The cover of Nomad at Home, the book by Hilary Robertson published in July 2022, features a photograph of Dar Kawa, Valérie Barkowski’s home in the Marrakech medina. Inside, a sixteen-page chapter, “Medina in Monochrome,” explores her journey and her way of living.
It depicts an alcove beneath a Moorish arch: a mattress, a Moroccan wedding blanket, a stack of embroidered cushions. Quotes have been translated from the original English.
Pages from Nomad at Home by Hilary Robertson
Nomad at Home, a book on those who have made a home in a different country
Hilary Robertson is an interior stylist, born in London and based in the United States. Nomad at Home: Designing the Home More Traveled, her fifth book, is published by Ryland Peters & Small, with photography by Mike Karlsson Lundgren and a foreword by American designer Leanne Ford.
This interior design book visits ten homes of creatives who have left their country of origin. Hilary Robertson divides them into three groups: those who settle for good elsewhere, those who live between several bases, and those who bring the spirit of the places they have traveled back home.
Pages from Nomad at Home by Hilary Robertson
“Medina in Monochrome”: what the feature reveals
The chapter in Nomad at Home begins with a paradox. Hilary Robertson writes that the Marrakech medina is not the most obvious refuge for a “monochromist with modernist tendencies.” Outside, the souk with its piles of spices, rugs, djellabas, and baskets. Behind the door of Dar Kawa, she describes “a calm 17th-century oasis of white accented with black,” where the silence of the patio is disturbed only by oranges falling from the trees and the call of the muezzin.
The feature tours the house: Moorish doors painted in gray, tadelakt, lemonwood spoons, a rooftop terrace.
The neutral palette has a practical reason, which Valérie Barkowski explains in the book: “Also, in Morocco you don’t live the same way in summer and winter. In summer, you live on the terrace in the early morning and evening as you hunt for some fresh air. Winters are the reverse” A neutral backdrop allows everything to change from one season to the next. The same logic has guided her boutiques since 2001: the monochrome concept. The restoration of the house is detailed in our article: Artistic direction of a place.
Pages from Nomad at Home by Hilary Robertson
V.Barkowski home linens through the pages
The home linens featured in the story come almost entirely from Valérie Barkowski’s collections. In the interview used to write the chapter, she says it simply: “Most of the linens are from my own collection. Normal no?”
In the patio, the monochrome embroidered textiles are from her collections, sold in her boutique in the Marrakech Medina. In the bedrooms, white sheets bear what the book calls “Twist The World” touches, a nod to the V.Barkowski brand signature: contrasting black hems, blanket-stitch edges, running-stitch patterns. Elsewhere, graphic cushions sit alongside Moroccan wedding blankets and Bertoia chairs.
The word summarizes her method: “I work with local and ancestral crafts that I “twist”. So did I in India, in Vietnam, in Russia… Wherever I work in fact”
Another nod: black tassels, borrowed from the Moroccan tarboosh, serve as light switch pulls. The tassel has accompanied Valérie Barkowski for thirty years, and Condé Nast Traveler filmed her in her workshop.
Pages from Nomad at Home by Hilary Robertson
A nomad settled in Marrakech
Hilary Robertson traces a journey defined by departures. Valérie Barkowski left art school to become a model, a profession that allowed her to travel between fashion seasons: Chiang Mai, New York, Ho Chi Minh City. “As long as there are artisans, interesting cultural places, and good food, I am fine”
It was in Russia, where she lived for three years, that she found her trade. In Moscow, only linen by the meter was available: one babushka sewed her linens, another embroidered them. Visiting friends wanted to buy them: “That was the beginning.’”
In 1991, she discovered Morocco, “a country that had not been on my travel map” . Five years later, she moved there and found Dar Kawa, a ruin from the early 17th century whose proportions she loved instantly. Her way of traveling is recounted in the article Adopting slow travel in Marrakech.
Pages from Nomad at Home by Hilary Robertson
Slowing down: the choice recounted in Nomad at Home
Nomad at Home also reflects on a turning point. At one time, Valérie Barkowski’s textile business employed 500 embroiderers and knitters and had over 400 distributors worldwide. She did not feel “formatted to feed fashion’s demand for seasonal collections,” writes Hilary Robertson, to produce collections at the pace of fashion seasons. She sold her fashion brand, Mia Zia, in 2007.
She quantifies this imbalance: “IIn that huge business I realized that only 5% of my time was filled with work that I enjoy against 95% of solving problems.”
The book concludes with what she has built since: a workshop, a boutique, a riad, and an e-shop—at once a home and an income, an anchor that gives her the freedom to leave.
Pages from Nomad at Home by Hilary Robertson
“Home,” according to Valérie Barkowski
To Hilary Robertson, who asks her what “home” means, she replies: “Home is more than anything else a state of mind for me. I can feel home in many places”
And to those who leave their country: “Have an open mind. Be humble, listen to the locals.”
The exchange continued after the book. In August 2022, Hilary Robertson published a Marrakech address book in Yolo Journal, the travel magazine founded by Yolanda Edwards, based on Valérie Barkowski’s recommendations. All the addresses mentioned are still current.
What Nomad at Home says about Valérie Barkowski
Four years after its publication, Nomad at Home remains a sixteen-page portrait of Valérie Barkowski’s work: a house in the medina, home linens from her workshop, and a life organized to be able to leave and return. Other publications are gathered on the press page, and her journey on the About page.
An interior design book by Hilary Robertson, published in July 2022 by Ryland Peters & Small (192 pages, in English). It features ten homes of creatives settled far from their country of origin.
Which house is on the cover of Nomad at Home?
Dar Kawa, Valérie Barkowski’s home in the Marrakech medina.
Where can I find the home linens seen in Nomad at Home?
In her collections, handmade in her Marrakech workshop. The pieces can be discovered at the V.Barkowski store in the medina and are available for custom order.
On October 7, 2026, Condé Nast Traveler dedicated an episode of its “Made In” video series to three ancient Moroccan skills: rug weaving, metalwork, and Moroccan tassels. The final chapter, starting at 8 minutes 39, was filmed with Valérie Barkowski in her Marrakech workshop and her medina boutique. https://youtu.be/0-KePEfsqyY?t=519 ‘Made In’ showcases three Moroccan craft …
Nomad at Home: Valérie Barkowski’s home on the cover
The cover of Nomad at Home, the book by Hilary Robertson published in July 2022, features a photograph of Dar Kawa, Valérie Barkowski’s home in the Marrakech medina. Inside, a sixteen-page chapter, “Medina in Monochrome,” explores her journey and her way of living.
It depicts an alcove beneath a Moorish arch: a mattress, a Moroccan wedding blanket, a stack of embroidered cushions. Quotes have been translated from the original English.
Nomad at Home, a book on those who have made a home in a different country
Hilary Robertson is an interior stylist, born in London and based in the United States. Nomad at Home: Designing the Home More Traveled, her fifth book, is published by Ryland Peters & Small, with photography by Mike Karlsson Lundgren and a foreword by American designer Leanne Ford.
This interior design book visits ten homes of creatives who have left their country of origin. Hilary Robertson divides them into three groups: those who settle for good elsewhere, those who live between several bases, and those who bring the spirit of the places they have traveled back home.
“Medina in Monochrome”: what the feature reveals
The chapter in Nomad at Home begins with a paradox. Hilary Robertson writes that the Marrakech medina is not the most obvious refuge for a “monochromist with modernist tendencies.” Outside, the souk with its piles of spices, rugs, djellabas, and baskets. Behind the door of Dar Kawa, she describes “a calm 17th-century oasis of white accented with black,” where the silence of the patio is disturbed only by oranges falling from the trees and the call of the muezzin.
The feature tours the house: Moorish doors painted in gray, tadelakt, lemonwood spoons, a rooftop terrace.
The neutral palette has a practical reason, which Valérie Barkowski explains in the book: “Also, in Morocco you don’t live the same way in summer and winter. In summer, you live on the terrace in the early morning and evening as you hunt for some fresh air. Winters are the reverse” A neutral backdrop allows everything to change from one season to the next. The same logic has guided her boutiques since 2001: the monochrome concept. The restoration of the house is detailed in our article: Artistic direction of a place.
V.Barkowski home linens through the pages
The home linens featured in the story come almost entirely from Valérie Barkowski’s collections. In the interview used to write the chapter, she says it simply: “Most of the linens are from my own collection. Normal no?”
In the patio, the monochrome embroidered textiles are from her collections, sold in her boutique in the Marrakech Medina. In the bedrooms, white sheets bear what the book calls “Twist The World” touches, a nod to the V.Barkowski brand signature: contrasting black hems, blanket-stitch edges, running-stitch patterns. Elsewhere, graphic cushions sit alongside Moroccan wedding blankets and Bertoia chairs.
The word summarizes her method: “I work with local and ancestral crafts that I “twist”. So did I in India, in Vietnam, in Russia… Wherever I work in fact”
Another nod: black tassels, borrowed from the Moroccan tarboosh, serve as light switch pulls. The tassel has accompanied Valérie Barkowski for thirty years, and Condé Nast Traveler filmed her in her workshop.
A nomad settled in Marrakech
Hilary Robertson traces a journey defined by departures. Valérie Barkowski left art school to become a model, a profession that allowed her to travel between fashion seasons: Chiang Mai, New York, Ho Chi Minh City. “As long as there are artisans, interesting cultural places,
and good food, I am fine”
It was in Russia, where she lived for three years, that she found her trade. In Moscow, only linen by the meter was available: one babushka sewed her linens, another embroidered them. Visiting friends wanted to buy them: “That was the beginning.’”
In 1991, she discovered Morocco, “a country that had not been on my travel map” . Five years later, she moved there and found Dar Kawa, a ruin from the early 17th century whose proportions she loved instantly. Her way of traveling is recounted in the article Adopting slow travel in Marrakech.
Slowing down: the choice recounted in Nomad at Home
Nomad at Home also reflects on a turning point. At one time, Valérie Barkowski’s textile business employed 500 embroiderers and knitters and had over 400 distributors worldwide. She did not feel “formatted to feed fashion’s demand for seasonal collections,” writes Hilary Robertson, to produce collections at the pace of fashion seasons. She sold her fashion brand, Mia Zia, in 2007.
She quantifies this imbalance: “IIn that huge business I realized that only 5% of my time
was filled with work that I enjoy against 95% of solving problems.”
The book concludes with what she has built since: a workshop, a boutique, a riad, and an e-shop—at once a home and an income, an anchor that gives her the freedom to leave.
“Home,” according to Valérie Barkowski
To Hilary Robertson, who asks her what “home” means, she replies: “Home is more than anything else a state of mind for me. I can feel home in many places”
And to those who leave their country: “Have an open mind. Be humble, listen to the locals.”
The exchange continued after the book. In August 2022, Hilary Robertson published a Marrakech address book in Yolo Journal, the travel magazine founded by Yolanda Edwards, based on Valérie Barkowski’s recommendations. All the addresses mentioned are still current.
What Nomad at Home says about Valérie Barkowski
Four years after its publication, Nomad at Home remains a sixteen-page portrait of Valérie Barkowski’s work: a house in the medina, home linens from her workshop, and a life organized to be able to leave and return. Other publications are gathered on the press page, and her journey on the About page.
Read also
→ Dar Kawa, the house that shaped 30 years of textiles
→ Artistic direction of a place, how I work
Frequently asked questions about Nomad at Home
What is the book Nomad at Home?
An interior design book by Hilary Robertson, published in July 2022 by Ryland Peters & Small (192 pages, in English). It features ten homes of creatives settled far from their country of origin.
Which house is on the cover of Nomad at Home?
Dar Kawa, Valérie Barkowski’s home in the Marrakech medina.
Where can I find the home linens seen in Nomad at Home?
In her collections, handmade in her Marrakech workshop. The pieces can be discovered at the V.Barkowski store in the medina and are available for custom order.
Related Posts
Moroccan tassels: the workshop filmed by Condé Nast Traveler
On October 7, 2026, Condé Nast Traveler dedicated an episode of its “Made In” video series to three ancient Moroccan skills: rug weaving, metalwork, and Moroccan tassels. The final chapter, starting at 8 minutes 39, was filmed with Valérie Barkowski in her Marrakech workshop and her medina boutique. https://youtu.be/0-KePEfsqyY?t=519 ‘Made In’ showcases three Moroccan craft …