Location scouting, after casting, was the most enjoyable part of my years working in photo and film production. I loved stepping into people’s worlds, and location scouting fascinated me. I’d walk into a space and immediately start trying to read it. Who are the people that live here? Why did they choose this home? Why these books, on that shelf, in that order?

Even when something wasn’t remotely my taste, I could still appreciate a home that felt unapologetically its owner’s. I loved how much you could learn about someone simply by walking through their home without ever meeting them.

Across past issues of Margot, we have photographed many of our interviewees in their own spaces. I have done this for many reasons, mostly because the women are more relaxed at home. As photographer Rose Callahan, a frequent Margot contributor often says,

When I think of my favorite portraits, whether photographs or paintings, I’m always drawn to people in situ. Their surroundings become part of the story. For our twelfth issue of Margot, I wanted to explore this further. Centering this issue on interiors coincided with my own apartment renovation. I recently moved into what I like to call a little jewel of an apartment on New York’s Upper East Side.

People often describe moving or renovating as exhausting. I think it’s something much bigger than that. It’s an emotional upheaval. Every move marks a new chapter in your life. Somehow, home becomes the physical expression of where you are at that moment. It became abundantly clear what I wanted my new space to reflect. We hear it all the time: home should be our sanctuary. I agree. But I also think it’s one of the truest expressions of who we are. Clothes tell part of our story. Our homes tell another, perhaps an even deeper one in my opinion.

This issue is Margot’s perspective on interiors. Beautiful rooms are wonderful, but it is the lives within that make them more interesting. We did not have stylists come in beforehand to tidy or perfect the spaces. Not every room was photographed. I asked each photographer to find the essence of the home. Its mood. Its atmosphere. The woman is the focus, and the interiors simply happen to be the lens through which we see them.

The Margot woman has never been particularly interested in trends. Interiors, of all things, should endure beyond them. These are homes filled with colors their owners love, objects collected over a lifetime, books that have been read and reread, and gardens that have become outdoor rooms—spaces that provide beauty and connect us to nature.

Photographer Eryca Green, who happened to be in Rome, introduced us to Antonella Cuzzocrea. Romi Loch Davis (another Margot interviewee) led us to her dear friend Sigrid de Montrond in Venice. Rose Callahan introduced us to Syrie Moskowitz, and her glorious garden of more than one hundred varieties of roses. Interiors expert Hilary Robertson pointed us towards Pik Yee Berwick in the Hudson Valley.

Then we have two women in the design industry: interior decorator and screenwriter Arlene Gibbs reminds us that moving into a new home is not about rushing to finish it but allowing it to evolve. We photographed interior designer Christiane Lemieux on the morning of her beautiful new flagship store opening in New York. Writer Laura Neilson chose to explore Lemieux’s great passion for travel—and is there any greater inspiration for an interior designer?

Each woman arrived through another trusted woman. That, in many ways, is the Margot story. As Observer in Chief, (which I so prefer over Editor in Chief) I simply get to follow my curiosity.

This issue is filled with delightful homes and gardens. But when I think back on every one of them, it isn’t the furniture, wallpaper or beautifully collected objects I remember. It’s the woman. Because she is the one who makes the space.