I am sad, but happy, to say goodbye today to one of my designers Maureen McDermott, who is going on maternity leave. Even until the last day she’s been working on an installation. This despite her apparently already being dilated and ready to give birth any minute – we’ve been joking in the office that we’re all wearing white medical garments, ready to boil the tools needed for the delivery. She will be sorely missed around here because of her concern for others, her devotedness to her work and her all-round sweetness.

And by the way, it’s a boy! He’s head is aimed down and he’s ready for blastoff. Good luck Moe!

I thought you’d enjoy a somewhat different view of my work today. Preston Bailey and his partner Theo Bleckmann had their apartments featured on Apartment Therapy this week (read the whole article here). I was lucky enough to be the one to help them bring their creative ideas to live in both apartments and the result is two spaces that really reflect the people that live (and work and play and entertain!) in them. Both have added their personal touch to the final design to truly reflect who they are.

What do you think? Quite a departure from my normal style, right?

Photo: Trevor Tondro for The New York Times

I was delighted to see this story in the home section of the NY Times last Thursday on Dara Caponigro’s apartment for her parents in a new retirement home. Dara and her mom have proven that retirement villages need not be drab and dreary. This beautiful project is more proof of Dara’s incredible talent and great style.

For those who don’t yet know Dara, she’s the new Editor-in-Chief of Veranda magazine. Dara is a lady whose talent and great style in design has been admired within the industry for many years while she worked at House Beautiful, Elle Decor and as one of the founding editors at Domino. I’m lucky enough to also call her a friend.

I know we will be seeing great things in Veranda from her – I for one am expecting a really fresh, clean design point of view and cannot wait to see what she does with an already outstanding publication.

Last night I was lucky enough to have Wendy Goodman of NY Magazine as my guest for dinner and we had a truly delightful evening. She came to my house for dinner – I always prefer dinner at home – and she got to meet Nene and all my hundreds of guppies. We stood out on the terrace and watched a beautiful sunset over the Hudson River and she talked about the new book that she’s about to publish on Gloria Vanderbilt.

The World of Gloria Vanderbilt is a pictorial biography that features portraits of Vanderbilt and her extraordinary homes, filled with original and influential decorating ideas, by photographic legends like Richard Avedon, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Inge Morath, Horst P. Horst, Francesco Scavullo, and Annie Leibovitz. Wendy worked with Gloria Vanderbilt and all captions are in first person and from how she describes it, it was a wonderful experience to spend this much time with such a legend.

We also spoke about the future of Architectural Digest now that Paige Rense is stepping down as editor-in-chief. Another topic we spent much time on is how so many young people in our industry are unaware of the great designers from 30 years ago like Billy Baldwin amd Angela Donghia and how little they are aware of the history of design and how those people helped to create where we are right now.

The time spent with Wendy flew by and I so look forward to our next one. Who knows what we’ll discuss then!

I am fortunate to say that I have gotten a new friend. The grande dame of British design Nina Campbell was with me in South Africa. She was just the most delightful and charming, funny, unstuffy and unpretentious person. We shared that neither she nor I had formal training and we both have a certain travel and entrepreneurial streak. I know that we will be traveling together really soon. She was a blast!  We talked about going to Scotland together and I’ve never been…maybe!