A Silent Street

Tysta gatan, Silent Street, is probably one of the most stunning in Stockholm, a short path quietly making a meander through a green zone between two busy mid-town streets. Here is where famous Swedish fashionista and designer Nathalie Schuterman resides in a lovely house.

Her boutique in the city centre offers an exclusive selection of clothing, shoes, acceessories, and jewellery by world known labels like Christian Dior, Jil Sander and Fendi, as well as her own - Nathalie Schuterman. Is it cashmere? It sure is. Right now she’s high over heels into the finest Scottish wool.

Nathalie also has a multi brand web shop, where she recently started PRE-LOVED – high end vintage with affectionate provenience - stating that “the fashion world is at a breaking point, it is time to build a circular wardrobe…”

Nathalie is lyrical about her new kitchen from Kvänum, Steneby in our Modern Classic series.

– A match made in heaven – fits us and suits our house and the surroundings. This area is a quiet and somewhat rural part of town with low houses and lots of lush greenery, and the kitchen, dainty as it is, still has that same almost pastoral, slightly rustic atmosphere. It’s just enchanting.

With its air of famed Swedish Grace from the 20s, Steneby seems congenial to the architecture. The houses along the street were erected around 1920; in fact, the blend of apartment buildings and townhouses is an exquisite example of Swedish Grace, a simpler version of contemporaneous European classicism slightly influenced by art déco. The style anticipated and possibly postponed introduction of functionalism in Sweden. But that’s another story.

The city plan of these residential blocks was partly inspired by continental European ideas. Austrian architect Camillo Sitte was an early leading figure of the movement. The dense medieval city was his ideal, organic rather than mechanic.

To Sitte, planning a city was an artistic activity, much like composing music. His city plans were scores; he had this weakness for arches, vaults, courtyards, porticoes, staircases, gates, small gardens bound together by portals and alleys, walls covered with woodbine, and gently curved streets like Tysta gatan, a little legato.

Intuition would likewise be Nathalie’s main instrument. When it comes to design and interior decorating, her style is international along the Rome-Milan-Paris-London-New York axis. She favours a calm and harmonic ensemble of colours, a Scandinavian keynote spiced up with more or less spectacular objects, sculpture, glass, ceramics, paintings, and furniture, things that tell stories and bring memories, things with character and charisma.

– My home is not a show room; I want it to be personal. I wish to leave a mark and make it bluntly clear that I live here.

The kitchen is in a way one of her places on earth. The day starts off with breakfast, but before she knows she is at work with email and Instagram. And her day usually ends up over a bite to eat and a glass of wine in creative and merry company; as a designer, Nathalie works on projects together with both her daughter Cloé and her son’s girlfriend Kajsa.

– A family affair indeed. And our kitchen is the hub. It’s an inspiring setting with the delicately discrete and consonant hues of Almond and Rock.

Has she got a treasured place or favourite detail in her kitchen?

– The sofa corner on the bench by the window for one. And the lamps, so much the 20s, and the sink, the stone of the sink, and the slender stick above, I could go on for a while; small tings, details that you easily fall in love with.

The slender stick that Nathalie refers to is Vide, the antique stained oak rail for utensils with shiny brass fittings like trumpet blasts. Yet this kitchen is not only for show; it’s for real, and frequently used, especially weekends when Nathalie and her fiancé have family and friends over for marathon meals.

– We’re a passionate cooking team. And I’m childishly excited about laying the table with fine china, candles, and flowers. Nothing’s more gratifying than preparing a dinner party for people you’re fond of.