Exploring the World of Luxury

The best of curated luxury….

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Dine Alfresco | Shop Outdoor Dining Furniture

The table set outside is one of the oldest acts of civilization. Long before walls defined the room, the meal defined the gathering — and the gathering, almost always, happened en plein air. The Romans formalized it with the triclinium, the three-sided arrangement of couches set in the garden, where the ceiling was the sky and the host’s ambition was expressed as much in the setting as the bounty served to guests. The great royal courts of Europe carried this understanding forward. At Versailles, the gardens were not backdrop — they were dining stage. Louis XIV dined in them, received in them, performed the ritual of court life in them. The outdoor dining table was as grand as the indoor dining table. It was life well lived. Café culture made outdoor dining democratic. Paris exported the sidewalk cafe table to the world. The French philosophy was that a meal eaten outside alongside the pulse of the street as the world passed by was life meets meal. The Italians understood this instinctively with dining Al fresco, a tradition that lives on and has been adopted around the world. The outdoor dining table and its companions have evolved and expanded across myriad styles for every taste.

Let’s Throw Some Shade – Shop Outdoor Umbrellas & Shade

Shade began as a power move. The word umbrella traces back through Italian to the Latin umbra — meaning shadow and/or shade. Before it was a design object, before it was a considered element of outdoor living, it was the oldest status symbol in recorded history. The instinct to seek shade is as old as humanity itself. What changed, over millennia, was who was allowed to take cover under it. The earliest evidence of the umbrella as shade appeared in ancient Egypt around 2450 BC — palm fronds, feathers and stretched papyrus fastened to poles, held aloft by servants over pharaohs and gods moving in procession beneath the African sun. Not for rain but for shade from the sun and for the unmistakable power statement that came with it. In Assyria, only the king held the right to be shaded by an umbrella or parasol. The carved reliefs of Persepolis show Persian kings attended by servants bearing canopied shade over their heads. In ancient Mesopotamia the message was identical — shade was only for the powerful. China took the concept further and engineered it into something enduring. Around 1100 BC the Chinese were the first to waterproof the shade material, waxing and lacquering paper and silk canopies into all-weather instruments. Archaeological digs at Luoyang later uncovered bronze castings of collapsible umbrella mechanisms dating back to the Zhou dynasty around 600 BC — the earliest known folding design, recognizable in its geometry even today. Social hierarchy was built into every tier — the Emperor traveled beneath four elaborate layers of canopy. Only the Chinese royal family was permitted use of yellow shade. The rulers of Siam and Burma extended this tradition across the region, commanding between eight and twenty-four tiers of canopy overhead. The message was architecture as power: the bigger the shade, the greater the power being shaded by it. The Silk Road carried Chinese umbrellas into Europe by the late sixteenth century, arriving in a world that found them exotic, fashionable and expensive. For centuries the outdoor umbrella remained a luxury object — heavy, elaborate and the exclusive province of those who could afford both the umbrella and the person to shade them with it. That exclusive status finally changed in mid-eighteenth century England when Jonas Hanway became the first man to carry an umbrella regularly in public. He was mocked, pelted by coachmen who feared umbrellas would eliminate their trade, and persisted anyway. By the 1790s the umbrella had shed its associations with exclusivity and femininity and begun its migration toward everyday object. The outdoor umbrella as we know it today is the direct descendant of that five-thousand-year history — same essential architecture, same fundamental purpose evolved. Powder-coated aluminum frames. Performance canopy fabrics engineered for UV protection, water resistance and fabric color retention. Cantilever designs that shade without a center support pole. Integrated heating and lighting for use at night. What remains unchanged is what shade does for an outdoor space, and for the people occupying it. It is a stylish element that adjusts the outdoor space, making it more comfortable — hello outdoor living and entertaining. Click-through to view the luxe-edit.com curation of outdoor umbrellas and shade — from the sculptural and the statement-making to the architecturally scaled — shade your outdoor space in style.

It’s a Wrap – Beach Towels & Inspired Places to Dry Off

It begins, as so many great things do, in a hammam. Seventeenth century Bursa, Turkey. The Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, and its hammam — the communal bath — at the center of daily life. Social. Sensory. The place to be seen. The cloth used after the steam was called a peshtamal — hand-woven cotton or linen, often embroidered, narrow enough to drape, long enough to wrap. In the Ottoman world a beautifully crafted peshtamal reflected the standing of the person who carried it. Artisans who had mastered carpet-weaving brought that same knowledge to cloth, and the first looped towel — the havlu, meaning simply “with loops” — was born in Bursa’s workshops. Slow to make. Expensive to own. Unmistakable luxury. Two centuries later, a British banker named Henry Christy visited Constantinople and encountered the havlu. He brought samples home to England, and together with his brother Richard studied its construction. Their employee Samuel Holt designed a machine to weave the looped fabric at scale and terry cloth was born. In 1851 the Christy brothers took their terry cloth towels to the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, Queen Victoria approved, and became one of their first clients. The havlu had traveled from the hammams of Bursa to the most celebrated exhibition in the world. For centuries the beach was not a sought after destination, one endured the outdoors when necessary, that was it. That changed in 1923 when Coco Chanel returned from the French Riviera accidentally tanned making tanned skin the new currency of a life well lived. The beach, the swimming pool and the great outdoors were suddenly de rigueur. The havlu (terry cloth towel) already a century old had found its place in the world. A century of evolution followed giving the world what we know today, the beach towel. Beyond their utility they are a style statement and the design houses realized this. Which brings us to this curation, a journey into that world as well as enticing places to travel to with your luxurious, thirsty friend. Bon voyage!

Exploring the World of Luxury

Latest Articles

Dine Alfresco | Shop Outdoor Dining Furniture

Let’s Throw Some Shade – Shop Outdoor Umbrellas & Shade

It’s a Wrap – Beach Towels & Inspired Places to Dry Off

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