian knitwear brand whose complex geometric patterns in earthy shades seemed the very antithesis of that power- dressing decade. Some 30 years later, we’re celebrating more than half a century of the global phenomenon that is Missoni and I’m particularly proud to be publishing the rarely glimpsed Milan home of the iconic brand’s original founder, Rosita Missoni (page 144), photographed exclusively for Vogue Living. At a lunch in Melbourne last year, I sat next to Italian-born, British-based interior designer Allegra Hicks. She asked me what I knew of the work of her mentor, Renzo Mongiardino. Pretence was futile under such close scrutiny. I admitted, truthfully, that I knew his name but beyond that, very little. A private note-to-self was made to research a feature. An Oscar-nominated set designer, architect and interior designer, Mongiardino referenced the past to create era- defining interiors for his generation’s A-list. In this issue (page 79), writer Jason Mowen lifts the lid on Mongiardino’s extraordinary career. Like me, you might not have known the story but you will recognise the brilliance.
NEALE WHITAKER