Time for another edition of Favourite Spaces today, and this time it’s the LA home of famed fashion photographer Mario Testino. This Vogue editorial was only published in February of this year, but it still ranks as one of my all-time favourite from the magazine (and not just because it features the breathtakingly otherworldly Natalia Vodianova).
Clearly, you can see why I love this space so. The Vogue article calls Testino’s mix of Peruvian, American and European styles “giddy eclecticism”, but I prefer to think of this space as controlled maximalism. I mean, look at that top photo again and check out all that stuff!
Testino hails from Peru, where his early design influences ranged from Inca minimalism (is this a Thing? I guess so) to Spanish baroque. Both are visible in this hedonistic mix of furniture, textiles and art, and they’re joined by French elegance and 70′s Americana, for good measure.
All images via Vogue
The star of this home is clearly Testino’s art collection (making him a man after my own heart)– you can see that every wall is full to bursting. It manages to maintain the spotlight because everything else, over-the-top as it might look, is strictly controlled by colour and scale. In the living room, almost everything is done in neutrals (blacks, whites, greys and browns), with a few considered pops of rust and blue. There’s also textures and patterns a-plenty, which in this large space and those basic colours, never overwhelm.
The great thing about this layered home is that the longer you look at the photos, the more beautiful things you discover. So I’ll stop gushing now, and let you get on with it!