Observations from the Road – Mally’s Fall Newsletter

Hi Guys,

Oh heavens, where do I start?? Ok, I’ll start on Cape Cod, in Falmouth at the end of the summer.

Our delightful new editor in chief at New England Home magazine, Clint Smith, chose to shoot our West Falmouth house for their next summer edition! Sadly, he couldn’t be on the shoot with us, but the wonderful Karin Lidbeck Brent arrived with bundles of blooms piled in the back of her car. I was instructed to make food and set the table for a lunch party. Okay then! We were lucky to catch the absolutely last gorgeous day of summer – it was sunny and mild. After the shoot, we ate the photoshoot props, gazpacho for its colour – and fresh tuna salad Niçoise, because it’s a summer family favourite. Can’t wait to see it in print.

Karin has such a way with flowers –

And then right into full on Heading Home to Dinner panic! Of course, I can never make my life easy for myself, so I spent hours trawling my favourite junk stores looking for vintage footed glass bowls for my lemons that were going to adorn my Positano table. I have to live by what I preach – go vintage or go home!!

What an amazing 3rd year the Boston design community put together! We are now officially taking our place on the Boston fall social calendar – people are clamoring for last minute tickets, we are definitely a thing, and we love it! For those of you that don’t know the background, two of my very good designer friends, Elizabeth Benedict and Kristen Rivoli and I decided over a slightly wine soaked dinner that it was time that we built some community in the Boston Design Center. The life of an interior designer can be a pretty lonely one, and we wanted to make our Boston designer world a little kinder and friendlier. Our good friend, and wine aficionado, Adam Japko – he is the CEO of Esteem Media that owns New England Home magazine, and Kathy Bush, the wonderful publisher of the magazine were both all in from the start.

We felt that it was very important that our event helped the less fortunate members of our Boston community while we celebrated excellent design. Some of us had already had a relationship with the incredible nonprofit Heading Home, an organization that houses and helps rebuild the lives of homeless families in Boston. They have become the most wonderful partners over the years! Now we had to sell our idea to the design community. At first there were a million questions, but we figured it out along the way. We decided on a tabletop event, with the addition of bar carts, which was a stroke of genius by Elizabeth Benedict and gave the newer members of the design community the chance to get a start! Jamestown Properties, the owners of the Boston Design Center, joined the alliance and voilà! – our grand experiment became a real thing!! After this year’s sold out two-day event, we were proud to announce that we have to date raised $400,000 for Heading Home!

Clint Smith, Austin Mill, Cecilia Walker and Ann Newman and me, with my Positano Nights table. BTW, this is part of the team that came on my Wine and Design tour to South Africa a couple of years ago!

I used my new Nature’s Valley fabric for my table cloth and napkins. I designed the pattern from some lovely little corals I that picked up on one of my favourite beaches in South Africa. The plates from Positano are mine, from a lovely family trip to the Amalfi Coast many years ago. I use them regularly for parties in our Cape Cod house, they look so right there! And of course – the dreaded footed glass bowls!

The hubbie’s latest passion is making videos and he put together this lovely version of our dinner evening –

Here’s the link to his video:

While scrolling through my pics, I realize that I was a very busy girl leading up to our Heading Home event – it all went by in a bit of a blurrrrrr!

Later on in September, Yankee Magazine shot a lifestyle piece in our house and office in Lincoln. The wonderful Sarah Winchester was our photographer once again – she was on our Falmouth shoot. Sarah knows me and my vibe so well, she always gets it spot on. Here’s our quick lunch break – no one can work on a growling stomach!

Here’s our lovely team, Jessica Mosely Gorden, Sarah Winchester photographer extraordinaire, Kate Hathaway Weeks an editor for Yankee magazine and strangely an old client of mine back in the day! Peeping in at the end is my new floral queen friend Jenn Figge! She and I will be doing the Lenox Hill tabletop event together next year – should be amazing!

Team us!! Kristen, Devon and I on lunch duty, with gorgeous gifted dahlia’s in a vintage pot from Kate; girl knows the way to my heart!

Next on our busy September agenda was a quick trip Kristen and I took to our showroom in Kentucky, starting with a lovely party in the studio space of our good friend and fellow maker Alex Mason. The Ferrick Mason headquarters is located in the loveliest old Victorian building in Versailles – pronounced Verr Sailes – and don’t even try to say it any other way!! LOLS. Alex is a gifted artist and fabric and wallpaper maker. She also believes in healthy collaboration amongst our design community. A high tide lifts all the boats and all that!!

What a friendly, talented and glam crowd! Kentucky is heaving with fun designers!

I just loved the old-world vibe of Lexington, yes, travel opens your mind and dismisses preconceptions!

Next stop Miami for a showroom event in the gorgeous Monica James showroom, but first we were treated to a house tour and dinner at SoHo House – swoon – by the lovely owner Monica Goldsmith. BTW – don’t pet the doggie, apparently, he bites! LOL We just looked and admired him obviously!

Here I am showing my wares in Monica James – as my good friend and fellow commenter from the peanut gallery, Anna Brockway and I are always lamenting – ‘You need a lot of frocks to be in this business!!’

Here is Monica doing her showroom owner thing! The lunch was totally delicious!

Then Alex and I took our show on the road to Palm Beach and visited some major design firms all set up by the team at Monica James. Real face time is so important for brand building, and Alex and I yin and yanged through a full day of appointments – pretty exhausting but good to do it with a friend!

Here I am in the charming retail part of Kemble Interiors – a real treasure trove! More frocks!

At Hive Interiors in front of a wall of this amazing Ferrick Mason wallpaper – yes collaboration can be fun!!

I know this is out of order but I forgot to mention that we did a designer day in our Studio 534 showroom during design week, leading up to the Heading Home event. Good to meet our local supporters of the Mally Skok Design brand!

We used some of my Robberg Collection ceramics for our table layout –

And I was invited to talk on a fascinating panel by Boston Magazine interior editor Andrea Timpano to discuss the confluence of the fashion and interior design industry today. Really fun!

I am starting to run out of steam, but before I go, I wanted to let you know that, crazy woman that I am, I took off first thing in the morning after Heading Home to catch Decorex in London and check in with my offshore family! What was I thinking??

Here’s a taste of my London trip – enjoying my first visit to the visual abundance of Frieze Contemporary Art Fair with my darling daughter Jessica!

Here are some of our favourites! We were amazed how relatively affordable some of the works were, but everything we loved was sold. You must have to get in right at the start of the show.

The next day we did a quick run through the Decorex design show, it is now held separately from the rest of London Design Week, which I missed due to an overloaded schedule – surprise! I felt the new timing and venue made it lose some its je ne sais quoi…

Still it was good to check in on my usual favourite vendors and see some new offerings –

Wallpaper love!

The next day I left London and I gifted myself with a little side trip to Malta – all on my own! I’m always pushing the boundaries of new experiences; totally mad I know. I saw an Instagram post by a UK designer of this delightful hotel in Valetta. I just had to go and take a look for myself….

But more of that in my next post, I feel like a piece of chewed string after putting this newsletter together – talk to you again soon!

Here’s a sneak peek of the streets of Valetta which I totally adored though…

Next stop, going to check in on my lovely 88-year-old young mum in South Africa. But more of that later….