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A few years ago, only total insiders in New York’s world of interior design would know the name Alfredo Paredes. As the former executive vice president and chief creative officer at Ralph Lauren Home, he not only helped to guide the line’s quintessentially American offerings, but was also in charge of some of the brand’s most iconic spaces, including the now impossible-to-book Polo Bar. But after more than three decades at Ralph, Paredes launched his own interior design studio, right before the pandemic hit. “People thought I’d had a nervous breakdown, but I didn’t,” he says. “I’d just had my first child at 50, and I just never thought I’d be somewhere my entire adult life in one place. I had a great ride.”
His leap of faith worked out, and today the young studio with a storied designer at its head has already landed on the Elle Decor A-List, has a rug collaboration upcoming with Patterson Flynn, and has landed a monograph. Alfredo Paredes at Home (Rizzoli), which debuts this week, details his personal aesthetic through the designs of his own homes, and helps establish Paredes’s unique outlook on design, from a cozy, rustic seaside house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to a a stately and harmonious apartment in Manhattan’s East Village. While a bit of that Ralph Lauren look is evident—always stylish, but never fussy—his sense of style comes across as truly his own. Here, we asked Paredes to share his top five follows on Instagram, which should shed some personal light on this American aesthete.
Obsolete Inc. — Beautifully documented vintage objects from a trusted dealer
“This account is owned by my friend Ray. He’s an antiques dealer out of L.A., having recently moved from Venice to Culver City. I love everything they have there; it’s like a pilgrimage to visit. And he has a kind of dark sensibility for L.A., which I think is kind of cool. He has an amazing warehouse where you can go, and there’s so much more of everything. And he’s just super cool. I totally appreciate his eye. The last thing I bought from him was a French ceramic artichoke lamp for a client.”
Vinyl Nights — A photographer and influencer who spins records in an enviable space
“I’m the kind of person who plays music wherever I go. I don’t know if it’s growing up Cuban with a dad who played jazz everywhere and keeping music everywhere, but it’s a background noise to life. So I love old vinyl, and I love this creator’s whole vibe, and I love the room he spins his records in. With vinyl though, people typically forget two things: First, the disk and the record ends in what feels like three seconds. You constantly have to go back to the turntable. Second, your house has to be pretty solid, because otherwise, it scratches. I used to have it set up in my house on Shelter Island, which was an old Victorian, and the floors bounced. So you had to be almost completely away from the turntable. Today, my son loves vinyl. I got him a turntable for Christmas, and he’s in there listening to Ed Sheeran and the like. He’s seven.”
Daily Paintings — A consistently and carefully chosen selection of evocative historical paintings
“He’s in my feed, and I’m often really attracted to what he selects, so whenever he comes up, I’m interested. I’m always on the hunt for new art, paintings, and I have a real love for photography in particular—I recently bought a print by George Platt Lynes. I have a fondness for the ’20s, ’30s, midcentury American art or English art. And I love Impressionists.”
Luminary Legends — Black-and-white photos of stylish stars, past and present
“There are some characters that inspired me over my 35 years at Ralph Lauren, and inspire me still: I love the way Brando looks, or Steve McQueen. I try to dress like that. They just feel good to me. I like other things besides just cocktail tables and chairs. I like art-directing things that feel inspiring.”
The London List — Astute design observations and yesteryear interiors with a pared-down sensibility
“Everytime journalist Benjamin Weaver pops up in my feed, it catches my attention. There’s never a post I don’t like. I don’t know where he finds all of these mostly forgotten spaces. And of course it reminds me of how I went to London all the time. While I was at Ralph, I used to go once a month, and since Covid happened I haven’t really been back. So this taps a lot into my desire for the city and the design community there. It’s a mix of modern and traditional—and makes me a little nostalgic, maybe.”
Anselm Kiefer’s Monumental Show; a Cuban Painter Forges a New Path; and More Openings Around the Globe
Cremona, “Paola Pivi: A Helicopter Upside Down” (Until June)
In the central nave of a 400-year-old church in northern Italy, Italian artist Paola Pivi has installed a helicopter belly-up, like an upside-down turtle. It’s a decidedly jarring sight. This is not Pivi’s first strange but delightful sculpture. Her first exhibition, in 1997, was a huge 18-wheeler flipped on its side. This show is only the latest in her unexpected visual concoctions: At the 1999 Venice Biennale, she presented an upside-down fighter jet. She’s covered polar bear sculptures in neon plumes and has brought horses to the Eiffel Tower. More recently, in 2022, New York’s High Line saw a small replica of the Statue of Liberty wearing a cartoonish mask. sancarlocremona.com
Amsterdam, “Anselm Kiefer: Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind” (Opens March 7)
Over five decades, German artist Anselm Kiefer has unflinchingly confronted Germany’s painful history in a varied oeuvre of provocative, melancholy, and sometimes deeply dark monumental sculptures and paintings thickly slathered in paint. Often, encrusted layers of straw, ash, and clay imbue his work with both gravity and fragility. A massive exhibition spanning two of Amsterdam’s institutions celebrates the artist’s 80th birthday this year: The Van Gogh Museum examines his Dutch influence, while the Stedelijk, one of the first museums to purchase Kiefer’s work, brings out all the Kiefers in their collection. vangoghmuseum.nl
London, “Cesar Santos: Manuscripts” (Until April 25)
In 2010, Cuban painter Cesar Santos started “Syncretism,” a series of paintings fluidly moving between the styles of masters like Michelangelo, Manet, van Gogh, and Picasso: a parody of Manet’s Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe in which picnickers eat McDonald’s, or realistic portraits set in front of van Gogh’s blue bedroom, for example. But at 40 years old, Santos experienced a sudden change of heart. In the past few years, he began experimenting with abstraction, channeling his fluency across different techniques into uncanny and inarticulable shapes. Following a solo presentation in New York, Santos makes his debut in the UK with this new series. “I want to see everything new again,” he says. robilantvoena.com
London, “James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher” (Opens March 7)
American photographer James Welling first saw Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs at the 1970 MoMA exhibition “Information.” The husband and wife photographers had been carefully documenting Germany’s disappearing industrial landscape since the ’60s. Welling, taken by their dedication, later compared the Bechers to bird-watchers in their obsession with variations of water towers, furnaces, and gas tanks. He began to make photographs in 1976, which largely consisted of local architecture. In a 1988 series, he chronicled railroads throughout North America. This show places Welling’s photographs of Marcel Breur’s Brutalist architecture in conversation with the Bechers’ renowned work. maureenpaley.com
New York, “Dorothy Hood: Remember Something Out of Time” (Until April 12)
While Dorothy Hood is considered by some as one of Texas’s greatest 20th-century painters, she never quite became a household name in her lifetime. The ambitious Texan began her artistic career in Mexico after a short vacation there in the ’40s turned into two decades. There, she found herself at the forefront of Mexico City’s creative community, including exiled European intellectuals and artists like Frida Kahlo, Sophie Treadwell, and Luis Buñuel. She would experiment with different styles (her first exhibit in Mexico consisted of portraits) before settling on abstraction. “Landscapes of my psyche,” she said of her work. This is Hood’s first solo exhibition in New York since the 1980s (she died in 2000), showcasing eight of her paintings, along with drawings and collages. hollistaggart.com —Vasilisa Ioukhnovets
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