Sandra‘s Closet

Where Fashion Meets Wallpaper:
A Morning at Annabel’s with Martin Brudnizki and de Gournay

Few interiors in London stop me the way Annabel’s does. As a member of the Membership Committee at the club, I spend a fair amount of time on Berkeley Square, and yet Martin Brudnizki’s work hits differently every single time. His studio MBDS created something genuinely unique here: a universe of controlled fantasy, English eccentricity and absolute attention to detail. The kind of space that makes you want to dress up just to be worthy of it.

Last Tuesday, I was at the club for breakfast with Martin Brudnizki and Hannah Cecil Gurney of de Gournay to see a new installation celebrating the English summer, which London, with its characteristic sense of humour, chose to mark with a day of horizontal rain. Inside, none of that mattered. The new de Gournay panels are breathtaking: a sweeping floral composition alive with birds, painted in that unmistakable hand that de Gournay has made its signature. Lush, layered, luminous. The moment I saw them, my mind went immediately to the Erdem collaboration, and for very personal reasons.

Those who have followed my interiors journey over the years will know that my previous home was conceived as a love letter to fashion. I dedicated each room to a different designer, with de Gournay as the connective thread running throughout. My study was entirely devoted to the Erdem x de Gournay collection: chinoiserie of birds and blossoms, handpainted in watercolour, in a design that Erdem Moralioglu and Hannah Cecil Gurney brought into being with a shared obsession for the handmade, the romantic and the rare. I lived inside that collaboration, quite literally. And I dressed to match it.

So when I sat down for breakfast last week, I wore my Erdem x de Gournay Giudita tie-neck belted floral-print silk-voile dress. The only possible choice. It felt like a small homage, and it was received as such.

Over breakfast, Martin and Hannah spoke about something that I think many people do not fully understand about the de Gournay design process: the role of the client. The vision, when it is strong and specific, is not a constraint. It is the starting point from which something truly singular can be made. My own vision for that home was fashion, always fashion. With de Gournay, we translated it into walls, into rooms, into an entire way of inhabiting a space. A collaboration in the truest sense of the word, unfolding slowly, with intention.

I will write more about this process another time, because it deserves the space to be explored properly. For now: a dress that was exactly where it needed to be, a room that understood it completely, and a conversation at the table as beautiful as everything else around it.

LoL, Sandra

With my beautiful girlfriends Marijana Matthäus and Monica Perlman.

Photos: Courtesy of Annabel’s / © Sandra Bauknecht 
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With so many of us at home right now, there’s no better time to make your space beautiful. Here is your welcome dose of whimsy as I would like to show you an amazing collaboration between de Gournay and British fashion house Erdem. The exclusive collection features limited edition Chinoise wallpapers alongside whimsical floral tiered dresses and other dreamy pieces, so that you can match your look to your interior design. This is what I call elevating your level of style!

Erdem Moralioglu – a designer feted for a signature expression of halcyon romance – whose creation of a new hand painted design for wallpaper and as a fabric for a line of his elegant silhouettes deftly pairs the realms of fashion and interiors.

A riotous depiction of nature in full bloom, the new design is a springtime vision of flora and birds: presenting the medium in a kaleidoscopic rendition of saturated tones.

Hydrangea, hollyhock, irises, chrysanthemum and morning glory jostle amidst a verdant lattice of branches, with sparrows, warblers, pheasant and egrets interspersed throughout. Honouring specific instruction from Erdem that the birds appear especially full of life, they appear darting through foliage, taking flight and energetically craning their necks.

With de Gournay’s provision of hand painted design work, the Erdem team plotted elements into a motif for clothing: altered in scale as a florid pattern garlanded across grounds of navy, white and black. The resulting collection for S/S 2020 combines the exquisite character of both brands, with de Gournay’s first executions of wallpaper in ‘Adam Grey’, ‘Kelly Gren’, and a ‘Golden Yellow’ painted to join their iconic Chinoiserie collection and seen for the first time within exclusive photography of the project. Each panel (91.5cm x 150cm-350cm) takes around 120 hours to produce and is handpainted in watercolour at De Gournay’s studio in Wuxi, outside Shanghai.

Exclusive to Net-à-Porter: Oleanna floral-print cotton-poplin midi dress

Erdem’s three separate capsules of stunning dresses and separates come with a white background for Net-à-Porter, navy for Bergdorf Goodman and black for Erdem’s own South Audley Street store and e-site. All three are available now.

I am in love with the Giudita tie-neck belted floral-print silk-voile dress.

A mutual dedication to beauty informs the endeavour, the results of which compliment the illustrious merits shared by Erdem and de Gournay both.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Erdem / de Gournay
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