On a sunny October day, Alexandra Champalimaud met with editor and writer Nancy Novogrod, formerly of Travel + Leisure and House & Garden magazines. Longtime friends and frequent travel companions, the two enjoyed a leisurely lunch and conversation with HD’s editorial director Michael Adams at Untitled, the new restaurant at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. The following is an excerpt from that meeting, where they chatted about charm, collaboration, and their next dream destination.
What is luxury to you?
Nancy Novogrod: Because I’ve seen everything [as editor in chief of Travel + Leisure], I’m pretty unswayed by simple luxury. Many of the classics don’t impact me as much as something that has a freshness and newness. It doesn’t have to be contemporary design necessarily, but it’s something that is well thought out and teaches me. It gives me a new idea about how to live. Hotels are lifestyle messages. They’re repositories of ideas on living and enhancements for living. It seems like a wonderful way to exist.
I am a lover of materials. If a hotel has beautiful wood or beautiful textiles or a richness in finishes, I notice it. I appreciate that and I know not everyone might see it, but it certainly adds to the sense of investment that was made. It can be paint. It doesn’t have to be layering of pillows or anything. It has much more to do with a kind of discipline and beauty.
Alexandra Champalimaud: And charm. Which the world generally has forgotten about.
How would you define charm?
AC: It is an unknown word in design. There’s an absence of it, entirely. But if you look at the root of the word, it’s bringing a natural expression to a place that elevates your experience, which is moving and touching, but not forced. And charm is that. It’s intuitive. Another word that touches slightly on that is soul.
NN: Absolutely, soul.
Rich, textured fabrics and dark oak furnishings in the Parlour at the
NoMad Hotel in New York. Photography by Benoit Linero.
What places would you consider charming?
NN: I think the Beaumont in London does a very good job. And, you know, the same way [London restaurant] the Wolseley has enormous charm. It’s one of the great interiors.
AC: In New York, I think the NoMad hotel has a soul that is great. It’s got something—it’s got a message.
NN: As long as we’re talking about restaurants, it’s a very different aesthetic from that, and much more rough and tumble, but I love the feeling at Il Buco Alimentari in New York. And sitting out in the garden at Narcissa, André Balazs’s place [at the Standard East Village in New York], is wonderful. Places can be un-charming that are also authentic, like the neighborhood bar we all go to.
AC: And like Donald Trump. He’s authentic.
NN: We wish he were slightly less, though.
What’s the secret to effective hospitality design?
NN: There is the reality about design for hospitality—it immediately gets tested in many different ways. One thing I know from my experience is that for a hotel company to hire a designer who doesn’t have hospitality experience is a very risky thing. I’ve seen it happen with furniture that doesn’t last, design that really can’t exist in a hotel room. The goal is to make something look like home—but it can’t. Maybe a better version of home, but it can’t really be home because it won’t last and it won’t work. You see designers who really don’t understand things: not doing appropriate lighting, not knowing where to put the outlets. If you have someone who is not as well-schooled as Alexandra, it’s very tricky.
AC: So the trick is to do the reverse, which is get all those ducks in a row and then apply design.
What do you look for in a collaborator?
AC: They add an enormous expression and they bring another medium and another character, another soul, another layer. I like that. I don’t feel it threatening in any way, shape, or form. I like to pick two or three collaborators who I know that if I get them on the job, it will change the whole end result. One of my first jobs with a collaborator was a casino in Quebec. We did a beautiful hotel. [It had] a very long entrance, so I had planned three beautiful chandeliers I was going to design and have made. And the price tag would be something like $250,000 or $300,000 each. I remember going to the client, the Quebec government, and saying, ‘You’ve hired me to design this whole hotel and I’ve done it, and now what’s left is to design some chandeliers for you on budget. But if I ask [glass sculptor] Dale Chihuly to do them, you’ll have the whole world coming to this casino. Which one do you want?’ They ended up with Chihuly.
NN: You always try to make yourself better through collaborators. I’ve had large staffs under me in editing magazines, and you have to promote the talent and give power to people who can do a better job at something than you, or who can broaden your understanding. Collaboration is key. I’ve seen Alexandra with people she works with, and she gives a lot of credit and she has an essential generosity of spirit. Actually, I would say that about design. There’s a generosity there that has to do with genuine concern for people and their comfort and their happiness. I don’t think you can be a great designer unless you have that. Certainly not in the hospitality world.
The lobby of London’s Beaumont hotel.
What do you look for when you travel?
NN: Illumination. Beauty. The colors and sounds—the smells. The experience. It’s about discovery. You can discover something even in the city where you live. And I love discovering New York.
Where would you go on your next trip—a place you’ve never been?
NN: I’m passionately in love with India. I would go back and see some places I hadn’t seen there. I haven’t been to Kolkata. I haven’t really been to the Himalayas. I’d like to go north and hike a bit. And I’d like to go to Tamil Nadu. I would go to Namibia, where I haven’t been.
AC: I would like to go to Namibia. I think it’s a great one.
NN: Visually, it would be incredible.
AC: It’s the most faraway and the most exciting. Let’s go!
