As I was getting my hair done the other day, I was flipping through the pages of Vogue May 2014 issue. At the very end of it my attention was caught by an article about the Italian fashion designer, Giambattista Valli. Well the article wasn’t really about him but about his innovative Parisian apartment. It was not one of those “tour my apartment” articles that many of the designers, and other celebrities have. This article was different. It was very inspiring. It was like looking into the artist’s mind or something like that. His apartment is very traditional yet very modern… He does it by having the “shell” which is an old Parisian apartment (high ceilings with Victorian molding all around) and adding modern fun and colorful pieces to it. To me his apartment is like an artist’s sketchbook. It has messy sketches, ideas, daily thoughts, maybe a photograph of something recorded in it. It’s never the same, each page does not match to the page previous to it. This kind of sketchbook catches your attention. Not everything in that kind of sketchbook will be understood but it doesn’t have to be…

Giambattista Valli’s apartment is certainly one big sketchbook. Daybeds in living room instead of sofas. Huge paintings propped against the walls instead hanging on them… Perfect new furnishing pieces paired with something that looks like it has been there for centuries. The colors jump from golds, to reds, to absolute white, to black. Organic shapes to geometric ones… It may not make sense to all of us but it makes sense to the owner of the “sketchbook”.

So go ahead, buy pieces that are inspiring to you and make your own sketchbook.

Photographs: Vogue