This is the weekly Style File, featuring what’s on the radar of The Globe’s lifestyle desk from the worlds of travel, home and design, wellness, fashion or beauty. Sign up for The Globe’s arts and lifestyle newsletters for more news, columns and advice in your inbox.
Between the covers
Assouline Plaza Athénée features more than 300 images.Assouline
Assouline Plaza Athénée
If you can’t afford to stay at the Plaza Athénée, one of Paris’s most storied hotels (rooms start around €2,000 a night) you might want to consider bringing home its new coffee table book. Assouline’s hefty, 272-page tome is clad in the hotel’s signature red colour – as bright as the geraniums that bloom from its balconies all summer – and features more than 300 images that take readers inside the lush suites and grand interiors of this famous hotel. Opened in 1913, it roared through the 1920s as the see-and-be-seen spot for the theatre crowd, then in 1947, Christian Dior opened up shop next door – often using the lobby and bar areas in fashion photo shoots. This cemented the hotel’s legacy as a haute-couture hot spot. Celebrities have always stayed here: Rudolph Valentino, Josephine Baker, Jackie Kennedy, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Mick Jagger, and in 1971 Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor checked in for six months. Even an episode of Emily in Paris was filmed in the hotel’s Eiffel Suite. Available for preorder in English or French at assouline.com as of Nov. 6, US$105. – Catherine Dawson March
Showroom tour de force
South Hill Home, in Toronto.Milan Surdi/Handout
Toronto’s South Hill Home marks 20 years in design
As much as technology has changed the way we shop for everything at home, stepping into a showroom still has the power to shift the way you imagine your living space. At South Hill Home in Toronto, for example, a visit might remind you of how sculptural everything from sofas to table lamps have become, reinforcing the idea that design-savvy rooms today are often meant to feel like gallery spaces. Or it might introduce you to a brand such as Atelier Tortil, with its abstract and geometric rugs that translate that artful spirit to your floors.
Founded in 2003 by interior designer Sandra De Luca and industry veteran Paul Harper, South Hill Home is celebrating 20 years this fall. Its philosophy, to connect Canadians with high-design names from around the world – with a special focus on options sourced from France – is articulated in its 13,000-square-foot space, which feels surprisingly intimate as you weave your way through its well-appointed salons.
To mark its first two decades, the store’s lower level has been revamped by Samer Shaath and Kevin Chan of the Toronto-based interior design office Nivek Remas. South Hill Home has also started representing Manufacture de Tapis de Bourgogne. The maker of hand-tufted carpets based in Moroges, France, creates work in collaboration with Damien Langlois-Meurinne, Pierre Yovanovitch, Bismut & Bismut, Studio Parisien and a host of other design world luminaries. – Andrew Sardone
For more information, visit southillhome.com.
Dazzling discovery
The largest yellow diamond ever discovered and mined in Canada, at 71 carats.Tiffany & Co. Studio/Handout
Tiffany & Co. cuts Canada’s largest yellow diamond
The allure of the yellow diamond, one of the most precious gemstones in the world, is only getting stronger.
The iconic 287.42-carat Tiffany Diamond discovered in 1877 has only been only worn by select few women (Mary Whitehouse, Audrey Hepburn, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé). This exclusivity has solidified a demand for this honey-like sheen, with more yellow diamonds popping up on the hands of celebrities or in new high-fashion collections. Recently, Tiffany & Co. acquired the largest yellow diamond ever discovered and mined in Canada, at 71 carats. The rough diamond from Canada’s Ekati mine in the Northwest Territories was transformed by Tiffany & Co. into two emerald cut yellow diamonds of more than 15 and 20 carats each. The company’s chief gemologist Victoria Wirth Reynolds notes their “unparalleled vivid yellow colour and brilliance.” Debuted in October, the diamonds’ prices are yet to be disclosed. – Aruna Dutt
Catherine Dawson March