This is an extract from Bellissima by Collette Dinnigan. Photography by Earl Carter. Published by Simon & Schuster Australia. Out now.
I always wanted a place by the ocean. Watching the storms roll in from the balcony of our Rosedale home, you can feel the energy in the air – it’s like a portal to another world.
The whales travel up and down the coast and you can see dolphins surfing the waves.
Each day brings a new narrative of oceanic wonder. After our original and wonderfully laidback surf shack here burnt down, we had to rebuild to a BAL 40 fire rating, which presented many challenges. But the result was a much more modern aesthetic and a house that is also 98 per cent off-grid.
Bellissima: An Australian–Italian Affair takes you into Collette’s world of beauty – interiors, gardens, food, friends, curiosities, art and travel – in Italy and Australia. It shows us Collette’s remarkable eye for detail, vignettes, texture and colour. She shares her design inspiration and reveals stunning photos never before published of her homes in Bowral and Darling Point, along with a Rome apartment and holiday house in Puglia. Collette and her photographer, Earl Carter, travelled the length of Italy, from Naples to Turin, to capture the essence of what inspires Collette that she then brings home to Australia, the ‘great Southern light’.
For more on Collette Dinnigan | For more on Bellissima, published by Simon & Schuster, RRP $100
