Palmer & Penn is buzzing. It’s a one-of-a-kind store with an influential aesthetic that sells high-end products and experiences. The brands all have impeccable pedigrees, with pieces choreographed as beautifully as a fashion show. You can have a cup of tea from a $1200 Legle de Limoge teapot with matching $500 teacup at its transporting courtyard cafe…then purchase a Nazareth candle by Cire Trudon, the candlemaker to France’s greatest churches. It sells the biggest range in the country. Or buy a Llalique vase encrusted with 24 carat gold birds, a set of Baccarat glasses, or real accessories for real hostesses by Aerin Lauder. Perhaps best of all, its knockout new season Ralph Lauren Home furniture collection that evokes grander times with a richly layered look, which arrived in town this month!
Expect proper pieces that will change the entire atmosphere of your rooms. This shop is everything to do with relevance and modern international glamour.
Co-owner Ben Palmer hard at work amongst a bevy of luxury products, palmerandpenn.com.au
The two-storey bijou showroom, designed by Australian powerhouse architect, Michael Suttor, is brimming with Ralph Lauren Home tweed sofas, black lacquer drinks trolleys, picnic baskets, and French Louis chairs, all of which work well in Sydney.
If you’re not ready to upholster in tweeds and pinstripes, experiment with menswear-inspired cushions or herringbone-patterned throw rugs. Ralph makes it as easy to dress your rooms as dress yourself. Devotees can outfit their entire lives—from dinner plates to throw rugs, cushions, coffee tables, sideboards, —in an expertly styled, history-laden look without the help of a decorator or blue-blooded ancestry.
Ralph Lauren furniture comes with unapologetically romantic names like Cliveden, Cote D’Azur and Jamaica. That connection to travel has always helped steep the home and furniture line in mystique, elevating the furniture into something desirable and contemporary. The range and displays are like little movie-set designs. They aren’t just beds and sheets, but settings with props that promise a certain lifestyle. It’s the evocation of a certain narrative.
When you’re buying Ralph Lauren furniture, you’re buying a piece of that myth. They are pieces that look like you bought on a trip, or have been given to you and have stood the test of time.
What’s unique about Ralph Lauren’s take on the classics is scale. He uses tradition and scales it up with a lush liveability take on casual comfort with a layered approach to interior design.
Ralph furniture proves you can treat your bed like fashion, transforming your sleeping zone into a personal statement.
It’s like putting together a suit. You choose a quilt cover in a formal and durable fabric, just like you would a jacket and pants, followed by serene sheets that feel great against the skin the way a good shirt should, and finally bold patterns and colours for your cushions, the equivalent of a tie and pocket-handkerchief.
Make sure you also check the endless range of Cire Trudon, founded back in the seventeenth century.
It was Louis XVI’s choice and is a big fave with Hermes, Cartier, Dior, and Guerlain. The paraffin-free numbers use 100 percent vegetable wax, have pure cotton wicks and will burn for almost double the time of the usual posh numbers. Available in endless fab scents, they come in handblown Italian glasses.
Also, look for Aerin’s gorgeous sculptures, trays, and coasters, made in everything from chagrin to gilt, plus porcelain gardenias, peonies, dogwood, crystal bookends and shell bowls that would look at home in Architectural Digest magazine. Gorgeous materials, with detailing to match Aerin’s eponymous firm, that is all about stylish living.
‘I love to decorate a room – from the furniture to the objects to the books,” says Aerin. “And I like to entertain at home, to live beautifully but comfortably.” Expect the kind of thing you would see in great Palm Springs houses of 1950s society icons like Babe Paley, Cornelia Guest, and Slim Aarons. Stylish enough to plan your entire interior update around. One Aerin sculpture will go a long way.
Inspiration springs from the dazzling selection of top-notch Assouline books that are the ultimate finishing touch to a space – they show you are civilized. Plus, there’s the best crystal and glassware by Baccarat, Lalique and Ralph Lauren that will help you distinguish between style and fashion.
If it weren’t for confidentiality agreements, Palmer & Penn would be known for having the most prestigious client list in Australia.
It’s a place to pass the time. Expect proper statement pieces; plus, they will look after you.
16 Transvaal Ave, Double Bay NSW 2028, (02) 9328 4800, palmerandpenn.com.au
Ralpp Lauren Byrant Chair, palmerandpenn.com.au
Ralph Lauren Joshua Tree Dining Chair, palmerandpenn.com.au
