Despite the appearance of yellow school buses and the drawing in of days, summer is not over yet. Take full advantage of its easy outdoor entertaining options before everyone moves indoors—a colorful tablecloth, flowers from the garden, and a few candles are all the decoration you need. And, with Mother Nature as your co-host, you don’t even have to clean the house!
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INTRODUCING ATHENA
New Athena bedding from Yves Delorme blends old fashioned elegance with new fashioned style.
WHAT’S NEW FOR FALL
TOILE TALES
THE DISH: TEA TOWELS
TRAY CHIC
CHEESE, PLEASE
Cheese is part of the culinary holy trinity in France, along with bread and wine.
MADE FOR EACHOTHER: Athena and Monogramming
Ciphers, or monograms, date back as far as ancient Egypt.
INTRODUCING ATHENA back to top
New Athena bedding from Yves Delorme blends old fashioned elegance with new fashioned style. Classic white Egyptian combed cotton features bourdon-stitched borders that extend vertically and horizontally for a modern, edge-of-the horizon air.
These could be the perfect linens—they look heavenly, feel divine, blend beautifully with our stunning Laurier sheets and piqué coverlets, and they offer a perfect canvas for monograms, making them ideal for wedding gifts, estates, yachts, or anyone who appreciates a little something personal in an impersonal world.
Athena comes in white with white, chocolate, ecru, flax, green, blue, or navy stitching, and in ecru with ecru stitching.
FALL IN LINE back to top
Yves Delorme’s line of beds for fall 2007 plays with some of the great themes in the history of textiles—damask, ottoman stripes, and toile.
Burano: An engaging and contemporary design between vintage and avant-garde expresses style that reaches back to the future. Bedding is printed in a damask motif with an Ottoman stripe on the reverse of the duvet cover and shams to balance the stylized floral. The choice of contrasting colors—chocolate and mother-of-pearl—reinforces the graphic style with a newer take on black and white.
Médicis: Piece-dyed and jacquard-woven in cotton sateen, Médicis is a glamorous reflection of a traditional fabric. The ecru colorway can be blended with Burano for a stylish layering of old and new.
Libertine: Claret-red Libertine celebrates two icons of history and fashion—the famous fabric that originated in Jouy-en-Josas and that trend-setter, Marie Antoinette. Printed in the manner of a toile de Jouy on cotton fabric, Libertine imagines life at court in the late 18th Century. Pale charcoal drawings within elaborate cartouches illustrate rural scenes in the hamlet of a château that evoke Marie Antoinette’s fondness for arts, games, and festivals.
TOILE TALES back to top
Stylish and classic, the printed cotton fabric known as toile (pronounced twal) is an enduring favorite. Toile is an abbreviation of toile de Jouy. In the French language, the phrase literally means “cloth from Jouy-en-Josas.” Possessed of a storybook charm, the fabric that tells stories has a story of its own.
In 1760, Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, a German-born textile printer and dyer living in France, founded a manufacture at Jouy-en-Josas, a little town near Versailles, close to the court. This was during a period when brightly printed cotton goods, called “Indiennes,” were all the rage in Europe, and Oberkampf’s printed patterns caught the eye of King Louis XVI. The infatuation with printed toiles was immediate.
The first toile was a monochromatic print, rendered in intricate detail on a white or cream-colored background. Originally, reverse images for toile prints were carved into wooden blocks. Ink was applied to the blocks and then transferred by hand to un-dyed cotton. Only the rich and the royal could afford the results of this painstaking process. Oberkampf later acquired technology that enabled him to print fabric using copper sheets. (Some historical accounts attribute this advance to industrial espionage and invisible ink!) He would eventually etch designs onto a copper-plate roller, which vastly increased production capacity and put toile within reach of a broader populace.
Typically, the images were scenic vignettes that told a story. Drawings might retell a myth about Roman gods, or chronicle important events of the day, or simply depict scenes from rural life. Today, only the engraving-like quality of the printing method remains true to its original. Contemporary toiles are often printed in more than one color and—like Yves Delorme’s “Libertine”—may appear on a colored background. The themes now encompass just about any subject that strikes a designer’s fancy.
Incorporating toile’s time-honored style into your décor couldn’t be easier with this versatile fabric. Go for an intensive all-over look or mix it with stripes or polka dots and—toilà—an up-to-date classic look is all yours.
THE DISH back to top
Tea towels, kitchen towels, dish towels—call them what you will, these little gems do more than mop up. In addition to drying, they can add an unexpected splash of color, a graphic pattern, or subtle texture to your kitchen. And it would be a real shame to restrict them to the kitchen. Tea towels make great placemats, napkins, and tray liners. Wrap one around a bottle of wine to delight a hostess. And try framing them for a striking accent on the wall.
But back to KP duty. Cotton towels are multipurpose—good for cleaning, drying, and absorbing. Cotton/linen blends (metis) make soft, strong, and absorbent dish towels and leave dinnerware and glassware lint free. And linen towels, which last longer and grow softer with each washing, dry glassware quickly, leaving it free of water spots and lint. So the next time someone asks if you’d rather wash or dry, skip the rubber gloves and reach for a beautiful, practical tea towel.
C’EST CHEESEback to top
Cheese is part of the culinary holy trinity in France, along with bread and wine. It also enjoys special status as a separate course at French meals—le fromage is served between the main course and dessert, between salad and dessert, or even instead of dessert as a luscious finale. If you’d like to compose a cheese platter for your next dinner party, we’ve collected some tips to put you at ease with cheese.
With over 300 varieties in France alone, making sense of all of them can seem overwhelming. But according to the folks at New York’s Paradou restaurant, cheese is one thing you can literally judge by its cover—the rind.
“Learning to read the rind is the first step in choosing the best cheeses. In general, the rougher a rind looks, the more interesting the cheese. If the rind is too pristine, the cheese is likely factory made and will be boring. So focus on cheeses with rough, rustic, handmade exteriors. Also, choose cheeses with varying textures and rinds and you’ll likely vary the intensity of flavors.”
A well-balanced cheese tray should include at least one soft ripened cheese (such as Brie, Camembert, or Coulommiers), one pressed cooked-curd cheese (Cantal or Comté, for example), one veined soft ripened cheese (Roquefort, Saint Agur, or bleu des Causses) and one goat’s-milk cheese (like Pouligny-Saint-Pierre or Crottin de Chavignol). If you’d like to include something smelly and strong (the infamous stinky cheese!) try a soft-textured washed rind cheese like a Livarot or Epoisses or a somewhat milder Pont L’Eveque.
According to the maîtres fromagers affineurs at Androuët, the great cheese merchant in France, there is one golden rule: cheeses should be tasted in increasing order of flavors. When composing your platter, arrange them in a circle, clockwise, from the freshest and mildest to the most fermented or strongest. And for serving:
“A knife is used to cut the cheese, but a fork is indispensable for serving. Ideally, cheese should be cut with a knife that has been rinsed in hot water and then wiped. Use a separate knife for each family of cheeses served, to avoid mixing flavors. A cheese does not have a uniform taste throughout; therefore it should be cut in such a way as to include both the heart and the rind.”
As for eating the rind, it’s strictly a personal taste thing. Remember that cheese is best served and eaten at room temperature, and fruit, nuts, and bread are fine accompaniments.
So there you have it—cheese expertise for a course guaranteed to please. (Sorry, that was a little cheesy.)
MAKING IT YOURS—OR HIS AND HERS—WITH THE MODERN MONOGRAM
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Strictly speaking, a monogram is a design composed of two or more letters, interwoven or joined, usually representing a name. Ciphers or monograms, which go back as far as ancient Egypt, were often used by early printers, painters, and engravers. As merchants were usually prohibited from employing heraldic emblems, they resorted to plain letters arranged very much in monogram form. These “merchants’ marks” generally took the form of a monogram of the owner’s initial together with a private device.
In their simplest form, early embroidered monograms served as laundry markers, placed on linens as a means of identification. However, they are part of a much richer tradition than this utilitarian definition suggests.
Through the 15th century, much of the most skilled and ornate needlework, including lettering and symbols, was produced by nuns for church vestments. When such vestments and embellishments were banned and religious orders disbanded during the Reformation, both the items and the designs for them disappeared. 
A resurgence of embroidered embellishments, including monograms, occurred at the end of the 16th century, but it was in the Victorian era that the decorative form of the monogram truly took hold outside the ruling class. The middle class began adapting the heraldry and crests of aristocracy, and the rise of individualism contributed to the popularity of the embroidered monogram.
Things have grown a touch more complicated in modern life, but the use of monograms endures. Although the traditional surname initial flanked by smaller first and middle initials remains a preference for all sorts of items, monograms are changing to suit all users. Women no longer feel the need to wait until marriage to enjoy the beauty and style of linens embroidered with their maiden initials. And, with bridal trousseaus increasingly rare, married couples are incorporating both names into monograms for household items.
The rules for the 21st Century are still emerging—and sending out the household laundry is, alas, not something most of us do anymore. But a monogram shows that, even in a busy, impersonal world, you have taken the time to make a possession personally yours.
