Required Reading: How They Decorated, Inspiration from Great Women of the 20th Century - Remodelista
Flicking through a vintage magazine can start well: the fabulous cover, the glamorous ads. Photography by Jim Powell for Remodelista. Lesley Blanch’s house in the south of France, photographed by Henry Clarke for House & Garden. An aphorism of Gloria Vanderbilt sets the tone: “Decorating is autobiography.” This is amply illustrated by the lifestyle of the extravagantly nomadic author Lesley Blanch (1904-2007). Like several of the women in this book, Blanch (best known for her book The Wilder Shores of Love) decorated herself and her houses with equal enthusiasm, “often matching the color of her wardrobe to a particular room,” notes Tapp. Each entry in How They Decorated begins with full name life span uniformly long and a potential epitaph The glamorous Gabrielle Andrée Iglesias Valayas van Zuylen 1933 2010 lived in a rarefied world of haute luxe By... Gabrielle van Zuylen’s house in Normandy, photographed by Horst P. Horst. ...the end we know that van Zuylen also became an accomplished gardener under the tutelage of British landscaper Russell Page who had a similar effect on Marella Agnelli and wrote a definitive volume The Gardens of Russell Page Indoors, once van Zuylen had spotted the work of François Catroux in New York, she knew she’d found the perfect collaborator for her modern rooms in Paris and Normandy. “Cozy for two people, magnificent for thirty,” van Zuylen’s description of her Paris apartment. Van Zuylen was vehemently anti-clutter; she took old places and gave them streamlined, almost futuristic interiors. Photographed by Marc Riboud. Dominique de Menil designed the heptagonal ottoman for her Philip Johnson house. Dominique Schlumberger de Menil (1908-1997) was an art collector and social reformer, with her husband Baron Jean de Menil. Photographed for House & Garden in the 1960s, by Balthazar Korab. Inside Georgia O’Keeffe’s ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. After the death of Stieglitz, she persuaded the owner to sell, so that she could develop the series of buildings to better suit her work and her ideas. The room above left was photographed in the 1960s. By the 1970s, O’Keeffe had reduced her interior palette considerably, to earth colors. Pauline Trigère’s house La Tortue (The Tortoise) in Westchester, New York. By way of contrast, clothes designer Pauline Trigère (1908-2002) expressed her sense of self in a way that seems rather outrageous now, and very much of its time (the 1970s and 1980s). Photographed by Richard Champion. How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the 20th Century (Rizzoli) is $34.43 from Amazon.