Style savant Mel Meer decorates by instinct. “I just do what I feel like doing,” he says. After a visit to Paris, he was inspired by the old world but informal elegance of the French. Thus the influences from his French sojourn became apparent when Meer did the interiors of his spacious home. He used white and ivory on his walls, matched them with dark tones of the flooring and furniture.
After working as a top executive in a multinational company, Paquito “Pen” Roque can now enjoy the fruits of his effort. Aside from travel, he rewarded himself with a condominium that reflected his style and substance.
For most executives, a business trip means being away from family and the comforts of home. For Alby Xerez-Burgos and his wife Maricar, however, it is an opportunity to spend time with their children at their home away from home.
A certain mountaintop in the Visayas might still be a patch of wild terrain today if Michel Lhuillier had followed a divergent career path in his youth. “He wanted to become a farmer when he graduated from De La Salle (University),” revealed his wife, Dr. Amparito Llamas Lhuillier, the light-heartedness evident in her voice as she shared the fond memory. Instead, his dream of a pastoral life was deferred for a few decades while he pursued a more lucrative trajectory in jewelry and finance. Now, after raising their family and building a business empire together, the indefatigable couple is enjoying that long-awaited bucolic lifestyle in the hills high above Cebu.
It echoes the global furniture firm’s exquisite design, sustainable technology—and most important, the user’s personal touch and love of family By Marge Enriquez Photos by Stanley Ong Decorating
ASK ANY design consultant or homeowner who’s “OC” (obsessive-compulsive) about tidiness and removing clutter at home, and chances are, he or she will say it’s just a matter of attitude.
IN 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte, after crossing the Papal States in his Italian campaign, reached Ancona, a port and trading city in northeastern Italy. Seeing the troops, the marquis of the Palazzo Trionfi ran to his fortress called the Rocca Priora on the city border. He then opened fire with two outdated cannons.
FOUR HOURS before the dinner, art patron and entrepreneur Kathleen Liechtenstein, “Maymay” to friends, was fashioning logs from Valrhona dark chocolate. That would be the dessert of her theme dinner for Ballet Philippines (BP) which was set to announce its forthcoming season with its opener, the revival of Agnes Locsin’s Encantada. Written by Al Santos, the story is about an enchantress who protects the forest, and how man suffers from his crime of savaging nature.
THEY SAY there are many lessons to learn from gardening. In this age of multiple distractions, it requires us to take in time, deal with change, be still, and be patient.
THE JESUITS have an early but short-lived association with the founding of the city of Cebu, an association that ended about 1600. But Jesuit presence in the province continued, notably in the town of Mandaue where a Jesuit hacienda operated for a good part of the 18th century.
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