In der aktuellen Ausgabe von Veranda

• RINGING in the WEEKEND
  Pop the Champagne: It’s our dressed-up, dusk-’til-dawn HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE for the ultimate celebration with friends. So drop your bag and freshen up, and we’ll see you downstairs. Cocktails are at six.
• Magic IN Miniature
  Collectors Bill Miller and Paul Landy spend more than 100 hours setting their Connecticut home aglow in a wonderland of rare and antique German ornaments.
• The RICH ROAD to DAMASK
  Named for the key trading hub of Damascus, the sumptuous Silk Road descendant reemerges in shiny new woven and printed tributes.
• Feast OF Florals
  The good china as you’ve never seen it: Birmingham floral designer Buffy Hargett Miller reimagines the artistry of iconic serving patterns in four festive centerpieces.
• 12 TRIMS of CHRISTMAS
  Floral maestro Mark Thompson unleashes wild winter bounty on New Orleans’s Hotel Peter & Paul with ideas from banister to bedroom, off-kilter garlands to a cure for the common fruit bowl.
• STAR SOJOURNS
  Age-dimpled beams, banana-leaf courtyards, vivid tilework: The year’s 16 BEST HOTELS and villas, manor houses and balés shine as ambassadors of their habitats from rowhouse-rich London to the rocky river banks of South Africa.
• The RIDES of a LIFETIME
  Wide-eyed adventurer Tracey Minkin channels early explorers as she sets out by rail, river, and Land Cruiser, slipping between eras into a new golden age of travel. Venice. Budapest. Nairobi. The names set a hook: circles inked on a map, fingers tapped on a drawing room globe, stickers layered on a valise. We set off from here. We head there—to a great city, up a grand river, into the African wild. We plan and thrill at what’s to come. A journey that echoes of historic provenance and links us with travelers of the past but that seizes us by the collar amid the high-velocity hurly-burly of 21st-century life and says: Slow down. Regard. Savor. These are grand journeys—these are the Great Journeys. But can something distinctly old resonate as powerfully today? Can we find the slow gear and inhabit the deeper beauty of such travel?
• Red-Hot Round Top
  Alessandra Branca two-steps into the antiques mecca, outfitting a 1,300-square-foot bungalow for Texas guesting with Italian gusto.
• ROUND TOP ROUNDUP
  How to hit the wildly popular antiques fair like a pro
• BLENDING—A — New Noir
  THERE’S MAYBE AN HOUR of sunlight left when I hop in Jeff Lewis’s silver F-150 hybrid to meet the icons of Oregon’s Willamette valley. “The idea is to build some context so you get a lexicon of how to speak about the valley and understand the wines,” Lewis says as we trace the emerald contours of the Dundee Hills he knows like the back of his hand. This is the valley’s most prestigious appellation and the home of Alexana vineyards and winery, whose portfolio Lewis manages. When pioneering winemakers planted the first vines in the hills in 1965, people said they were crazy—turns out they weren’t—and that can-do, counterculture spirit is as ingrained in the valley’s DNA as the iron in its ruddy Jory soil, left over from million-years-old lava flows.
• For the PEOPLE by DESIGN
  ON A SPRING DAY in 1954, hundreds of women donning cat-eye sunglasses, fascinators, and strands of pearls befitting the newly coronated Queen of the United Kingdom gathered in front of the Illinois governor’s mansion in Springfield. They were members of the state Parent-Teacher Association and had been invited by First Lady Shirley Breckenridge Stratton for tea (thus the sartorial nods to Her Majesty were not only au courant but also appropriate). Stratton had overseen a comprehensive redecoration of what was known as the People’s House, the largest and one of the oldest governor’s mansions in the United States, with the goal of making it feel more welcoming to the public.
• Golden Tidings
  IS THE DEN THE NEW DINING ROOM? DESIGNER INTERIOR DESIGN ALEX PAPACHRISTIDIS CONJURES A SPARKLING CHANGE OF SCENERY WITH AN INTIMATE HOLIDAY FETE AROUND THE BANQUETTE.
• A Very Merry MENAGERIE
  At home in Palm Beach, design matriarch Mimi McMakin delights in enchanting yuletide theater with zebras, gators, and giraffes—oh my!
• REVELRY in the PINES
  AREJUVENATING HOLIDAY GETAWAY can take many forms, from skiing in the Alps to sunning in the Bahamas. But for one extended family, it often happens at the end of a long red-dirt road on the banks of an oxbow lake “in the middle of nowhere Mississippi,” as designer Richard Keith Langham puts it. Black Bear Lodge is more than a physical destination; it’s also a way of spending time together. “The whole place speaks of Southern hospitality in a real, old-fashioned sense,” says Langham. “Big, comfy guest rooms; wonderful meals and roaring fires; great fellowship, plus a huge amount of time in the piney woods”—some 6,000 acres of piney woods to be exact.
• now serring: ARADIANT GLOW-UP
  This year’s holiday guest of honor: DARING, DIVINE COLOR for the most social spots in the house, from a crimson kitchen to a minty fresh bar.
• FASHIONING AN IDYLL
  Famed couturier Ralph Lauren on the uncomplicated glamour of his Jamaican winter escape and the comfort of sky, water, and dressing for dinner