SantaFe.com

Over in Santa Fe’s historic Railyard district, you’ll find an up-market store full of both fine contemporary arts and crafts and old ethnographic pieces from across the length and breadth of Africa. The five-year-old Casa Nova is the brainchild of Natalie Fitz-Gerald. Born and raised in Johannesburg, Fitz-Gerald speaks six languages, is an ardent traveler and collector and the first woman ever to be seated on the South African Stock Exchange.

When she moved to the States and married, Fitz-Gerald filled her home with art, tableware, dishes, decorative accessories and textiles from the...

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
by Leslie Clark • SantaFe.com

One of the most fantastic events for everyone in Santa Fe is coming up: the Fifth Annual Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, Saturday and Sunday, July 12 & 13, 2008, on Milner Plaza up on Museum Hill. It’s been such a runaway smash-hit success since its debut that UNESCO as a result named Santa Fe as the first and only U.S. city in its prestigious Creative Cities Network. The Folk Art Market is an amazing, colorful extravaganza of art, food, music, song and dance, and person-to-person encounters with artists from far flung parts of the world.

Even if you’re vague about folk art, or...

Monday, June 30, 2008
by Leslie Clark • SantaFe.com

Modern minimalist design has barnstormed through Santa Fe with a vengeance. From the slew of new buildings going up around Site Santa Fe in the railyard, to shops, art galleries, and new homes around town, the vogue for pared-down clean lines and functionality is flourishing here. In a 400-year-old town with a distinctive regional aesthetic inclined towards ornamental scrolls and flourishes, the appeal might seem contradictory. But in fact, modernism feels right at home here. Both the pueblo and territorial styles of traditional adobe architecture developed a strong clarity and sparseness...

Sunday, June 15, 2008
by Leslie Clark • SantaFe.com

Whether you live here or you’re visiting, just as sure as Hatch chiles grow, somebody is going to say those words to you. Usually, you’ll hear it from your house or pet sitter when you ask them what they’d like as a thank you from your trip. You’ll hear it from your hostess if you’re going out of town. We’re not talking about the goodies you’ll blow your credit limit on buying for yourself. We’re talking about a gift: Something Southwestern; something portable, that won’t add a ton of weight to your already crammed suitcase; and something that looks like you spent way more money on it...

Friday, May 30, 2008
by Leslie Clark and Mary Corcoran (Photographer) • SantaFe.com

It takes a spirit of adventure to get to Santa Fe. There are only a handful of direct flights; locals mostly drive to Albuquerque to go anywhere. And go anywhere they do. For an out-of-the-way little town, just about everybody living around here has travel creds you would not believe. Your waitress probably just came back from doing an environmental good deed in Borneo. The sales clerk who helped you the other day is going backpacking in Nepal soon. Your river rafting guide spends three months in South America every winter. Nobody stays put for very long, and when they go, they go far and...

Thursday, May 15, 2008
by Leslie Clark and Mary Corcoran (Photographer) • SantaFe.com

Santa Fe just got voted best small art town in America for the third year in a row by AmericanStyle Magazine, muchas gracias, and the art you see everywhere, on cars and houses, flowerpots and front doors, is what makes it such an entertaining place to live. One of my favorites is an ordinary mailbox resting on two big sculpted hands. All that inventiveness and creativity shows up in three stores in town in particular known for eclectic, wonderful “objets,” as the Japanese call them. The Yiddish word “chotchke” seems more warm and affectionate, but there’s just that trace of a dismissive...

Thursday, May 1, 2008
by Leslie Clark and Mary Corcoran (Photographer) • SantaFe.com

Spring has nearly sprung, and along with it comes thoughts of breathing life back into the office wardrobe. By now we’re ready to burst out of the tired winter cocoon of sweaters, coats and tights and spread our wings in something lighter and brighter. It was time to check in with the Hi-Lo Shopper and see what she had been thinking about lately.

A true fashionista, the Hi-Lo Shopper is a career woman who manages to look glossy and groomed at all times. She loves to shop, but with her schedule has to streamline where to go in Santa Fe for what she wants in business-appropriate clothes....

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
by Leslie Clark and Mary Corcoran (Photographer) • SantaFe.com

The two Japanese women got off the plane in Albuquerque for only one reason. Starting in New York, they had been shopping their way across the U.S. for a week. New Mexico was their last stop before heading to Los Angeles for their flight home. What were they looking for, cowboy boots? No, they both already had plenty of those. Turquoise jewelry? That was for another trip. They wanted just one thing:

A Chimayó jacket.

Sophisticated, fashion-savvy Japanese are some of the biggest customers of the centuries-old New Mexico wool-weaving tradition. In the picturesque Hispanic settlement of...

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 4:00 PM
by Leslie Clark and Mary Corcoran (Photographer) • SantaFe.com

When it comes to finding that once-in-a-lifetime wedding dress, Santa Fe has got the goods on dream gowns. From traditional to cutting edge, there’s incredible diversity to choose from.

Along with custom wedding gowns, the Laura Sheppherd Salon de Couture on Marcy Street offers everything from custom day to evening wear. At the moment she is prepping two luscious gowns to send off to a Dallas debutante and her mother. A thirty-year veteran of the fashion business, Sheppherd is also known as much, if not more, for her custom work for the “mothers of the wedding,” as she calls them—the...

Friday, March 14, 2008
by Leslie Clark • SantaFe.com

They say of a great beauty that her face has “good bones,” and the same could be said about Santa Fe designer Nancy Traugott’s clothing line, Homefrocks. The clean lines underscore the subtly stated structure to her designs. Her style combines common sense with a low-key, romantic sensibility, and the relaxed, easy-going fit compliments a deeply feminine look. Timeless in their appeal, her clothes attract independent-minded women willing to trust their own taste—someone like Traugott herself.

“What I make comes from me,” the tall, statuesque designer said. “I like to think about...

Friday, February 29, 2008 at 1:44 AM
by Leslie Clark