scale private material culture so
luxurious yet so refined that it can
only be attained over generations,
almost never purchased and
orchestrated outright, except, of
course, where great talent happens
to merge with great wealth, as in
the case of Hubert de Givenchy,
or that of certain projects recently
completed by the late Alberto
Pinto.
Says Christopher Hyland, "Many
generations of ghostly time travel
are necessary to create such
interiors. There is an obvious
historicity, a maturity about these
interiors. De Nicolay informs us
that these houses, like the White
House, the Forbidden City or the
Kremlin, have had generations
of design mishaps but mostly
triumphs, resulting in a generational
accumulation of treasure, hardly a
HYLAND
