A Designer Education
Julia Reed October 22nd, 2009Until I married my husband and we bought our house in the Garden District of New Orleans, I lived a fairly peripatetic life, moving through Washington, New York, the French Quarter, even Winter Park, Florida. Along the way, I collected a lot of things and probably offloaded even more (a parrot green parson’s table, my mother’s flame-stitched dining room chairs, a Lucite coffee table scarred by late night cigarettes). But no matter where I went, the one thing I insisted on toting with me was my ever-burgeoning collection of shelter magazines.
I still have most of them: the sadly departed House & Garden, Southern Accents, and Maison & Jardin, as well as the survivors, House Beautiful, The World of Interiors, and Elle Decor. You can learn a lot by looking at how and where other people live, and for more than twenty years these magazines provided the bulk of my design education.
These days I am lucky enough to be friends with a number of talented designers. But long before I could afford their services, I had read up on all the greats and learned by trying to emulate them. My first New York City apartment was Billy Baldwin brown with white woodwork and white curtains made of a Jack Lenor Larsen cotton “lace.” I did the walls of my second, rather more grand one in Nancy Lancaster’s glazed “buttah” yellow, modeled after her famous Yellow Room in London that was a collaboration with John Fowler.
My education continued when I actually got to visit some of the places I’d only seen in print. Bill Blass’s Manhattan apartment, for example, remains one of the most amazing—and well-curated—spaces I’ve ever been in. There was not a thing in it that wasn’t perfect, from the pair of Regency chaise longues upholstered in a faded green-striped linen to the contents of his spotless refrigerator. Once, when he was caught unprepared for a trick-or-treater, he returned from his kitchen with the only thing he could find, a single black truffle! After he died, I bought at auction a gutsy bronze Chinese urn lamp that had been in that apartment, along with a lovely watercolor of a crab that had hung in his equally perfect Connecticut country house.
Blass is quoted in the new Style and Substance, the Best of Elle Décor, saying, “It’s all about editing one’s life—refining, simplifying, constantly editing.” Blass taught me a lot (about clothes too—I still miss the sheer dash of even his dressiest pieces and his amazing touch with menswear and upholstery fabrics), but he was by no means my only mentor. Recently my friend Suzanne Rheinstein bought a Manhattan apartment that could not be more different than Bill’s, though it is equally refined. A shrine to low-key city glamour, it’s all warm grays and creams and taupes, like a modern-day Syrie Maugham pied a terre, but still entirely Suzanne with its gorgeous old mirrors, painted floors, and comfortable handmade sofas.
From Suzanne I have learned the fine art of layering, a skill not unrelated to Bill’s rigorous editing. Right now, in my own house, I am trying to do both. As I type, I am staring at a pair of windows with no curtains and wondering if I will ever find the right bench for my sunroom—among many, many other things I still desperately need (or, more to the point, want). Still, as nice as it might have been to have an “instant house,” I’m glad I’ve gone a bit slow. The fun part is the weeding out and layering in, the constant search and the constant education.
On Taigan, I have lots of places from which to choose my “layers.” There’s Suzanne’s Hollyhock, of course, and Corzine and Co., where over the years I have bought the bulk of my Herend china and so much more. The mantle in my front parlor already boasts blue and lavender coral from Lushlife and I am currently dying for a bird diorama from Revival and a gilded clamshell from Georgia Tapert Living.
Fortunately, in addition to the volume from Elle Décor, there are loads of new “house” books out this fall to offer plenty more guidance. Over the next several weeks, we will be featuring them on fetch—and I will, as usual, be poring over them.
Elusive Find: Oysterman
