We’ve been reading former fashion journalist and art buyer Constance Gennari’s chic blog “The Socialite Family,” featuring uniquely styled homes from around the world . . . and you should too.
The Socialite Family is the result of Constance Gennari’s love for design, beauty and family life. She tries to find the most amazing spaces all over the world in order to show those fantastic atmospheres where different families inspire us to get our dream home. Curiosity plays an important role here, she always wants to know more, to show everything, to build wonderful images created by her own point of view.
Do you want to know more about this talented woman and her plans? Let’s read on.
Constance has worked as a fashion journalist and an art buyer in an advertising agency.
She grew up in a French and Milanese family, so design and love for beautiful objects have been something important for me from the start. My mother always took us with her to auctions and flea markets and we had piles of decoration magazines at home so I was really surrounded by this universe. I also felt a bit frustrated by the photos in magazines at the time because I wanted to know who lived in the interiors that were shown.
The second factor that made me create The Socialite Family is that I started having a sociologic fascination for the new generation of parents that work a lot and start having kids in their thirties. They want to have a nice and stylish interior to come home to and they have to reconcile this desire with their family life. I have a lot of friends who have crazy jobs and who manage to take care of their children without an army of nannies. I wanted to know what their family life really looked like from the inside.
According to you, what are your distinctive features? What kind of houses are included in “The Socialite Family”?
I think that one of our distinctive features is that we only want to show inspiring and original homes on the website. We publish a new family interview every Tuesday and it has become a real event for our community. Our readers are always eager to discover new personalities and new styles. The families we shoot and interview are often creative people, they are urban and connected but they have this little extra that makes them unique, they don’t follow the trends blindly and they are passionate about decoration and finding the right objects for their home.
The houses showed by TSF are really nice. Do you need a lot of money to have a beautiful home? How can you get inspiration to have one of those houses?
Not necessarily! The families we feature on the site don’t all have a huge budget for decoration. The particularity of the homes we shoot for The Socialite Family is that the decoration is often a mix of family heirlooms, flea markets findings and more expensive pieces. And that’s what we love about it; the result is always very personal and expresses a true singularity.
Your publication shows that you can have a stylish house even if you have kids. Do you have any tip about the combination of design and kids?
I truly think it is about how you bring your children up. If they are used to living around beautiful things and they learn to appreciate it, it becomes easier. A lot of our families take their children with them when they go to flea markets for example and the children are usually quite receptive to the idea of admiring and wanting nice pieces in their home. Of course, you have to compromise on a few details but it definitely doesn’t have to be to the detriment of aesthetics.
Your project has already grown, how were your first shootings? How was the development of ‘The Socialite Family’?
For the first interviews, at the beginning of the blog that I founded in 2013, I worked with freelance photographers and I spent so much time with them that I finally learned to do the shootings by myself. I knew exactly what I wanted in terms of light and pictures. It started working really well with more and more readers encouraging me and following the reportages every week. Now we are a full team. Marianne Gosset joined the adventure as my partner one year ago and we have now a very cool team helping us every day and contributing to the success of The Socialite Family. We recently launched a new version of the site for our growing community. We have a full English version of the site for our international readers and we also opened an e-shop section, since we really want to keep having this inspirational role for all those who are passionate about design and decoration.
What are your plans for the future?
The Socialite Family is now a real “go-to” online media on lifestyle “à la française”. We want to aspire to more inspiring and original families, more interviews with unique designers, decorators, start-up founders, hotels or restaurants owners. Also, we are currently working on some collaborations with very nice lifestyle brands. Finally, we want to go on developing our e-shop to sell our exclusive selection of vintage and new pieces of furniture.
Photos: Constance Gennari – The Socialite Family
I’m a big fan of the French blog The Socialite Family, showcasing inspiring home stories of modern, smart and cool families and I’m also a big fan of their own furniture collection, they launched some time ago.
One of my favourite designs is the Cavallo Armchair – which up to now was available in natural cane and black lacquered beech. So delighted to hear that my favourite chair is now available in two additional finishes: natural ash and cherry ash. Now the Cavallo collection is about to suit all tastes and all interiors. Your need for freshness, and, with summer on the way, for a Mediterranean-style “summer living room” feel with the Cavallo in natural ash. And, finally, the compromise offered by the cherry ash version of our iconic product. Red highlights blended with golden brown – I haven’t seen cherry ash for a while now in interiors and almost forgot about it. But now I’m wondering… will cherry ash be the next big thing?
