WHY DON’T YOU … ?
Lady Amanda Harlech on extraordinary living
Fashion muse, writer, and Karl Lagerfeld’s right hand shares her eclectic ideas for a truly extraordinary life.
… WEAR PEARLS. Think sophisticated strands like Consuelo Vanderbilt or ropes of pearls such as those worn by the Contessa de Castiglione or Marchesa Luisa Casati. Layer them like Coco Chanel or wear a single- or doublestrand choker à la Grace Kelly. Channel Barbara Hutton by adding a little black jacket. Or simply scatter them over a dress and your hair as Mary Stuart did.
… PLANT A CHAMOMILE LAWN. Try this beneath an orchard of rare fruit trees woven into an arch for blossom in the spring.
… WRITE LETTERS AGAIN. Scribble on bespoke notepaper from Smythson – with a fountain pen.
… START MAKING AN ALBUM WITH PHOTOGRAPHS. Add descriptions underneath as Cecil Beaton did, and stick in anything that you collect on your travels: Wild flowers, an invitation to a wonderful masked ball or even poems.
… INVEST IN MILLER HARRIS’S SCENTED CANDLES. I would suggest the smell of rain.
… DESIGN YOUR OWN PLATES. Find a potter who will work with you. Make a green slip glaze with butterflies or an Ellsworth abstracted bird stone cut-out on a white ground.
… HANG A PIECE OF FABRIC YOU LOVE. It could be a 19th-century linen sheet. Let it flutter in the breeze like a moving painting.
… LEARN A NEW SKILL. Take on a foreign language like Argentinean Spanish or ballroom dancing.
… MAKE A ROAD TRIP VIA LINLITHGOW. Visit the most northern tip of Scotland and then take a ferry to the islands of ancient song and legend.
… SPEND A MOMENT EVERY DAY LOOKING UP AT THE SKY. Then donate to a charity that is saving the last wild fragments of the Earth.