Upon completing the book, she has concluded that New Yorkers fall into two categories: “The type to keep their shoes on, or the type to take them off when you collapse at the end of the day to read the newspaper.” Of course, calming down means a lot of different things to many bodies,” Mrs. Because they go so hard, they need a place that is theirs. “New Yorkers make a space they can come to at night after a long day. Rayner said, looking at the pictures of Bill Blass’ lofty apartment on Sutton Place filled with antiquities. “Personality is very important to New York houses,” Mrs. When one designs one’s life from the ground up, things tend to be simple, clear, and consistent.” “It is not a reduction for the sake of reduction, but rather five floors having nothing in them except what is necessary for them to serve their separate functions. “Most people look at this space and see ‘reduction,’ but this is a mistake,” Flavin Judd, the artist’s son, says in the text. The book opens with photographs of the building of the late minimalist artist Donald Judd on Spring Street, equal parts lonely and intimate. From the fine Park Avenue collections of the de la Rentas and the modern art of Jane Holzer to Zoran’s denuded 4,000-square-foot loft, walls are gone, rooms reconfigured. Until Andy Warhol introduced uptown people to downtown in the 1960’s, lofts were a novelty, urban shacks for unmoneyed people on the edge. What one notices most about New York: Trends and Traditions is how influential the idea of the loft space has become on decorating all over town, regardless of the social politics of the homeowners. The measure of status in New York is how much space you take up, rather than what you do with it. Space is luxury, especially in lieu of an abundance of places with architectural significance.
Designer Greg Jordan is firing up the color scheme in Blaine and Robert Trump’s parlor with East River views. Lulu de Kwiatkowski, an artist, is painting trompe l’oeil at the downtown duplex of the young newlyweds Adam and Samantha Kluge Cahan. Manolo Blahnik is redoing an entire brownstone for a new shoe salon and offices on West 54th Street. Fashion designer John Bartlett and Mark Welsh recently invited guests to inspect their airy new penthouse in the East 20’s, decorated by Alan Tanksley. Interior designer Thomas O’Brien is moving to the West 50’s. There’s great curiosity about Peter Marino’s work for Anne Bass in northwestern Connecticut, post-minimalist designer Claudio Silvestrin’s doings on Calvin Klein’s double apartment on Central Park West, and Rose Tarlow’s creative output for David Geffen on the East Side. Fascination fastens upon the interior lives of such not-your-average folks as David and Julia Koch, and how they will settle into their renovated Fifth Avenue apartment that once belonged to Jacqueline Onassis. With all the richness oozing from Wall Street like so much gravy these days, decorating, or “the silent art,” as Elsie de Wolfe, the mother of American interior design, called her trade, is a fevered topic in Gotham again. “We wanted to show how people live in town,” her voice tipped whimsically, like Audrey Hepburn in old New York. Rayner said, not so much turning the heavy pages as plucking them. “We tried to show what makes New York unique,” Mrs. Here are Oscar and Annette de la Renta, Bill Blass, Mica and Ahmet Ertegun, Jane Wenner, Richard Hampton Jenrette, Niall Smith, Marion McEvoy, Jane Holzer, Peter and Brooke Duchin, Fred Hughes and Beatriz Patiño, among others. The handsome volume of 27 Manhattan residences was published this fall by the Monacelli Press. Rayner referred was whatever readers might dislike about New York: Trends and Traditions, a beautiful new book she has produced with photographer Roberto Schezen. The tall, slender tastemaster settled herself on a gentle chair by a window with a view of life on East 81st Street: babbling workmen, the small heirs to large houses with their nannies, the last rusty leaves on spare city trees.
“People might think some of it is real hideola,” the interior designer Chessy Rayner said one morning recently at her office on the Upper East Side.
0 kommentar(er)
