LETTERS FROM PARIS

The city that has never confused restraint with coldness, and never explains itself to visitors. Letters From Paris goes behind the courtyard doors: the ateliers where gilding, marquetry and upholstery are still taught properly, the apartments where nothing matches and everything agrees, the shops that have sold the same thing beautifully for generations. We look inside the Mobilier National, the state furniture workshops founded under Louis XIV, still restoring the nation’s collection and still commissioning living designers to add to it. Plus the architecture read street by street, hotel bars with the best proportions in Europe, and the addresses Parisians give only when asked twice.

Each edition carries the city’s palette, taken here from boiserie grey and Mobilier National gilt; what we have learned about sourcing in Paris, including the ateliers worth the wait; and a letter to the city at the back.