"So many hammams, or Arab baths, and landscaped rooftop terraces now dot the landscape - from Essaouira to Tangiers and, most recently, Fez - that a typical expatriate pastime is leafing through glossy home decor magazines to see who made the latest issue." - International Herald TribuneLet me confess - I do not leaf through glossy home decor magazines. Sometimes you just want to cringe - if you ever doubted this read the piece in the Herald Tribune...High Style Between Morocco's Walls
"Every month another house is featured somewhere," said Hugo Curletto, a magazine stylist who is based in Paris and whose Marrakesh home is painted pink and filled with sleek 1960s-style tables and chairs. "People say, look, I have a friend who just did a divine house in such-and-such area or a divine piece of furniture for so-and-so."
Curletto himself recently organized an eight-page spread for The World of Interiors magazine on Jean-Paul Gaultier's riad in Marrakesh, where arched doorways and traditionally plastered walls coexist with Paris bistro chairs, Indian silk bed coverings and lamps of Venetian crystal.
In Marrakesh alone, 650 traditional dars or riads have been restored since 1998, according the Moroccan Tourist Office in Rabat - and there are about 400 still on the market, according to Abdellatif ait ben Abdallah of the Marrakech Riads real estate agency. At least another 50 have undergone modern makeovers in the white-and-blue seaside town of Essaouira and 120 inside the ancient walls of Fez are being renovated.
The only person in the article who appears to have "got" what is going on is the interior designer François Gilles, who is based in London and whose house in Tangier is slated to appear on French television. He labels all this gushing about curvy lanterns as - "exoticism" or "Orientalism," the Westerner's romance with the trappings of the East.
Right on Francois!
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
1 comment:
I think the IHT will find that image accompaying the story is a actually of a dar in Fez, I've been there. I can't remember it's name but Louis Da Fez will tell you.
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