The best partnerships always seem to arrive with a sense of inevitability. For years, I have been both a customer and a distant admirer of Beth Berke and her incredible brand, South Loop Loft. When she reached out to collaborate, it felt like a beautifully timed moment of kismet—turns out, while I was admiring her world, she was watching mine from across the room. How cool is that?
Getting to know Beth has been a true honor and a reminder of the special magic that happens when a friendship is forged through creative curiosity. In some ways, we are very different women. Beth spends her days traveling the globe, hunting for beauty, and tracking down forgotten treasures. I spend most of my time deeply rooted at home. Yet, despite our different rhythms, we are cut from the same cloth. Both driven by a profound love for art, a shared obsession with history and culture (we were both anthropology majors), and an absolute reverence for the stories that objects carry.
When you look at Beth’s background, it all makes sense. Before she founded South Loop Loft, she spent years working in humanitarian aid in developing countries. She understands people. She understands nuance. And she possesses the kind of expansive, empathetic soul that allows her to look at a piece of stone and see the entire life of the person who carved it.
The story she brought to LES for this edition—the story of Philippe—is beautiful. It’s a narrative that deserved to be told with the utmost care, and I am honored and delighted that she trusted me to tell that story. I was particularly drawn to the way Beth approached Philippe’s work. When she stumbled upon his sculptures in that sun-dappled Provençal garden, she didn’t just see inventory to be bought and sold. She saw a thirty-year life’s work created in relative obscurity, purely for the enduring pleasure of discovery.
More than that, I was moved by how she chose to steward his legacy. The true mission of these LES journals has always been a form of world-building. We want to invite you into our ethos, our aesthetic, and our community—to give you a sense of the living, breathing world we inhabit. Beth approached Philippe’s sculptures with that same instinct. She dreamed a world into being around them.
In this issue, we invite you to step inside that world. You will find the serendipitous story of Beth stumbling upon Philippe’s work, the warmth of her journey into his private Provençal garden, and the poetic way she envisioned his heavy, soulful stones thriving inside a home. Because we couldn’t resist leaning into the spirit of summer travel, Beth has also shared her coveted Provence travel tips, and I have gathered a curated list of European fiction recommendations to carry with you—whether you are boarding a flight or, like me, traveling entirely through the pages of a book from the comfort of home.
I am so thrilled to share this collaborative labor of love with you.
With gratitude,
Lauren
Don’t forget to hit that heart! It helps more than you know. If you liked this, please subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a comment! For more creativity, you can follow me on IG and explore years of art and design articles on the LES Journal.
Collaboration. Curation. Imagination
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May 30
I want to tell you how excited I am to present this issue. But that feels sort of lame. The truth is, I’m intensely excited to present every single issue we create at LES.
From Her Hands: A Women's History Month Art Project
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Mar 18
For a while, A Whimsical World was pretty seperate from my “day job” at LES Collection. The stories, here, were mostly researched and written in my off-hours on whatever whim I felt like chasing that particular week. At LES, I was engaged in that steady creative act of building a brand—fine-tuning our tone of voice and visual language,
LES Winter Journal Reflections
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Jan 24
I’m always slightly hesitant to write too much about LES here on A Whimsical World (beyond sharing a bit of news at the end of every story). In my head, I’ve created this arbitrary distinction: LES is my “day job,” and AWW is my “extracurricular activity.” LES is where I go to build a business, and AWW is where I get to write about all the other things …
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