There is an air of romanticism to everything Jenny Walton does. In addition to her endless array of archival Prada, the illustrator, painter, and Vogue contributor is perhaps best known to her Instagram audience for her fanciful takes on the everyday (think: a mid-week breakfast table covered in Marchesi sweets and pastries.) In her newly-published Monacelli/Phaidon tome Jenny Sais Quoi: Adventures in Vintage and Personal Style, one finds an equally delight-inspiring collection of watercolors and essays that go one step beyond the usual coffee table book content to advise us on how one might go about living like Walton. Just don’t call it a guide.
“I didn’t want to do a guidebook, in any way, because it’s 2026 and you don’t want something prescriptive that says ‘wear this’ or ‘do this’—but I wanted this book to get people to think in a more creative way,” she told Vogue during a cocktail party gathering in the presidential suite at The Carlyle Hotel. As such, the project includes essays like Flow State Fashion, which asks readers to put on music and treat their closet like a child’s dressing up box, and Off The Algorithm, which harkens the need for time and research in order to develop unique personal taste away from social media.
Joining Walton were many of her compatriots who live by the same philosophies, including Christopher John Rogers, Tommy Ton, Leandra Medine Cohen, and Vogue’s Lisa Aiken and Lilah Ramzi who gathered in the living room to admire the sweeping view of Central Park, as well as a cake in the shape of Walton’s dog, Aurora, made by Lilli Maren.
Also in attendance were a troupe of charming waiters from the hotel’s famed Bemelmans Bar, sporting their signature white coats to serve up martinis in the hotel’s etched Art Deco glassware. The team from Vestiare Collective were also in situ, highlighting a few of Walton’s own ready-to-wear and accessories in the room’s expansive walk-in closet from the likes of Hermes, Chanel, and Prada (of course!) which are now available to snap up on the site.
Next up for Walton is a talk at the Victoria & Albert in London alongside the museum’s new Schiaparelli exhibition. There’s also an upcoming jaunt to California, as she’s readying to soon begin her move from Milan to Santa Barbara with her fiancé, Nick, though he is known to her followers simply as “the plane guy.” As if it were a chapter in the rom-com that is Walton’s life, the two met on a flight from New York to San Francisco last year and have been smitten ever since. “We found this house from the ‘70s on this quiet little cul-de-sac, and I was like, ‘Yeah, why not?’” Walton explained. “Let’s try a new adventure!”
