Mavens of style
New book explores the decorating sense and sensibilities of 15 trendsetting designing women
IT was the early 1950s, and River Oaks was buzzing: John and Dominique de Menil had brought architect Philip Johnson to the city to design their new home.
A plain, pink-brick exterior and a flat roof weren’t what you’d normally see in that swank neighborhood, but the de Menils didn’t care. They were French — he was a banker and she was an oil industry heiress — and brought a different sense of style to their modern home.
They filled the space, where they raised their five children, with their collection of art and hired her clothing designer, Charles James, to shake things up with a high-fashion sensibility in every room.
P. Gaye Tapp, who chronicles Dominique de Menil’s design style in her new book, “How they Decorated: Inspiration From Great Women of the 20th Century,” lauds de Menil’s choice of designers as “gutsy.”
“He must have driven her crazy, but he has a wonderful eye and way of bringing in these Victorian pieces and putting leather or color on them, making a home that was completely unique,” says Tapp, a decorator for more than 30 years.
James — who never decorated another residence — approached the home like he did his clothing. The severe angles of Johnson’s structure would be softened with colors such as fuchsia, crimson, butterscotch and a custom-blended paint color dubbed “Menil Gray.”
Black floors were polished to a mirrorlike state and doors were wrapped in velvet or felt. Every room boasted pieces from their growing art collection.
A curvy modern banquette, 18th-century Spanish furniture, art hung gallery style and African sculpture all fit together in their dining room, for example.
In the living room, a bar
“Their rooms and houses were a part of who they were. Our rooms express who we are.”
P. Gaye Tapp, author
closet held miniature works of art, rows of colorful glasses and at least a few taxidermied birds who met an untimely death when they ran into the home’s huge windows.
De Menil is one of 15 muses from the past century who are celebrated in the book for their innate style — depicted in rooms in their homes — that still influence others today. Many are European — Lesley Blanch, Lady Diana Cooper, Louise de Vilmorin, Sybil Connolly, Hélène Rochas, Pauline de Rothschild, Elsa Schiaparelli, Pauline Trigère and Gabrielle van Zuylen.
Americans include Evangeline Bruce, Fleur Cowles, Georgia O’Keeffe, Babe Paley, Bunny Mellon and Mona von Bismarck.
Filled with lavish photos and illustrations, Tapp’s book weaves history, culture, style and art together with just enough gossip to keep you reading.
“My subjects are all fascinating,” Tapp says. “I included Georgia O’Keeffe, who is not thought about as a decorator per se, but has had such an influence over women’s lifestyles.”
During her Houston visit for Texas Design Week, Tapp toured the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, reveling in the style and culture that Ima Hogg brought to her hometown. If she produces a second volume of her book, Tapp said, Hogg might just be perfect for it.
Tapp, who lives outside Raleigh-Durham, N.C., has written about similar women in her Little Augury blog. Reading about their lives through the years and getting a look at various rooms in their homes through magazines made creating a list of subjects easier.
She admires Cooper, a Brit whose diplomat husband took her all over the world, for her interesting life. De Rothschild was a favorite subject for Diana Vreeland’s Vogue, and her rooms seemed always ready for a photo shoot. O’Keeffe represents an unconventional eye for the sense of place in the New Mexico desert, and Mellon and Paley are personal favorites.
Though many of these women lived very public lives in their day, Tapp wants to revive their reputations for a new generation.
“I hope that, for instance, Evangeline Bruce’s way of tying paintings up with ribbons will be remembered,” Tapp says. “She did that as a way of personalizing when living in homes that weren’t hers when her husband was an ambassador.” Bruce, once called the “true queen of American style,” was married to David Bruce, American ambassador to Britain, France, Germany and China at various times. Once the couple returned to their 11,000-square-foot home in Washington, D.C., she became famous for her parties there.
Despite living for so many years in ambassadorial homes that came with furniture and art, she made her mark with those ribbons from which masterful paintings hung, as well as objects and antiques she collected during her travels. Through the years, the Bruces lived in homes full of history, classic architecture and elegant interiors.
Von Bismarck, who married well five times and seemingly spent her life decorating one house or another, would have been a celebrity if anyone had used that term in the 1920s and 1930s.
When she married her third husband, Harrison Williams, 24 years her senior and considered the richest man in America, she too was celebrated as the best-dressed woman in the world.
Her style was cool and clean and spare, often using all-white themes in her homes.
Paley — dubbed “one of the fabulous Cushing sisters” —was a socialite and style icon before she married CBS mogul Bill Paley.
During their marriage, she threw herself into decorating their various homes, using the best interior designers of the day, including George Stacey, Billy Baldwin, McMillen Inc., Sister Parish, Albert Hadley and Stéphane Boudin of Jansen.
The Paleys’ Fifth Avenue home was decorated by Parish and Hadley, and its living room was painted taxicab yellow and filled with French antiques and post-Impressionistic paintings. It was a mixture of yellow chairs, pillows and ottomans, glamorous brown satin sofas and Indian cotton prints on top of a dyed goatskin rug.
Among the often photographed women is Italian fashion designer Schiaparelli, Tapp’s favorite for her eclectic mix of colors and patterns.
At the height of her career, just before World War II, she decorated her Paris flat with the Jansen design firm and her friend, modernist Jean Michek Frank.
In her autobiography, “Shocking Life,” she described the library in that flat as the one room that gave her joy. It was an improbable mix of pagoda-style bookcases, antique tapestries, pieces of chinoiserie and a sofa covered in leopard skin. When she finally got a TV, she set it on a stack of rare 18th-century dictionaries.
As much as “How They Decorated” is about style and design, it is also about history. Tapp jokes that as she wrote the book, she ought to have been sitting in some dusty library.
“Delving into it was interesting. Most of these women really did live,” Tapp says, “Their rooms and houses were a part of who they were. Our rooms express who we are.”