From modern Baroque to the queen of chintz, on this, the 250th anniversary of the United States, here are the American decorators you need to know. Several have connections to Ireland.
Each of these US tastemakers has had a profound impact on high-end residential, commercial, and television-based design.
From the 19th century to today, they transcend genres and have influenced design houses across the 50 states and beyond.
One of the country's main fabric houses, Schumacher, has created Stars and Stripes, a collection of fabrics, wallpapers, and trims that draws inspiration from American art, traditional quilts, and patriotic colour palettes.
Sources include Jasper Johns’ flag paintings and traditional American quilt patterns.
THE PIONEERS
The Wasp aesthetic - Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937)
While best known as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Edith Wharton was a pioneer of interior design.
Her The Decoration of Houses, published in 1897, was the original of the decoration book species and helped revolutionise American home aesthetics by rejecting Victorian clutter in favour of classical proportions, architectural harmony, and simplicity.
Her moneyed background connected her to the then-wealthy establishment of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, shortened to Wasp, her client base.
Her country house in Massachusetts, pictured above, is now a national historic landmark.
The Gilded Age arbiter of taste - Elsie de Wolfe (1859 – 1950)
Many also cite Elsie de Wolfe as the inventor of interior design. She reportedly printed business cards in 1903, stating this was her job.
She banished Victoriana in favour of light, clutter-free room layouts, and even made beige fashionable decades before the 1990s.
She favoured chintz, mirrors, trellis, painted furniture, decoupage, black-and-white colour schemes, all of which were evident in The Trellis Room in Manhattan’s Colony Club, the hot spot, which opened in 1907.
Her client base included Gilded Age new money moguls, the Vanderbilts, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Edward and Wallis Simpson, publisher Condé Nast, whose ballroom can be seen above, and the Fricks, whose Upper East Side mansion now houses in New York is now home to the Frick Collection.
Mother of modern Baroque - Dorothy Draper (1889 – 1969)
A near counterparty of de Wolfe, Dorothy Draper, is also credited with inventing the business of interior design. She started out buying and selling houses with her husband.
Her big break came in the early 1930s when she was contracted to redecorate Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel.
Think shiny black ceilings, acid-green woodwork and black-and-white tiled floors, along with a hint of maximalism, large prints such as banana leaves and flamingos, or the florals shown above, birdcage chandeliers, along with rococo scrollwork and baroque plasterwork.
This combination that has been called modern Baroque. She, too, published a book, Decorating is Fun! How To Be Your Own Decorator in 1939.
You can still buy it on Amazon.
The modern classicist - T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905 – 1976)
From an Irish perspective, Harry Robsjohn-Gibbings claim to fame is that he designed tobacco heiress Doris Duke’s house.
Her butler, Bernard Lafferty, came from Creeslough, Co Donegal. He was also commissioned to do Hilda Boldt Weber’s Casa Encantada in Bel-Air.
The storied Los Angeles estate at the heart of a contentious foreclosure battle following the death of telecommunications mogul Gary Winnick has just sold at auction for US $130 million.
He incorporated sphinxes, dolphins, lions’ paw feet, and Ionic columns into the furniture.
He too published a book in 1944 titled Goodbye, Mr. Chippendale, and working with Greek cabinet makers Susan and Eleftherios Saridis, created the Klismos line of furniture.
When he moved to Athens, he became Aristotle Onassis’s designer when he was married to Jaqueline Kennedy.
The queen of chintz - Sister Parish (1910 – 1994) and Albert Hadley (1920 – 2012) of Parish-Hadley
A cousin of Dorothy Draper’s and not a nun, Sister Parish opened her decorating business in 1933 with no training.
Her style was an Americanised version of the English country house look. Simplicity and comfort were her watchwords.
She popularised the use of ticking and believed that every room should have a piece of blue and white porcelain and some trace of chintz.
Sister met Albert Hadley, ten years her junior, in 1962 – their first job together was the breakfast room of the Kennedy White House.
MID CENTURY MAVERICKS
Bold and all-American - Billy Baldwin (1903 – 1983)
Billy Baldwin was Jacqueline Kennedy’s post-White House decorator of choice, designing her then unfinished and unfurnished home on Skorpios Island in time for Christmas with just six weeks' lead time.
He was also favoured by Truman Capote’s Swans, including Bunny Mellon and Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill, along with Condé Nast’s CEO, S.I. Newhouse Jr, and Vogue magazine editor Diana Vreeland – he did her much-photographed, bold, blood-red colour-drenched sitting room.
The maximalist - Tony Duquette (1914 – 1999)
The artist and set designer Tony Duquette was an unequivocal maximalist.
Reportedly discovered by Elsie de Wolfe in the early 1940s, his clients included Doris Duke, J. Paul Getty, and Elizabeth Arden, who commissioned him to design Barratstown Castle in Ballymore Eustace, Co Kildare.
Considered the master of Space Age Baroque, his Hollywood designs were considered entertainment.
It appeared opulent, but with a background in set design, not all was as it seemed. Think malachite walls, gilded and gem-studded objects, ostrich eggs, sunbursts, shells, and coral.
Pic: Exterior of Barretstown Castle and 500-acre estate in the 1960s, then owned by Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden. She sold it to Canadian millionaire Galen Weston, who owned Brown Thomas.
Space Age stylist - Arthur Elrod (1924 – 1974)
Palm Springs modernism owes much of its existence to Arthur Elrod, who designed homes for Lucille Ball and Walt Disney.
He mixed modernism with Space Age styling and commissioned one of the country’s most revered architects, John Lautner, to design his own home.
The combination of the two men’s talents is now one of the principal reasons people visit the desert city to view the property. Since it was built, the house has been used as a location.
Fashion designer Bill Blass held a fashion show there, Playboy did a feature on it, and the house was used as the mansion of millionaire Willard Whyte’s in the 1971 Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever.
The counterculture cool kid - Bill Willis (1937 – 2009)
Bill Willis was the decorating high priest of the countercultural swinging sixties when much of high society decamped to Morocco.
Through his use of coloured tiles, intricate mosaics, billowing curtains, majestic fireplaces, orientalist domes, fountain-studded courtyards, elaborate vaulting, and the waterproof plaster known as tadelakt, he shone a light on the traditional techniques of North African craftsmen.
He drew the attention of clients that included John Paul Getty Jr and his bride, the model Talitha Getty, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and Baroness Guy de Rothschild.
Find out more about his magnetism by watching this film.
Liveable luxury by Mark Hampton (1940 – 1998)
Trained by British designer David Hicks, Mark Hampton also favoured an English country house aesthetic that espoused liveable luxury.
Clients included Brooke Astor, Anne Bass, and Estée Lauder, and even presidential families, including George and Barbara Bush and Bill and Hilary Clinton.
He decorated the Bushes’ private houses, the private quarters at the White House, the Oval Office, and the White House State Dining Room for the Clintons.
His daughter Alexa has taken over the reins at his firm.
THE CURRENT CREATORS
Life-enhancing minimalist - Clodagh
Known by her first name only, Irish-born decorator Clodagh was born in Co Sligo and includes Moytura House, in Gortcurra, outside Cong, Co Mayo, once the summerhouse of Oscar Wilde’s family, as one of her childhood residences.
In the 1970s, she moved to Spain, where she met her second husband and began her decorating career, having previously worked as a fashion designer.
She first set up the eponymous Clodagh shop on Dublin’s South Anne Street and later on Baggot Street before putting down roots on Kildare Street.
She and her husband moved to New York, where she honed her minimalist look by blending modern, tranquil spaces with holistic wellness.
This attracted clients such as film star Robert Redford and beauty queen Elizabeth Arden, and completed projects including the Dupont Circle Hotel in Washington DC, the luxurious high-rise condominiums in Caledonia in New York, the Avery building in San Francisco, and the Six Senses Douro Valley spa in Portugal.
In 1995, Clodagh produced a room for New York’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House and fabrics for Designtex.
In Ireland, she has designed a house on Dalkey’s Sorrento Terrace, the White Horses Spa at the Trump International Hotel and Golf Links in Doonbeg, Co Clare, and a converted cow shed holiday home for her son Tim O’Kennedy in Co Cork, which can be rented on Airbnb.
West Coast cool chic - Kelly Wearstler
The undisputed queen of the West Coast aesthetic, a look she has parlayed into a global empire.
Operating out of her Kelly Wearstler studio in Los Angeles, she is recognised for her bold, maximalist aesthetic and seamless blending of raw, organic materials with sculptural, mid-century and vintage furniture.
West Coast interior and product designer Kelly Wearstler doesn’t seem to sleep.
She’s collaborated with many brands, from Airbnb to Pinterest and Louis Vuitton, and has made ranges for Belgian homeware house Serax and lighting firm Visual Comfort.
She’s created interiors for several hotels, including Proper’s Austin, Downtown LA and San Francisco properties, along with the Four Seasons Anguilla.
The designer has nailed the high-low mix with her upcoming collection with Danish fast fashion label H&M. Landing in selected stores and online on Thursday, September 3rd, expect the same kind of reaction that the recent fashion collaboration with Stella McCarthy caused.
Fashion-forward Peter Marino
Often described as fashion's favourite architect, Marino bridges the gap between high fashion and modernist architecture.
His marriage of interior architecture, design, and showmanship has created a real sense of theatre in flagship retail stores for superbrands Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Dior.
His firm, Peter Marino Architect, is heavily celebrated for integrating contemporary art installations into high-end, rock-and-roll-inspired spaces.
Liveable modernist Nate Berkus
Rising to prominence in the early 2000s, Berkus has built a massive global empire focusing on soulful, layered, and personalised spaces that epitomise liveable modernism.
The American interior designer and author has brought his talents to the small screen and has become a television personality.
He runs the Chicago interior design firm Nate Berkus Associates and was a regularly featured guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, offering design advice to viewers as well as coordinating surprise makeovers for people's homes.
Liveable luxist - Michael S. Smith
Widely acclaimed for redefining the traditional liveable-luxe look, Michael S. Smith famously decorated the Obama White House.
His work features residential, hospitality, and commercial clients and blends European classicism and American modernism.
Possessing a deep respect for tradition, viewed through a modern eye, he believes that everyone should live with things they love.
Modern farmhouse revivalist - Joanna Gaines
Joanna Gaines' signature interior design aesthetic is credited with reviving the farmhouse look that works for modern life.
Her modern farmhouse approach is also often referred to as farmhouse chic, Magnolia style, or modern rustic.
It blends the warmth, vintage character, and rustic charm of a traditional farmhouse with clean, contemporary lines and modern conveniences.
Salvage finds help in creating points of interest and has garnered a following of 13.6 million followers.
