Decorating your own home is a special task for a designer. On the one hand, there are no restrictions, on the other — it is difficult to work with such a demanding customer as yourself

Ian Phillips

Journalist, editor, author of books, Ian Phillips has been writing about interiors for almost 25 years and during this time has managed to visit designers all over the world — from Los Angeles to Beirut and from London to Antigua.

“A decorator can do any experiments in his own house”

Apartment of Michael Korengel and Jean-Pierre Calvagrak in Paris

The apartment is located in a house built in 1836 in the 10th arrondissement. The decorators abandoned the usual zoning — there is no living room, dining room or study as such, instead the rooms were named according to the color scheme: “Black”, “Gold”, “Silver”. The classic role is played only by the bedroom and the kitchen.

One of the first articles about the interior that I wrote for magazines was an article about the house of American designer Bill Sofield in Los Angeles. I started with the fact that Bill had a habit of finding accommodation in unusual places. These included a former refrigerator warehouse on the Hudson River and a small government building owned by New York Mayor Jimmy Walker in the 1920s. “He destroyed everything there and created a ballroom in the style of the Mexican Renaissance, where he hid his mistress,” Sofield told me. At the time of the 2001 interview, his Manhattan apartment was located in a former porn theater in Noho.

Meanwhile, his home in Los Angeles was in Laurel Canyon and once belonged to actor Douglas Fairbanks. Douglas built two gazebos there, which were exact copies of the gatehouses of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. For many years, the house served as a secret love nest of the actor and Mary Pickford. They created something like an altar, which Sofield discovered when he was repairing the fireplace. “Douglas kept a Power stick, a golf ball, a bottle of liquor and a playing card there,” he said. — And Mary — her cup and a hair scrunchie.”

At that time, the backstage of Hollywood, of course, intrigued many, but the real interest in this story woke up after Bill decorated the interior. He commissioned the New York artist Nancy Lorenz to paint a mural in the living room and a mother-of-pearl ceiling in the dining room. Sofield placed in the house iconic pieces of furniture authored by Otto Wagner (Otto Koloman Wagner) and Frank Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright).

Chantilly Castle by Jean-Louis Deneau

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Stephan Julliard

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© Stephan Julliard

The decorator Jean-Louis Deniot bought this castle in Chaintilly in the early 2000s and still lives in it. After the renovation, he planned 7 bedrooms here, each in its own style, so there are “Swedish”, “Chinese”, “Italian”, etc. rooms. Other spaces are also eclectic and represent a mix of vintage, collectible design, textures and prints.

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Stephan Julliard

Over the past decade, everything has changed. The universal fascination with the life of celebrities has turned into an obsession, and in many interior magazines design has faded into the background. The latest house to capture the collective imagination is Gwyneth Paltrow’s home in Montecito, which has a $62,000 swing in the living room and a spa with live plants. However, the public expressed surprise that the sculpture of Ruth Asawa (Ruth Asawa) — almost a fake (“couldn’t she afford the real thing?”). I wouldn’t go as far as one commentator who stated that the house is “definitely a masterpiece”, but the interior certainly demonstrates a subtle sense of style.

This does not apply to the homes of all celebrities. I admire Serena Williams as a talented tennis player, but to a much lesser extent I am a fan of the interior of her house north of Miami, which she designed in tandem with her sister Venus. It has a gallery-like space with a sculpture of a donkey with a chest on its back and a plexiglass piano, behind which Liberace would look perfect. In my opinion, we should not be guided by the winners of the Oscar and the Grand Slam in search of aesthetic guidance. We should focus on those whose profession is directly related to style — the designers themselves. Actors may be the stars of the film industry, but real taste-setters devote their whole lives to this.

Doug Meyer’s apartment in New York

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© STEPHAN JULLIARD

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STEPHAN JULLIARD

American designer Doug Meyer (Doug Meyer) knew that he could not live in a gray or beige interior, so he turned 80 sq. meters of his apartment in something between a museum of modern art and an artist’s palette. The usual furniture also does not suit him, so almost all the items are made according to the sketches of the owner.

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© STEPHAN JULLIARD

In the past, the standard of taste was a whole galaxy of fashion designers. Oscar de la Renta, Valentino Garavani and Hubert de Givenchy were happy to open their homes to the whole world. Yves Saint Laurent was photographed in his villa Dar el Hanch in Marrakech, in the Gabriel Castle in Normandy and in his legendary Parisian apartments on Babylon Street. The living room of these apartments was decorated with a Goya canvas, a pair of vases created by Jean Dunand for the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs exhibition in Paris in 1925, and the Dragon armchair by Eileen Gray. The latter was sold for almost 22 million euros at the posthumous auction “Collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berger” organized by Christie’s in 2009.

Karl Lagerfeld’s apartment in Paris

The famous fashion designer demolished all the partitions in the apartment on the Voltaire embankment, turning 400 sq. m. meters into a single space. “My apartment is like a huge hotel room, crammed with furniture from famous designers — I call it “antiques of the future,” he explained his radical approach.

As for Karl Lagerfeld, he decorated houses in which he almost never lived: Chateau de Penouet in Brittany, Memphis-style apartment in Monaco, Villa Jaco in Hamburg… I interviewed him twice about his other real estate — Villa Elhorria, which was built in Biarritz in 1925 by the banker Robert de Gainsbourg. It retains the original panels and bathrooms designed by Jean-Michel Frank, and a 24-hectare garden, which, according to Lagerfeld, was “like a small valley.” To mow the lawn, he bought high-tech Japanese robots. “They look like big frogs,” he told me with undisguised delight. “When they get tired, they automatically drive up to the wall and plug into outlets for recharging.”

A little later, Lagerfeld built a concrete library on the site, which numbered three hundred thousand books. He also planned to build a second house there with the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. These two, however, never managed to come to terms. “He wanted to install large windows everywhere that wouldn’t open, and he didn’t want to install them in the bathroom at all,” Lagerfeld explained. “I wasn’t going to use air conditioners in the house where I came to get some fresh air.”

Tony Duquette’s Beverly Hills Home

The most famous designer of Hollywood Tony Duquette (Tony Duquette) created the interior of his own residence “Downridge” on the principle of scenery for the films for which he became famous. Despite the fact that the house is quite small — only 83 sq. m., thanks to mirrors, paintings and fancy decor, it seems endless. And most importantly, absolutely modern.

Another fashion designer I interviewed about my own house was Frida Giannini, who was working at Gucci at the time. I was impressed by her professionalism and discipline, her collection of 8000 vinyl records and the most interesting history of her 1934 Roman villa. It stood next to a stone house that probably belonged to Anteo Zamboni, who at the age of 15 tried to kill Mussolini. The renovation of the house was supervised by Giannini’s father, the friendly architect Antonio. The black and white interior, inspired by the Art Deco era, was complemented by a bust of Modigliani carved from a railway sleeper.

In recent years, fashion designers have become more secretive about private property issues. A friend told me that Richard Buckley, Tom Ford’s late husband, once stood at a supermarket checkout somewhere in Central America. People nearby were leafing through the issue of a magazine in which one of Richard and Tom’s houses was published. After hearing the sarcastic comments of strangers, Buckley vowed that they would never open their doors to the press again.

However, the publication of their own houses and apartments can become a kind of manifesto for designers. Firstly, many customers are often not allowed to take pictures of their homes. Secondly, the interior designed for the client does not always express the designer’s own taste. Countless times I have been shown projects in which the decorator had to juggle dubious works of art or fit a completely inappropriate old-fashioned table into the interior, which the owner insisted on preserving only because it belonged to his grandparents. The interiors of their own apartments and houses allow designers to clearly declare their style.

The house of designer Catherine Martin and director Baz Luhrmann in New York

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JAMES MERRELL

In the setting of the New York house of director Baz Luhrmann, who has been working in Hollywood for many years, an experienced moviegoer’s eye can already recognize familiar objects from the threshold: a cylinder from the props of the film “Moulin Rouge!”, a drowning console that lit up in the film “Australia” with the participation of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman… It’s no coincidence: Luhrmann and his wife, costume and set designerCatherine Martin moved to New York from Sydney in 2013 while working on The Great Gatsby. The couple found a house built in 1852 in Manhattan in the Anglo-Italian style and completely renovated the interiors to their taste.

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JAMES MERRELL

Of course, this is possible only if designers have the means to design their real estate on a grand scale. Jean-Louis Deneau’s estate near Chantilly was covered by many interior publications at the beginning of his career. Axel Vervoordt’s castle near Antwerp has become a role model among decorators. Kelly Westler (Kelly Wearstler) lives in a luxury house on a three-acre plot in Beverly Hills north of Sunset Boulevard. This Spanish hacienda was rebuilt for actor William Powell in the 1930s – legend has it that he proposed to Greta Garbo in an extension known as the “Chapel”.

Other designers manage to be creative on a smaller scale. For example, Doug Meyer decorated one of his former New York apartments with about 3,000 sheets of paper. About 500 different subjects were reflected on the walls of the bedrooms. His current housing is an apartment of 80 sq. m. m2 in a brick high-rise building in Chelsea. It is notable for the pink partition “Deep Space”, which was inspired by science fiction films and topographic maps. There is also a blue library in the apartment, which Doug compares to an aquarium, wall panels made of painted glass with patterns similar to microorganisms, and a console resembling a jewel.

However, the opportunity for a designer to express himself freely is fraught with certain problems. “As a decorator, you can make two hundred variations of the same room,” says London—based designer Claudia Skaff. “The possibilities are endless.” “I like the framework and specific tasks that my clients set for me,— Olga Maleva notes. — I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a project that challenged me more than my own Moscow apartment. She had the most strict and demanding customer I’ve ever met.”

Olga Maleva’s apartment in Moscow

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Mikhail Loskutov

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Mikhail Loskutov

The designer had to do a significant part of the work on the interior remotely: the first lockdown caught her abroad. Therefore, vintage light and furniture were often chosen by Zoom. In addition, there are many items designed by Olga herself, for example, a resin table in the kitchen.

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Mikhail Loskutov

However, there is no better way for designers to improve their skills and develop their style than decorating their own homes. After all, clients mostly come to them for projects that they have already seen and want something similar. But the designers themselves don’t necessarily want to work in the same aesthetic throughout their careers. And what better way to reveal your style than working with the only client who will allow you to do whatever you want — with yourself? Jean-Louis Deneau is a perfect example of this. He made a name for himself by modernizing traditional interiors, but his own apartment in Miami testified to completely different preferences: walls of raw concrete and a ceiling decorated with a picture that resembles a satellite photo of a cyclone.

Designers surprise us in different ways. I once stayed at the Jacques Grange boarding house in Comport, where I found small plaster statues of seven dwarfs on one of the fireplaces. It seems that even the master of refinement does not mind a few ironic touches! In the Paris apartment, Michael Korengel and Jean-Pierre Calvagrak were surprised by the color of their toilet paper — black. Until recently, it seemed defiant. And one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had was visiting Tony Duquette’s wonderful home in Los Angeles, which resembles a jewelry box. After my visit, Duquette’s spiritual heir Hutton Wilkinson took me to dinner at the nearby home of Nancy Cook de Herrer, who introduced The Beatles to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This is the only time in my life when I was served medicine as part of a snack… to reduce the adverse effects of black bean soup. Since then, “Donridge” has been associated with these “pills from Beverly Hills”!

The house of designer Sabine Marcelis in Rotterdam

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CHRISTOPHER REGILD

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CHRISTOPHER REGILD

The house of 520 sq. m, in which the designer livesSabine Marcelis and her partner, architectPaul Cournet was built in the 1920s for a paper mill, but by the time of purchase it had been empty for several years. “The building was listed as an office center, there was no water or electricity. Daylight penetrated only from one side, asbestos was found in the ceiling… So we had to start from scratch, and this gave us the opportunity to experiment,” says Sabin. Today, the house of Sabine and Paul is a bright mix of industrial objects and works of collectible design. There are no internal ceilings in the building, except for the wall separating the bathrooms. Exposed brick walls and cement underfloor heating emphasize the industrial character of the building.

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Christopher Regild

Another favorite of mine is Jean—Philippe Demeyer’s house on the outskirts of Bruges. He painted one room with a geometric pattern, which he spied in a Gothic house in the Flemish village of Damme, where Margaret of York and Charles the Bold were married in 1468. Natalia Maslova’s London pied-à-terre is also charming, the green color scheme of which was inspired by Primrose Hill Park.

And the real standard of casual chic is the apartment of Maria Ousseimi in Beirut. Located on the ground floor of an 1870s house in the Gemmaize district, it is a perfect illustration of the fact that you do not need to fill a room with expensive items to make it stylish. As Ussaimi told me, “I don’t like expensive things. I prefer subjects with character.” The disco ball installed on the ceiling during the New Year’s party eventually became a permanent attribute of the interior. The Chinese figurines, which seemed priceless relics to the whole world, were actually bought for only 15 euros each. I was surprised by the absence of a chandelier in the living room with seven-meter ceilings. “What would you put there?” “What is it?” she asked. I replied: “The room itself is so impressive that there must be something incredibly grand.” Instead, she chose a simple light bulb.

Maria Housseimi’s apartment in Beirut

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© Stephan JULLIARD

Designer Maria Ousseimi settled in a traditional Lebanese house of the 1870s, filling it with objects that she had collected all her life. Thanks to this, a bed of the XIX century, modern murals based on Persian poems, trinkets found at flea markets, and Louis Vuitton chests successfully coexist here.

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© Stephan JULLIARD

Ian Phillips

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