This month, as the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cooler, Marina and I have been flicking through several coffee table books that might ignite your creative side – from fashion and interior design to gardening and healing your soul in faraway places…
Items and Interiors by Bea Mombaers
Bea Mombaers started her professional life as a passionate collector of rare collector´s items, original works of art, vintage furniture and a selection of exclusive home ware articles. Over time she developed her distinct, unique interior design style.
Items and Interiors presents Bea’s world as seen through the lenses of different photographers including help from a photographer Raf Maes and a designer Geoffrey Brusatto. The photos show “interiors arranged by Bea, but also intriguing details, beautiful still life and objects with a story Bea feels inspired by”.
Interestingly, the photos are presented according to different parts of the day: waking up, breakfast, break, lunch, coffee, aperitif, dinner and party.
Haute Couture Catwalk by Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent needs no further introduction and this stunning pink hard back presents the complete haute couture collections spanning 40 years, from 1962 to 2022.
The book starts with a short history of the house, continues with a brief biography of Yves Saint Laurent, and goes on to explore chronologically organised collections. Each collection is introduced by a short text unveiling its influences and highlights, and illustrated with a gallery of carefully curated catwalk images, showing “hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks and set designs – and, of course, the top fashion models who wore them on the runway”.
The seasonal Gardener, Creative Planting Combinations by Anna Pavord
Ana Pavord is described as one of today’s most inspiring and much loved garden writers. She is known as the author of the global bestseller The Tulip.
This book, first published in 2001 and now revised and updated, is “both a visual feast and a much referenced gardening book”. Pavord covers form, texture and seasonality as well as colour. All this makes planting design even more complex than interior design. She selects “60 ‘star plants’ – from iris to hostas – and pairs each with two perfect partners: shrubs, herbaceous perennials, bulbs, and annuals that no garden should be without. This classic book reveals how best to group plants in a garden to create a year-long display.”
Great Escapes Yoga by Angelika Taschen
Recommended by the likes of Harper´s Bazaar and Forbes, we are pretty sure that Great Escapes will inspire you too.
In this beautifully illustrated guide Angelika Taschen recommends “the world’s most exquisite and inspiring yoga retreats, from an exotic luxury hotel in Bhutan to a spiritual ashram in India, a seaside resort in Mexico, or a lost treasure in the Brazilian rainforest”.
Some of the most interesting destinations include Parmarth Niketan Ashramin Rishikesh (one of the holy cities on the Ganges and a famous pilgrimage site where the Beatles attended Maharishi’s ashram in 1968) and Santani (a 15-hectare former tea plantation in Sri Lanka, where inner peace is achieved by following the highest ecological and sustainability standards).
About Marina´s Book Club
Marina also runs a couple of popular monthly book clubs in English and Spanish at La Salina. The English book club is usually set for the first Monday of the month and lasts for about 1.5-2h each time. This month the group is reading “Leny” by Laura McVeigh and the meeting is set for the beginning of October, so you still have time to get the book at La Salina and join the club by messaging Marina.
A column sponsored by Marina Alonso de Caso of La Salina Bookstore.
La Salina Bookstore
C/ Bayarte 21 Palma
Instagram: @lasalinapalma
Web: www.lasalinapalma.com
Text: Mia Naprta
E-mail: mia.naprta@gmail.com
Instagram: @mianaprta
Photos: Private archives
