“I tell my friends that I'm now midcentury modern,” the New York–based fashion designer Phillip Lim quips about turning 50. “And like the furniture, hopefully better with age.” Joking aside, Lim, who launched his 3.1 Phillip Lim label in 2005 and now sells his signature clean-lined clothing in shops around the world, saw the landmark birthday as a chance to take stock. “I heard somewhere that, with 50, you get a second dawn. I took that to heart.”
Designer Phillip Lim
Bell-covered doors lead from the courtyard to the interior of the No. 5 house at Lunuganga
For starters, he sold the Manhattan apartment where he'd lived for 16 years and turned his 1940s bungalow on the North Fork of Long Island into his primary home. But the weekend place needed renovating, which was one of Lim's reasons for booking a trip to Sri Lanka, a destination he'd long dreamed of visiting. “The colors, the flavors, the energy—I always feel creatively inspired by Southeast Asia,” says Lim. He'd previously traveled throughout Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam, “but Sri Lanka was on my bucket list because of Geoffrey Bawa.”
The renowned Sri Lankan architect helped pioneer tropical modernism, a movement that adapted mid-20th-century design principles for the hot, steamy climates of Latin America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, weaving in local materials and building vernaculars.
“I've loved Bawa's design for ages,” Lim says, “but now that I'm sort of playing architect with my bungalow, I really wanted to see his work in person.” Bawa designed dozens of homes, public spaces like Colombo's parliament building, and hotels across Sri Lanka, displaying a characteristic sensitivity to the landscape and a tendency to blur the line between indoors and out. When Lim learned that Lunuganga, Bawa's personal estate two hours south of Colombo, was open to overnight guests, he took it as a further sign that it was time to visit.
With only a week in Sri Lanka, Lim built his itinerary around visits to two of Bawa's most important projects: The first was Lunuganga, near the beach town of Bentota, the second was the inland Heritance Kandalama Hotel.
The wood-beamed eastern terrace at Lunuganga
Before Bawa purchased Lununaga's 15-acre estate in 1948, the year Sri Lanka declared independence from Great Britain, it had served as both a cinnamon and a rubber plantation. Bawa spent decades turning the colonial-era structure into his private home and planting a sprawling, mostly endemic garden as a way to rehab the land after centuries of monocropping.
“There's Bawa's main house, where you can sleep where he slept and sit at the desk where he worked,” Lim says, “but also bungalows scattered around the grounds where you can see him experimenting with
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I'm an American born to British parents. My husband is British and recently obtained US citizenship after living there for 10 years. When we had our son (who also has dual citizenship), we knew we'd spend significant time on both continents. However, the pandemic, finances, and busy schedules kept us from traveling internationally.
Booking a hotel stay just got more rewarding with JetBlue’s latest promotion, helping travelers score potentially up to 15,000 points for their next flight. “Watch your TrueBlue points reach new heights as an IHG One Rewards member,” IHG Hotels shared about the promotion on its website. “Register to earn 1,000 bonus TrueBlue points for a 1 – 2 night stay and 3,000 bonus TrueBlue points for stays of 3 or more nights at select IHG Hotels & Resorts.
In a bid to clamp down on overtourism and protect places of interest, popular holiday destinations across Europe and beyond have introduced various forms of a “tourist tax”. In recent years, this has come into play in destinations such as Venice, Lake Como, Brussels, and parts of Japan—and now, UK hotspots are following suit.
Indian Gen Z and Millennials prefer to travel in the off-peak season to avoid crowds and reduce costs, according to a report by online visa application platform Atlys.
Summer is over and airlines, like the weather, are shifting into fall mode. That means fewer leisure-oriented flights and more connections aimed at business travelers.
Going on a romantic escape and traveling with your partner for the very first time is as exciting as it is nerve-wracking. There is a lot of pressure associated with your first couple’s trip: There are all the typical stresses that come with traveling, plus more anxieties associated with spending uninterrupted quality time together for longer-than-usual stretches. Not to mention having to get used to the travel idiosyncrasies of another person. Below, we’ve rounded up the golden rules, according to our staff editors, that you should follow to ensure a smooth-sailing trip when you're traveling with your partner.
Clarksville, a historic district of Austin, Texas, has lately emerged as a stylish dining and shopping enclave. Among the area’s most compelling new businesses is La Embajada, a design shop housed in a 1923 Craftsman bungalow. Combining the hospitality and interiors expertise of its founder, Raul Cabra — who has designed tableware for some of Mexico City’s most celebrated restaurants, including Rosetta and Pujol — La Embajada presents a refined, regionally diverse selection of Mexico’s artisanal offerings. A series of small rooms display vintage and contemporary furniture, from stately midcentury armchairs and 1970s glass sconces to a minimalist agave fiber rug by the Oaxaca-based textile artist Trine Ellitsgaard. The house is also an actual residence. Cabra often stays in the bedroom up the creaky stairs, and he’s recently made it available for short-term stays (bookings include a daily basket of baked goods from Austin’s Swedish Hill). Guests can purchase the room’s handmade décor, such as a pair of sleek bedside lamps in milky white onyx, a 1960s La Malinche dresser and a bedspread from a Michoacan manufacturer that once supplied Herman Miller. Downstairs, glassware, candles and gifts fill a section modeled after a typical general store in a small Mexican town. But La Embajada’s heart is its inviting kitchen, where visiting chefs cook elaborate meals and staff prepare ice cream and coffee. In another twist, every bespoke detail — including a hammered copper sink, caramel-colored tiles and waxed pine cabinets — can be custom-ordered for one’s own home.
As the summer travel season comes to a close, travelers have a new way to save on fall getaways. JetBlue recently announced the «Game On» fare sale, which offers flights as low as $49. The promotion is a nod to the fall football season, however the fares can provide an affordable options for early fall vacations, or last-minute trips. As an example, JetBlue shows a fare of $49 one-way from New York's JFK airport to Nashville, Tenn. for travel in both September and October.
Government officials in Sri Lanka announced that citizens from 35 countries—including the United States—will be granted visa-free entry into the Asian nation, according to the Times of India.