By Carmel Brantley / Vendome Press
Carmel Brantley begins TROPICAL LIVING with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and ends it with the same wish for her readers. Soon after she moved to South Florida, the flower was a revelation. Raised in the Midwest, she had never heard of a plant that woke after dark and used the moon for light. Her husband, Robert, gave her the knowing smile of a man who grew up at the beach. That first breath of the tropics is the book’s starting point. Tropical living, she says, is as much about the senses as about anything you can touch.
Interior design by Ellen Kavanaugh
Her introduction argues that tropical style goes past palms and flamingos, wicker and rattan. She also admits she never planned to be a photographer. (Robert was the photographer in the family, and her own early try ended when she forgot to load film while shooting a minor league baseball team). She went back to advertising and painted her first apartment battleship gray, which suited Minnesota. Then came Florida, and an assignment to photograph all 35,000 square feet of the Harold Vanderbilt estate. That is when the design bug bit.
Interior design by Meg Braff
The exuberant cover tells the story in one image: a gallery wall of fruit, fish, and birds hanging over an alligator on a sofa. A white, coral-shaped mirror hangs on a wall of framed botanical and bird prints on grasscloth. Below it, an aqua banquette on a rattan base holds a green alligator pillow, and a coral sofa trimmed in white fringe faces a striped wicker table. The title is in bright yellow.
Aptly, Aerin Lauder wrote the foreword. She grew up visiting her grandparents Estée and Joe Lauder in Palm Beach and now has a 1930s Howard Major house of her own. Her own taste runs to a restrained palette and clean lines, which makes her a fair witness to a book this colorful. She names some of the designers Brantley has photographed: Amanda Lindroth, Miles Redd, Mark D. Sikes, and Meg Braff. The book is organized by room, from entry foyers to pool houses.
The Colony Hotel, with interiors by Mimi Maddock McMakin and Celerie Kemble.
The chapter essay on public spaces, by Mimi Maddock McMakin and Celerie Kemble, is full of particulars. They say a good lobby or clubroom should invite, then bring that idea home. At Kemble Interiors, a kitchen banquette is all-day seating for morning coffee and afternoon puzzles. Family rooms get swivel chairs, layered throws, and extra pull-up chairs. Host chairs at a dining table need not match the rest, upholstered walls soften the sound, and a mirrored tabletop catches the candlelight.
Interior design by Jessica Lagrange
Brantley’s last thoughts go back to the jasmine. She calls the book a postcard to the reader, with “Wish you were here!” on the back, and hopes the scent fills the air wherever you are reading. Kemble and McMakin put the design goal another way. The best rooms, they write, have “a sense of occasion that doesn’t require a dress code to enjoy.”
Add this book to your design library. No passport required, and nobody will check your shoes.
TROPICAL LIVING
Carmel Brantley / Vendome Press
Available through Vendome, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and the Rizzoli Bookstore.