How Does The World's Most Amazing Magazine Exist?

It’s time to take note again of one of the world’s great magazines, The World of Interiors, a Condé Nast UK publication. When last mentioned here, it was because of its magical spread on Anna Wintour’s Long Island home.

Edited by Rupert Thomas, the much-younger lover of Alan Bennett, the December issue goes beyond the magazine’s low-key habit of just a photograph of an interior on the cover — no words! — and reproduces a stretch of post-Revolutionary French border pattern, from the collection of Christopher Moore, a Delhi-based collector of toiles de jouy. This is insane. (Moore travels with a book of “1,000 original watercolour designs for printed cottons, spanning a period of about 1780 to 1830,” the article reveals inside, which may or may not have originated in “Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf’s famous toile factory in Jouy.” DON’T WE ALL.)

Madness. In what possible world did this become a Condé Nast product? It seems so unlikely. The issue also came with three sheets of wrapping paper for the holidays and has all of 23,250 subscribers. You may join them if you like. (Its Twitter is also delightful if a bit more commercial.)