Architectural Digest
What’s New in Palm Beach 2022
Once a sleepy haven of the pink-trousered uber-rich with last names that built America, Palm Beach, Florida, is awakening to a growing population of young pioneers. Newly untethered professionals decamped from the crowded northeast and tax-burdened West Coast to infuse the barrier island with a new, youthful vibrance and are preparing for the social season. Leave it to AD to scout what’s new and where recently arrived residents and global jet-setters will be rubbing elbows with longtime denizens.
In a continuation of the Colony Hotel’s villa design partnerships—2020 was with Aerin Lauder, who hasn’t left the boutique property entirely—the pink palace is unveiling its newest guest apartment restoration with AD100 interior designer and best-selling author Mark D. Sikes. As a frequent hotel guest, Sikes’s room overlooked the hotel’s café, whose blue-striped awnings ignited his inspiration for reimagining the 1,100-square-foot Villa Aralia.
To create a charming retreat within the spacious two-bedroom haven, Sikes chose crisp blue and white cabana-stripe Brunschwig and Fils fabric from his new furniture collection with Chaddock, all framed by soft, custom Valley Drapery upholstery and window treatments that seamlessly mesh with beachy, striped patterns. His eponymous lighting collection with Hudson Valley Lighting casts an ethereal evening glow to rooms that “feel old school, but fresh and fun, celebrating our love of blue and white and an ode to that color palette and to the all-American approachable style we are known for,” Sikes avers.
Aerin Lauder, who designed The Colony’s Aerin Villa Jasmin in 2020, returns to dress the hotel for the holidays. Inspired by Palm Beach memories with grandmother, Estee, her collection includes mercury glass seashells, tropical flowers, bird and fish ornaments in muted tones, juxtaposed against customized de Gournay wall coverings in the hotel’s Living Room. The mural masterpiece, a fantasy jungle on a pink-hued backdrop starring spider monkey mascot Johnnie Brown amidst other folkloric creatures, took months to hand-paint on Pierre Frey fabric, in collaboration with Kemble Interiors for what Colony CEO Sarah Wetenhall considers “a love letter to Palm Beach.”
Carriage House, the swanky members-only club Michael and Paula Bickford carefully created from two landmark Maurice Fatio and Addison Mizner buildings, quietly opens its striking blue doors at the iconic Phipps Plaza entrance this winter. “It will be elegant, private, and discreet,” says Ms. Bickford of the unfussy opening, befitting a bastion for the international jet set. Architect Keith Spina rescued pecky cypress and oversaw restoration, while Ms. Bickford partnered with Madrid-based artist Luis Bustamante to craft elegant interiors. Vibrant colorways including red lacquer and indigo blue set distinctive tones for each room, from an emerald bathroom with backlit green agate stone floor to backgammon-inspired wood floors in the social club’s reading room and multicolored semiprecious stones that adorn dining room tabletops.