The key to understanding the whole house is a pair of silver picture frames on a polished 17th-century Italian table, in the perfectly decorated salon. Each still contains the generic black and white images (and manufacturer’s logo) with which they had been delivered two or three years earlier, doubtless hand-selected by an interior designer: on display, extremely expensive and never used.
We are in a farmhouse in Tuscany, which used to belong to a famous English composer and his sculptor friend. When Tuscany got too crowded with German cars and flashy money, they left for quieter climes. The house was sold on and the new owner – fabulously wealthy, a mover and shaker, collector of rare first editions that sit on shelves forever unread – restored the famous house and garden with its iris borders and cypress groves and quiet interiors ... and throttled it to death with far too much money.
It’s a story that we are all familiar with. In this newspaper, Simon Kuper has written tellingly of the global world of the “one-per-centers”, how New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Paris are becoming the mega cities for the international elite. Tom Wolfe is your chronicler, Architectural Digest your bible, and this is your look: Banker Style.