In New Orleans one certainly senses, as William Faulkner wrote, that “the past isn't dead. It's not even past.” Still, a fresh and exciting 21st-century interpretation of the old themes emerges. The style reflects a prevalent brightness about the city's future. Within the new generation of New Orleans style is evolving a design philosophy that leaves behind period and traditional interiors. A new set of common threads runs through this new aesthetic. Many of the old elements are there. The antiquity and mystery are still there. There are hints of the extravagance of the 19th-century port city, and we still find the past woven into the tapestry, but what is emerging as New Orleans new elegance is lighter, more open, and reconfigured to suit our lives in the 21st century.

Award winning documenter of local architecture and culture, Kerri McCaffety looks at the city’s most innovative and iconic interiors in a quest to define the essence of New Orleans’ unique style.

What is it that makes New Orleans different from any other place on Earth? How does it show in our rooms? How have styles changed in the twenty-first century? McCaffety poses these questions to designers, scholars and artists best known for capturing the soul of the city and tells the story with their words and her photographs.

The book includes over 200 photographs documenting more than 40 homes and an introduction by Julia Reed.