The question I am asked most often is: How does AD find the projects it publishes? Our small but mighty team of editors and contributors stays in touch with a global network of architects, interior designers, and landscape designers, tirelessly tracking projects (often for years) before they land in the pages of Architectural Digest. But on an even more personal note, the editors pursue fascinating people—non-design professionals—we are fortunate to be acquainted with. I am endlessly intrigued by how those with creative and artistic vision craft their own environments, and I am not shy about snooping a bit!
I have known Aurora James, the cover star of our September Style issue, for many years now, following her impressive career first as the founder of the shoe and accessories company Brother Vellies and later as an author and activist and the mastermind behind the impactful Fifteen Percent Pledge initiative. When Aurora bought a house in LA a few years ago, I fully expected that her new nest would be something deeply inspiring, powerful, and special. The place reveals so much about her interior life and values, as all the most memorable houses do.
I met the writer Plum Sykes when we were both young editors at Vogue in the late 1990s, and we bonded in that sort of “work friends forever” way, never imagining that one day she would be a best-selling author (her latest book, Wives Like Us, is wickedly funny) and I would be publishing her breathtaking Cotswolds garden in AD. We seem to have come full circle, and I am moved by the words she has written, describing her family’s pastoral English paradise.
