The celebrated designer’s latest book, devoted to gleaning design inspiration from the personal scrapbooks and notebooks of great women of style—including her own. Interior designer Charlotte Moss has spent years collecting as well as creating scrapbooks—a pastime both meditative and instructive about her own ideas regarding design and style. In this unique book, Moss brings together her own scrapbooks along with those of notable women, both contemporary and historical, whose flair for style inspires us, including interior designer Elsie de Wolfe and society doyenne Gloria Vanderbilt—all never before published. Organized by theme—home, garden, travel, entertaining, and fashion—each chapter includes examples of Moss’s signature style mingled with excerpts from the scrapbooks of these great women. From the ambassador’s wife and bon vivant Evangeline Bruce, we learn that she preferred accessorizing tabletops with simple florets of broccoli in biscuit tins. And from the iconic Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, we see her notes and menus from the legendary White House dinners she threw. One piece (among many) of sage advice includes perfecting one extraordinary meal and serving it again and again, rather than experimenting endlessly.

Celebrated interior designer and renowned tastemaker Charlotte Moss turns her eye to the garden as a resource for interiors, entertaining, and good living. Charlotte Moss’s greatest muse is the garden, and this book shows the myriad ways the garden provides inspiration every day—indoors and outdoors. Touring readers through her own gardens, Moss offers insights on how to bring the garden into home life—including ideas for elegant flower arrangements from the garden and the table settings and menus they inspire, garden seating for entertaining and relaxing, interior color schemes drawn from nature, and much more. Moss also shares with readers key garden lessons that she has culled from her time spent exploring magnificent gardens around the world, including French and Italian, English and Russian, private and public, and also the gardens of great women, past and present. An extensive resource guide of notable gardens to visit is also included. With this verdant volume, Moss shows us—implores us—that "to behold our own patch of beauty and pleasure" (in Edith Wharton’s words) is not beyond our reach.

Offers the designer's insights on eleven projects, from finding her inspiration and making sketches to creating the room and adding finishing touches such as aromatic scents and decorative flowers.

The first volume of the Design Inspirations series takes an in-depth look at four exquisite rooms created by Charlotte Moss for four different New York decorator show houses. Drawing on inspiration from history as well as her own travels and favorite people, Moss shares her design philosophy and process from the initial spark of an idea to the final creation of a sophisticated and timeless room. The founder of Charlotte Moss & Company and Charlotte Moss Interior Design in New York City, Moss has designed houses throughout the United States and in the Caribbean.

A sparkling life of the monumental fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga When Cristóbal Balenciaga died in 1972, the news hit the front page of The New York Times. One of the most innovative and admired figures in the history of haute couture, Balenciaga was, said Schiaparelli, “the only designer who dares do what he likes.” He was, said Christian Dior,“the master of us all.” But despite his extraordinary impact, Balenciaga was a man hidden from view. Unlike today’s celebrity designers, he saw to it that little was known about him, to the point that some French journalists wondered if he existed at all. Even his most notable and devoted clients—Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Hutton, a clutch of Rothschilds—never met him. But one woman knew Balenciaga very well indeed. The first person he hired when he opened his Paris house (then furnished with only a table and a stool) was Florette Chelot, who became his top vendeuse—as much an adviser as a saleswoman. She witnessed the spectacular success of his first collection, and they worked closely for more than thirty years, until 1968, when Balenciaga abruptly closed his house without telling any of his staff. Youth-oriented fashion was taking over, Paris was in upheaval, and the elder statesman wanted no part of it. In The Master of Us All , Mary Blume tells the remarkable story of the man and his house through the eyes of the woman who knew him best. Intimate and revealing, this is an unprecedented portrait of a designer whose vision transformed an industry but whose story has never been told until now.

An American interior designer explains how to transform any home into a beautiful, comfortable winter space using simple decorating techniques and principles, with tips on furnishings, window treatments, fabrics, and accessories.

Celebrated artists, designers, photographers, writers, actors, and activists offer personal reflections on the essence of home in this inspirational book to benefit No Kid Hungry. Filled with personal insight, humor, creativity, joy, and poignancy, Home: A Celebration is a lyrical ode to sanctuary and a thoughtful and inspirational book to peruse again and again. Through the lenses of their crafts and passions, each illustrious contributor presents an offering—either a personal text or work of art—on what home means to them. Historian Jon Meacham discusses books as the emotional infrastructure of the houses in his life. Photographer Oberto Gili documents the glorious garden at his property in northwest Italy. Chef Alice Waters proffers a recipe from her home garden. Interior designers—including Nina Campbell, Steven Gambrel, and Kelly Wearstler—share aspects of their profession that define home to them. Other notable pieces are from Joan Juliet Buck, Julian Fellowes, John Grisham, Jill Kargman, Joyce Carol Oates, and Gloria Steinem. Charlotte Moss’s inspiration for this project is Edith Wharton’s The Book of the Homeless (1916), a fundraising effort that aided refugees and children during the First World War. For this book, a portion of the profits are benefiting the organization No Kid Hungry, which works to feed more than 11 million children in the United States who live in food-insecure homes.