Matoba Choker in Wood - $185.00
Victoria de la Maza
Author, Photographer, The Serial Hostess
My name is Victoria de la Maza. I live in Charleston, South Carolina, which suits me in ways I did not fully expect when I arrived. The light here has something of Andalucía to it in the late afternoon — warm and a little golden and unhurried. I have been here long enough now that it feels like mine.
This season of life is one of consolidation, I think. I have written the books, launched the condiment line, written the columns, hosted the television shows. Now I am doing
the thing I love most without apology: writing about entertaining, cooking for people I love, and trying to say something true about what it means to live beautifully without making it complicated.
A truly beautiful day for me starts early. I am not someone who wastes the morning. Coffee first — proper
coffee, not something from a machine — and then a walk, ideally somewhere with a view of water or trees. Then writing, for as long as the words come. Then the market, because I cannot plan a meal without seeing what is there first. Then cooking, which for me is not a task but a form of thinking. And then people around the table. That is
the whole day. That is the whole life, really.
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FIELD STORIES™ INTERVIEW
Victoria de la Maza
Her path
I grew up on a cortijo — a working Andalusian farm — outside Sevilla. The outdoors was not something you went to. It was simply where you were. We rode horses before school. We picked oranges and olives. We ate outside whenever the weather allowed, which in Sevilla is most of the year. The land was not a backdrop; it was the whole texture of daily life.
When I went to boarding school in England, I missed it terribly. The English countryside is beautiful, but it is a different kind of beauty — green and contained and a little melancholy. I think that contrast is what made me understand, for the first time, that I had been given something rare in those years on the farm.
The Modern Sporting Woman
It means being capable. It means not needing to be rescued. It means knowing how to read a landscape, how to be comfortable in your own body outdoors, how to be useful rather than decorative.
I am not a hunter, and I am not particularly athletic in the conventional sense. But I have always been someone who goes toward things rather than away from them. I will take the longer walk. I will stay out in the rain. I will eat whatever is on the table. That willingness to be in it — fully in it — is what I think of when I think of a sporting woman.
“Elegance is not about expense. It is about intention.”
I grew up watching my mother set a table in the cortijo — our family’s farm in Sevilla — with whatever was in the garden and whatever was in the pantry, and it was always beautiful, always generous, always right. She never made a fuss about it. She just did it with care. That is the thing I have been trying to teach ever since: that a beautiful life is not a luxury reserved for people with large budgets. It is a practice. It is a choice you make every day about how much attention you are willing to pay.
Your Norton + Hodges Story
I first discovered Norton and Hodges through Suzette, and through the story she was telling. What caught my attention was not the product first — it was the intention behind it. A brand built around real women living real lives, in real places, with real things. That is rare. Most luxury brands sell you an aspiration. Norton + Hodges sells you a recognition — this is already who you are.
Women + Community
Being a part of this community means being seen accurately. Not as a hostess, not as a cook, not as a columnist — but as a whole person who contains all of those things and more. The women in this community understand that a woman can love a beautifully set table and also love a long walk in the rain. That she can care deeply about food and also care deeply aboutthe land the food comes from. That she is not one thing
Victoria de la Maza is an award-winning author of lifestyle and entertaining cookbooks, columnist, and photographer. Born in Madrid and raised on her family’s cortijo in Sevilla, she attended boarding school in England before moving to New York in her twenties. She has written for Veranda, Town & Country, Food & Wine, Cottages & Gardens, and The Miami Herald, and hosted television programmes for Canal de Casain Spain and PBS in Florida. She is the creator of Diary of a Serial Hostess and the founder of Victoria Amory & Co., a collection of artisanal condiments inspired by the flavours of Andalucía. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
