Dream House: South Wraxall Manor

September 1st, 2009 | Playing House

On one of those enchanting English summer evenings when it’s light until ten o’clock and the air is so soft you could almost touch it, Gela Nash-Taylor, co-creative director of Juicy Couture, is giddy with excitement. She often gets this way, she says, when she’s in England, which is about eight weeks of the year, and where she has taken on a new role—chatelaine of one of the finest manor houses in the country. “It’s just psychotically gorgeous,” she says of her favorite vacation spot. “Sometimes I get-really-excited-and-I-start-talking-too-fast-and.…”

It’s not surprising that Gela daydreams constantly about her English home when she is working at the Juicy offices in Pacoima, California. Tucked down a remote Wiltshire lane thick with cow parsley and foxgloves, South Wraxall Manor is an Elizabethan fairy tale. Rambling (it has nine bedrooms and seven bathrooms) and wildly romantic, the house was built of Bath stone by the aristocratic Long family, who lived here for more than five centuries. Now, after passing through a Gothic courtyard with a distinctly Middle Earth vibe, visitors are greeted by a welcome mat inscribed NASH-TAYLOR.

In a modern twist on the tradition of the dollar princesses, Gela plays the L.A. career girl transported to lady of the manor quite brilliantly—and with her tongue planted firmly in her porcelain-white cheek. Her look today is an American fashionista’s take on a classic English hunting outfit: gleaming black leather riding boots over skintight, ultradark navy J Brand jeans, a little chiffon blouse with an antique lace jabot, and a bespoke dogtooth-tweed Edward Sexton waistcoat to protect her from the faint chill evident on even the most beautiful English evening. The feather Philip Treacy fascinator hat on her head quivers every time she speaks, in exact correlation to her level of anticipation, which is accelerating by the second because she is expecting fourteen people for dinner tonight. – Vogue