Elsie de wolfe biography examples
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The First Interior Designer: Here’s the Story of Elsie de Wolfe
Elsie de Wolfe, Source: James Hazen Hyde Ball, Library of Congress
Elsie’s visceral reaction to the William Morris aesthetic that was thrust upon her, which so disturbed her inner aesthete, is a recurring theme in the stereotype of the celebrity designer. This trope recurs in various portraits of the profession, even inspiring Saturday Night Live shows like the fake home tour and has since become a parody on the profession itself, and one of its deepest anxieties of self image. In this world, the colour-, material- and texture-obsessed designer exists in a make-believe world of their own design, many times oblivious to outside realities. Many times, the unwavering focus on aesthetic obscures larger inquiries of sustainability, craft or even ethics. By sidestepping context and any larger forces at play, interior designers create wholly other worlds to inhabit. The entire professional act becomes one of crafting alter
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Elsie de Wolfe
American interior decorator, author, and actress
Elsie de Wolfe | |
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Elsie de Wolfe, | |
| Born | Ella Anderson de Wolfe December 20, c. New York City, U.S. |
| Died | July 12, () (aged&#;90) Versailles, France |
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| Title | Lady Mendl |
| Spouse | |
Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (née Ella Anderson de Wolfe; December 20, c. [1] – July 12, [2]) was an American actress who became a prominent interior designer and author. Born in New York City, de Wolfe was acutely sensitive to her surroundings from her earliest years and became one of the first female interior decorators, replacing dark and ornate Victorian decor with lighter, simpler styles and uncluttered room layouts.
Her marriage to English diplomat Sir Charles Mendl was seen as a marriage of convenience, although she was proud to be called Lady Mendl. Since , de Wolfe had been living openly in a lesbian relationship with Elisab
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Inside, Frick assigned the decoration of the grand rooms on the first floor, including the foot-long art gallery, to Sir Charles Allom, the leading British architect and interior decorator of the period who had recently redone Buckingham Palace for his yachting pal George V. To Sir Charles, Frick declared: ”We desire a comfortable well-arranged home, simple, in good taste, and not ostentatious.” The grandeur that Sir Charles achieved through a manipulation of imposing spaces, noble proportions, and classical detail, often based on historical precedents, contrasts markedly with the simplicity Frick had requested, but correspondence shows that the client frequently reined in his decorator’s extravagant tendencies.
With the house midway beneath construction in , Elsie de Wolfe entered the scene, commissioned to decorate the family’s quarters and guest rooms on the second and third floors. How she got the job, nobody knows. Mrs. Frick and her daughter, Helen, might have been familiar wit