Athena Calderone - Live Beautiful

BY AMY ASTLEY

Athena Calderone is my friend who really can do it all. She is an actual domestic goddessemphasis on both words.

Athenas first book, Cook Beautiful, proved her fierce kitchen bona fides. Thanks to Athenas passion for photography, styling, and setting a glorious table, her food looks just as good as it tastes. This second book, Live Beautiful, reveals a flip (yet complementary) side to Athena the chef: Athena the gifted and intuitive interior designer, who has created several enviably photogenic homes for her family.

But dont hate her because she lives beautiful! Athenas secret weapon is her generosityshe is a sharer. She wants her readers, followers, and friends to make their personal world as delicious, attractive, and joyful as her own. Just look at her site or any of her Instagram posts (the entire enterprise aptly named EyeSwoon) and you will discover a natural writer and storyteller, one who openly confesses her own insecurities and challenges (in kitchen, home, and career), while unreservedly dispensing recipes, decorating tips, style hacks, and life advice. Sure, Athenas taste is elevated and aspirational, but her tone is unpretentious and inclusiveshe wants you to have what she is having! Ease, simplicity, and approachability are her mantra. And she often notes that beautiful does not necessarily mean complicated. Or expensive.

In this book, Athena has persuaded nineteen international creatives who have inspired her to open their doors. Documenting the homes of fellow influencers like Jenna Lyons, Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent, and Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer (the husband-and-wife duo behind Roman and Williams) with that signature clean-yet-dreamy EyeSwoon photography by Nicole Franzen, Athena unpacks the personal style and clever solutions behind each space. The accompanying text, in her clear and instructional, yet warmly affirmational voice, offers up practical DIY suggestions for anyone eager to reimagine their own environment.

When Architectural Digest published Athenas Cobble Hill townhouse in late 2018, the story instantly became a digital sensationher light, bright, and luxuriously windowed kitchen alone surely launched a million Pinterest boards. It has been fascinating and fun to see how both that space and Athenas much-admired Amagansett beach house keep evolving as they function as laboratories for her stylistic experiments and growth. The same can be said for the residences Athena has selected to record in this book. Some are familiar, some completely fresh to the eye, but all pass the Athena taste test: they share a spare, lean-yet-luscious aesthetic and feel simultaneously current and classic. Athena has the seemingly effortless ability to intuitand exemplifyjust how people want to decorate and eat today. She makes it so easy for the rest of us to live beautiful.

I have always been intrigued by the behind-the-scenes: the hidden process of how things magically come together and the spark of inspiration that incites a journey. When it comes to the design of our homesand the carefully curated objects that comprise themwhat intrigues me most is how the decisions that lead to an end result are rarely obvious. The aesthetics we create are an accumulation of seemingly small decor influencesa sofa you first spied in a shelter magazine that sent you on a hunt, ancient Greek columns that solved a hallway dilemma, or a mural that guides the painterly palette of your home. From a wellspring of inspiration, a dialogue begins, and the language of a room takes form, gently carrying you to the next decision. I want to amplify these quieter creative moments, because they are far louder than they seem. These are the choices that reflect our individuality and shape the alchemy in our homes.

You know how you can initially be moved by a piece of art, and yet gain a far stronger attachment once you learn about the artists approach? This is precisely how I feel about design. Oftentimes, this visual chemistry is difficult to articulate. It is the composition and silent space in between things, a wordless expression, a hybrid of contrasts that can cause both tension and curiosity. It is a personal journey steeped in spontaneity and trusting our eye.

In my work, I continually ask other creatives to pull back the curtain on their design practices. I want to better understand the fluidity of their process and the principles at play: How do you achieve the right balance of scale, texture, patina, and layering? Is it the mix of materials, periods, or styles? Is it the blend of high and low? Is it intuitive or more studied? Is it worth staying true to the architecture of the house, or is it better to diverge to reflect your own tastes? Understanding each fork in the road is fascinating and enlightening to me. The path is full of twists and turns.

Through the prism of the creatives in this book, I found beautythe intrinsic essence of which is both intangible and highly personal. Not only did it teach me something about their unique lens on the aesthetic world around us, but, more important, it also helped me understand my own eye. Each designer herethrough an accumulation of gestures, anecdotes, and historiesbrings a version of living beautiful to life. In summoning all of these sumptuous, enigmatic homes together, Im trying to understand as much about them as I am about conscious or unconscious design practices at play, not in an effort to mimic, but rather to help inform my own process. To Live Beautiful simply means to tinker with, explore, and ultimately find your own design gold at home. While beauty is different for each of the nineteen creatives Ive interviewed, the journey for achieving it is remarkably similardesign unfolds piece by piece in an intuitive, emotional, and heartfelt process.

As much as this book is about intimate creative portraits, it is also a practical deep dive, offering actionable ideas that will help you design your home. The inspiring photography here is accompanied by extractable tips on why the design works, the resources each homeowner drew from, and teacherly insight to help you understand the principles at play. Whether you are embarking on a gut renovation like Pamela Shamshiri or renting an apartment you cant alter like Signe Bindslev Henriksen, Live Beautiful will hopefully inspire and help you make choices in your own home, no matter your budget.

Over the past twenty years, I have owned and renovated eight homes. Yes, I am the rare bird who moves every two to three years and thoroughly enjoys every bit of it! Some may find the thought of ping-ponging around Brooklynas we haveto be unsettling. But to our family of three, it just feels natural and exciting. Every home has allowed me to strengthen my architecture and design muscles. I love to reinvent a space. I get silly excited by the all-encompassing research and find the scavenging and collecting of objects downright thrilling. I fixate on the problem-solving until I find resolution, and I crave the knowledge these renovations offer me. Most of all, I love the journey. Its exhilaratingif you allow yourself to be led.