Palm Beach; Simon Doonan's Take

C.Bell is an authentically 'Palm Beach' interiors shop that I can't pass up a visit to.

I love Palm Beach. It is one of my favorite places in the world. Amongst all things glitzy, gaudy, and positively plastic, remains a stationery old-guard manner to people that exists nowhere else. Resort style, bright colors, preppy-bohemian dress, C.Orrico, cocktails, and Boloud all stand out as island standbys, the kind of places and things you love and cherish more with every visit.

Lace frock by Anna Sui s/s 2008 - Palm Beach boho at it's best.

The grandeur of the island's homes, the Breakers, and brick-paved roads lend the kind of wonderland charm that truly make it an escape. So many things about it that may make it seem "new money" are greatly outnumbered by the things that make it so authentically "old Florida".

Allan Reyes Interiors is a delightful shop on Dixie Highway

My friend Nicole just sent me a delightfully cheeky piece about Palm Beach ettiquette by the unrivaled Simon Doonan, who notes;

"Old-fashioned etiquette is alive and well and living in Palm Beach. While vacationing there last week, I saw the kind of extreme posturing and genuflection which one associates with 18th-century Versailles. Everywhere you look, there are doddering titans of industry kissing the backs of ladies’ hands and deftly inserting gilt dining chairs under lifted bottoms. When these grandees leave or enter a P.B. restaurant—Chez Jean-Pierre, for example—they exhibit the kind of magnificent, regal deportment that leads one to believe they might practice at home with books on their heads. All this hilariously unself-conscious campiness serves a purpose: It gives Palm Beach an identity. Take away the anachronistic folderol and the place would be Boca." You can read the rest of the piece here, on Mr. Doonan's website.

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