Even though I’ve never been to Copenhagen, it’s left a strong imprint on my being. Everything from the effortlessly minimal and abundantly unfussy interior point of view, to the swoony muted palette of whites, grays and soft blues that balance the warmth of their favored pale wood tones, to the food which has been more celebrated recently than any other global city, Scandinavia is high on my list of places to travel and Denmark is on the tippy top of that list.
Most of the design blogs that have informed my Amagansett home stemmed from, yes you guessed it, Scandinavia. Emma’s Design Blog, Scandinavian Retreat and My Scandinavian Home acted as my go-to trifecta of beauty and inspiration. And even more recently many of the tastemakers I’ve found myself following Instagram – like-minded lovers of design and food – have been from Copenhagen. It’s come into focus that I swoon the Danish!
The insta feed I’ve been finding the swooniest of all is Caroline Feiffer of‘ ‘The Feiffer’s’. I’ve admired her stunning feed for quite some time. I have such an appreciation for her refined scope, which is light and airy and absolutely influenced by the coastline and her travels. From the palette to the content to the composition and the products, I absolutely can’t get enough. The Feiffer’s is truly a curated destination, that’s both visually impressive and inspirational, as well as being a web boutique for items worth owning and knowing. Caroline and her husband/partner Steffan have what I can only describe as an impeccable eye and they’ve succeeded in making me swoon from across the globe.
As fate would have it, Caroline (who used to live in NYC) recently planned a trip stateside and reached out to me to cook and create! She wanted to share the Danish breakfast routine she and Steffan engage in every morning; it’s truly a ritual. There’s a calming beauty to the series of steps that start their day together. Day in and day out, it doesn’t change, ever – perfectly softboiled eggs with flaky sea salt, half a grapefruit, a bowl of strained fullfat Greek yogurt with swirls of homemade blackcurrant coulis, and a pot of black hot dripp coffee. To me it’s absolutely fascinating since my breakfast is incredibly varied each and every day! It really got me thinking – so I decided to prepare a classic weekend breakfast with Caroline, which I will share this Friday on The Bite!
Though Danish design is simplistic at its core it always contains an element of juxtaposition, whether in its high-low approach or the extremes of using bold black accents in an all white space. So it made sense for me to juxtapose my breakfast ritual with Caroline’s. Once again a virtual stranger and I have been brought together by our shared aesthetics, our love of design and beauty, to become dear friends. As Caroline shared, “Instagram is a community for creatives – the visual storytelling gives a glimpse on the visual mind of the curator and I guess you instantly know if there’s some sense of connection just through visuals.” There are differences to all of us – our culture, our language, our location, our eating habits, how we live in our homes – but there are far more similarities that unite us. Here’s to celebrating friendship plain and simple. To common ground!