Miguel Flores-Vianna
If you could have a second home anywhere, where would you live? I would live in Greece. I think of Greece every day of my life.
Tell us about your childhood bedroom? My childhood bedroom was separated from the main part of the house, and I loved being away from everybody, it made me feel quite grown up and responsible. It also gave me the freedom to play music louder than most of my friends could, for example, and to stay awake doing whatever I wanted without my parents poking their noses in the room. Of course I had all my things there, books, toys, music, but it was the sense of freedom what I loved the most.
What’s the first investment piece you ever bought for your house? The first ‘serious’ thing I ever bought for my apartment in NY was a work by the artist Donald Baechler. I got it at auction, and my reaction to it was instinctive, a sort of ‘have to have it’ moment. I didn’t check provenance or nor did I read its condition report. I wanted it and I got it. The extraordinary thing was that, had I read about the piece’s provenance, I would have not only ‘have to have’ it because I liked it so much but, also, because its previous owner was Marian McEvoy, whom I love.
In the history of design, if you could hire any designer, who would it be? It would have to be a composite of the late antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs and my friend Charlotte di Carcaci.
No room is complete without books.
People think of me as aloof, but I am really shy.
Things you omit from:
A flower arrangement: Too many flowers, I like flowers to be loose, simple.
An hors d’oeuvre platter : I don’t like hors d’oeuvres, one has to keep an appetite for the proper meal
A bar cabinet : my bar is very humble I only really keep vodka, maybe scotch and sometimes gin.
A song for:
Dinner at home/ Of lately we are listening to Stacey Kent, an American who sings jazz and Bossa Nova in English, French and Portuguese.
Working at your desk/ I have been listening to a lot of Ahmad Jamal jazz, somehow his music connects with all those things that I miss about NY and my constant wanderlust. I really like his album Marseille.
Going for a run/My favorite exercise song is So Clear by Kraak and Smaak
Biggest Vice? French fries!
If you were on an Ambien high and internet shopping, what would you buy? I would buy porphyry, specially anything that may have been in the late dealer Oliver Hoare’s possession.
Do your clothes reflect your design sensibility, if so, how? I don’t think they do. I wear uniforms, or try to, khaki trousers, rumpled shirts and blazers. My design sensibility is more eclectic.
Who is your star crush? They are both dead, does that count? And they were both writers, although one’s war experience merited a film starring Dirk Bogarde. They are Robert Byron, a travel writer who died in WW2 and Patrick Leigh Fermor, my ultimate wanderlust crush who lived between Greece and England. The movie Ill Met by Moonlight, released in 1957, is about his role fighting the Nazis in Crete.
What is the one thing you would never decorate your home with, but don’t detest when you see others do it? A home decorated in one specific style. For myself I like eclecticism
If there were a fire, and you could only keep one design book, what would it be? I would probably expire in the act of trying to decide which one to keep.
For posterity, what would you like your work to be known for? I hope that what I do will, one day, inspire someone to be curious, to go out of his or her comfort zone and to discover different worlds.
A Few Favorites:
Movie: My favorite movie choice changes all the time. Right now is one called Into Great Silence, a two hour documentary on the life of Carthusian monks in a monastery in the French Alps. There is no dialogue as the monks keep a vow of silence. It is immensely poetic and extremely beautiful to watch, with images that look like those Polaroids Cy Twombly took in his houses: grainy, pale, elusive and of an infinite elegance.
Book: The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
Scent: For the body: I love those old fashioned citrus colognes one finds lots in Spain and Sicily but, last year, I bought about ten bottles of Pereja, a lemon scent, in Turkey so that is all I wear right now. In these days of lockdown I am into long showers and lots of Pereja afterwards. For the home: I love the scent of blooming hyacinths during the deepest of winter, when spring seems so far away.
The fabric you always come back to: I love chintzes, specially Hollyhocks from Jean Monro
Dream project: As a photographer I would love to travel the length of the Silk Road to do a book on its monuments and landscapes. If I were a designer I would want to do a house, for myself, with a wrap-around veranda in the middle of an orchard in the Peloponnese. I would fill it with classical sculptures, Islamic tiles, old velvets, curtains made with saffron colored rough linen and Kilims, old peasant pottery, Picassos and Elizabethan portraits. Each summer I would grow masses and masses of hollyhocks by the veranda.
Meal: Roast chicken and German potato salad. Watermelon afterwards.
Drink: White wine, with ice, drunk in small glasses during summer nights at Xeri Elia, an outdoor taverna in Hydra, Greece. Perhaps my favorite restaurant in the world.
Hotel: My choice would be the old Yasil Ev in Sultanahmet, Istanbul, right next to Agia Sophia. It was dusty and sleepy and the likes of President Mitterrand, John Le Carre and Queen Sofia of Spain often stayed there. Most expensive room $150. Alas, they have recently renovated it and it looks great, but all that old dust is gone.
Travel Destination: I would love, love to visit Persia and Afghanistan. But that is, unfortunately, not quite possible these days. On the other hand to feel happy and alive and full of projects while walking a Manhattan street, is one of the destinations I will never tire of. I love NY.
Artist: How could I choose only one? This is not a fair question
Thing to collect obsessively: Memories
Era in the history of design: The years when all those English collectors/decorators/writers/editors ruled the waves and roamed the world finding marvels, the years of Christopher Gibbs, Oliver Hoare, Bruce Chatwin, Teddy Millington Drake, Min Hogg. For me they had the best taste in the world.
Museum: The Prado in Madrid. That one is my fave. Let me add that any visit to the Prado is twice as charming as I always follow it up with a stop in one of those open air cafes along the Paseo de la Castellana to have ‘un aperitivo’, surrounded by charming 70-something year old ladies turned out in their impeccable Sunday bests, no matter what the day. Aaah, Madrid, such a great city.
Paint Color that always look great: Sky Blue
Favorite person to follow on Instagram: Alexa Hampton, of course.
Dogs, Cats, or No Pets? I love Nacho, a black lab who lives in California.
