Tea at Trianon: Hill House

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Hill House

From Architectural Digest:

After running her company out of a string of New York co-working spaces, Nell Diamond—founder of the endearing lifestyle brand Hill House Home—was ready to settle into what she describes as her “big-girl office.” As with most coming-of-age stories, appearances play a role: To properly outfit the frill-filled brand’s SoHo office, Diamond tapped longtime friend CeCe Barfield Thompson.

Over the course of six months, Barfield Thompson pored over Hill House Home’s stash of romantic prints that appear across its bedding, homeware, and clothing lines and translated them into uplifting interiors. “Nell shared all her art with me, and it was such an amazing opportunity,” Barfield Thompson tells AD PRO. “So much of my job is synthesizing a personality. I took a brand and did that same exercise, but instead of pulling from my library, I got to pull from Nell’s.”

Hill House Home, famed for its flouncy Nap dress, was founded in 2016, and ever since it’s felt like a community as much as a business, Diamond says. That’s why Barfield Thompson envisioned the office as a clubhouse, beginning with the wowing entry swathed in blue-on-white botanicals. “When people walk in, I want them to be transported. You come off the elevator into a dark hallway, and then you’re in this boudoir,” Diamond says. A riff on a classy ladies’ dressing room of yore—complete with fainting couch, curtained wardrobe, and frilly vanity skirt—this dreamy area is the only one devoid of natural light, providing Barfield Thompson the opportunity to “play with intense color and pattern,” the designer points out. (Read more.)