A Trip to the Kips Bay Designer Show House

The Aldyn Residences, at 63rd Street and the Hudson River - click on photos to enlarge (photo from company website)
TD and I were invited last week to the cocktail preview party of the 40th anniversary Kips Bay Decorator Show House, which is always a big event in the springtime when decorators pull out the stops to style their assigned room with their signature panache. The Show House is usually mounted in a classical manse on the Upper East Side, but this year it is presented on two floors of the new, modern luxury Aldyn Residences on the west side – as far west as you can get in fact as its location abuts the Hudson River. The Show House is open until June 14 and admission is $30 – you get your money's worth for sure as 32 talented designers are presenting their work this year; the pictures here are a small selection of the event.
The modern interiors featured huge windows which revealed spectacular views up and down the Hudson. Outdoor decks stretched in either direction along the river. At one end was perched...wait for it...the private lap swimming pool. It was a grey evening but the light on the Hudson was luminous.

Inside was a panoply of design, color, textures and ideas. Set in a living room with soaring windows, the reknowned Bunny Williams, along with Brian J. McCarthy and David Kleinberg Design Associates, created a tribute to the iconic American designer Albert Hadley, who passed away this March, complete with Hadley's signature red pops of color.
I found myself drawn to the serene rooms which were quiet and relaxing. Raji Radhakrishnan/Raji RM & Associates created a peaceful home office. I would love to work at this desk. And look at that view!

The wonderful Charlotte Moss, who last year around this time published a beautiful book, designed on the second floor a very romantic master bedroom. A long hall, which was covered with wallpaper that looked like pale silver birch, and hung with photographs that Charlotte had taken in France, led to the bedroom which had walls lined with green velvet. Charlotte herself was tucked in a corner wearing a long dress that shimmered with golden sequins which she told me was vintage Adele Simpson. Preserved boxwood covered one wall, the air was scented, and birdsong played overhead. It was dreamy escape.

Charlotte Moss in her room (photo from Kips Bay)
Back down we went to the first floor of the Show House where Susan Zises Green designed a very pretty living room. I met the decorator who said that she was inspired by the colors of the Hudson River outside the windows, and on that grey evening her room of tranquilly-toned furniture, art and antiques perfectly matched the view beyond.

We took one more trip out onto the deck and then headed downstairs to an interior courtyard where a party tent had been erected. Bars were set up there and hors d'oeuvres were passed to a chic crowd who required some refreshments after a long house tour. It was a very civilized outing here on the isle of Manhattan.

Charlotte Moss at Ralph Lauren

Decorator Charlotte Moss signing copies of her new book at the Ralph Lauren women's store this week.

"Decorating is a personal art, and your house is your studio, where there are no boundaries."
From Charlotte Moss Decorates

This week I hightailed it uptown to the new Ralph Lauren women's store on Madison Avenue for a party celebrating decorator Charlotte Moss's new book. Ralph Lauren "store" doesn't quite cover it because the building is pretty amazing but more about that later. Charlotte Moss you know is the great American decorator who specializes in interiors that are luxurious, elegant, and welcoming. A Charlotte Moss room is a masterful composition with rich layers of textiles, colors, art and antiques – a thoroughly modern Edwardian take. Her new book, Charlotte Moss Decorates (Rizzoli), written with Mitchell Owens, is her seventh.

Charlotte Moss grew up in Virginia, and her Southern roots inform her aesthetic and style. She had a successful career on Wall Street where she met her husband, financier Barry Friedberg – the couple have homes in New York City, East Hampton, and Aspen – and in 1985 she changed gears to start her decorating firm. This new book features rooms which Charlotte created for designer showhouses so it's a lavish array of luxe interiors. Charlotte has a wonderful eye for color and textures; a good example is this bedroom which was inspired by the famously stylish Pauline de Rothschild –

"Every book is different and this book was intended to address the muse in design and the thought process that follows," said Charlotte, who was wearing a very chic black hammered Swiss silk eyelet cage jacket by Lee Anderson. I asked her how a person could create more style or beauty in their life. "From the moment you wake up, everything you do, everything you see, everything you touch should express just that... beauty," she said. "It is how you carry yourself, how you dress, how you decorate, entertain, and how you write a letter... The smallest gestures are where to begin... start small!"
Another view of the blue bedroom

At the party I ran into Mitchell Owens, who is the special projects editor at Architectural Digest, and helped Charlotte write the book. "We were a grand team," he reported, "partly because we are both Virginians, had fathers who were military officers, and love beautiful houses and
gardens. Charlotte talked, I listened, we batted around ideas, and the
book just grew. And because of those long conversations, the book
sounds exactly like Charlotte because the words are Charlotte's – I
was just the medium. Basically, we had a lot of fun. She's a designer
I greatly admire, and like me, she's a serious design-history nut,
obsessed with everything from Madame de Pompadour's private rooms at Versailles to the kind of flowers Jackie Kennedy used at the White House."
A profusion of blooms

and champagne.

Held in the rather intimate confines of the fourth floor home department, the party was a bubbly swirl of editors, decorators and Charlotte's friends. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor where the party was held. Display by the fourth floor elevator –

But when I left I took the staircase down, which was quite amazing.

At the corner of Madison Avenue and 72nd Street, Ralph Lauren built from scratch this limestone store that complements the Rhinelander Mansion across the street which now houses just the men's collections. This women's store opened last summer but it looks like it has been here forever.

The limestone steps and handwrought French metal railings evoke a Parisian department store from the turn of the last century.

Here is the ground floor near the front door. I love the silk pleated lamp shades and simple palette of white and black in this store which contrasts with the rich, deep colors of the men's store across the street.

This is a view toward the jewelry salon, with Ralph Lauren staff in black and waiters in white. Trés chic.

Visit this beautiful store if you are in New York, and pick up Charlotte Moss's gorgeous book, on sale on the fourth floor.