There aren’t many people in the world with taste as good as Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, who founded Details magazine in ’80s New York and has decades advising brands, from Comme des Garçons to Louis Vuitton, under her belt. And now, she has embarked on an entirely new project: inviting one of the women whose taste she most loves – the Portuguese antiquarian and collector Isabel Lopes da Silva – to London’s Dover Street Market to curate an edit of her jewellery and silver objects.
Silver jug, by Scarpa.
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Gold necklace.
“A lot of my friends tell me not to share places,” Ronnie laughs over the phone. “But I love to share my favourite things – especially at Dover Street Market, with a community of like-minded people that I’ve been a part of for a long time.” What she has now brought to London is a reflection of da Silva’s gallery, which she first fell in love with in early ’00s Lisbon when, during a lunch break from set, she recruited Portuguese Vogue’s then-fashion editor to going shopping with her.
“I called him and I said, ‘I have an hour; please can you take me to your absolute favourite shop?’” she recalls, “And he took me to Isabel’s: the most beautiful space, filled with design-led jewellery from the ’30s to the ’70s. It was all curated through her sensibility, showed alongside great pieces of silverware and ceramics, and the mix was just so incredible.” It was, she recalls, unlike anywhere else she knew. At weekends, sometimes, she would take trips to the city purely to pay a visit; Christmas wishlists were filled with specifically-selected pieces; and now, finally, they’ve come closer to home.
