Our New Design Offices

I finally found a new space for our offices. It's close to home, the kids' schools, and most importantly, decent lunch spots. It's much smaller than our current space, but we will have actual walls. Now we can all be on the phones without sounding like we're in a call center.

I haven't been able to focus on much else beside the aesthetic of the new space. Green is always my office accent color. But after years with boring gray walls (my mistake!), I want to bump up the drama and paint the walls a rich emerald green.  My cabinet maker is retrofitting our cabinets, including installing these brass library lights with black shades. Of course, because I'm the client, there'll be lots of Empire and Chinoiserie touches, crystal, and gilt. Mercifully, the landlord agreed to let me replace the current 80's fluorescent lights and bad carpet with these crystal fixtures and white wood floors. 

Have a look at the inspiration board. (Unfortunately, we will also have to bring along the less attractive storage stuff.) Stay tuned...

Shop the look...

Empire Chest with Cararre marble top, $3,900

Brushed brass library light with black shade, $255

Lightweight zinc-look Regency planter, $ 175

Everlasting Pink Peonies, $375

Art Deco crystal fixture, $425

Everlasting boxwood topiary, $232

Gilded crystal chandelier, $695

Emerald green storage bench, $300

Scalamandre le tigre velvet pillow, $475

Bamboo desk chair, $375

Deco Delight!

Once in a while the universe hands you a golden nugget on a silver platter. By that, I mean this spectacular inspiration photo handed to me by my francophile client. I mean SPECTACULAR! How can I even begin to recreate this periwinkle bedroom fantasy? I literally gasped when I saw it.

Okay, maybe you've seen it, but I hadn't. So, excuse me while I discuss it ad nauseam! Who did it? When? Is that ottoman Ralph? Or a vintage find? I think the mirror is Vaughan. And the fabric? Custom? Sources please...!

It is, in fact, the boudoir of Jeanne Lanvin of the famous House of Lanvin, completed in 1925! I can never emphasize enough that beautiful design is timeless. After researching it a bit further, I found these other images and this fantastic article by Eloise Moorehead:

"Jeanne Lanvin, one of the most illustrious Paris couturières of the twentieth century, hired Armand-Albert Rateau to create an elegant... Art Deco... bedroom suite in her [Paris] townhouse. Lanvin was so delighted by the results that Rateau was commissioned to design her two country homes, her boutiques, her theater and her iconic Arpège perfume bottle, as well as named head of the Lanvin-Décoration department of interior design (established in 1920).

Perfume advertisement, 1927

"The dominant motif of the room is the daisy (Lanvin’s daughter was named Marguerite, the French word for daisy). The flower appears throughout the suite, heavily stylized in fabrics, carved in wood and cast in bronze.

"Cornflower blue was Lanvin’s signature color, and it appeared so frequently in her clothing designs that it became known as 'Lanvin Blue.'...The white-silk-embroidered fabric used on the walls, draperies and bedding was made by the same seamstresses that embellished her robes de styles."

"The tufted low-slung Louis-Louis chairs nod to 18th-century France, and the bronze furniture (torchère, low table and coiffeuse) hearken ancient Pompeii (a major influence on Rateau’s style)...Curtains called portières hang over the doorways, a popular design element up to the 19th century."

In a word, spectacular.

Jeanne Lanvin, painted by one of my favorite painters, Edouard Vuillard, 1933.